New technology to help young children's reading
Researchers at The Open University have created a free 'app' to help parents teach their children to read.
Our Story has been designed to be used on mobile devices, such as the iphone or iPad. The app incorporates research findings and theory to provide the experiences known to develop the abilities and motivation for reading. Parents can easily create their own personal picture books, stories and games and in doing so support vocabulary development and reading skills.
David Messer, Professor of Education in the Faculty of Education
and Language Studies, explained: "Reading, even in the digital age,
is probably one of the most important skills that children can
acquire. It's an important source of enjoyment and helps children
to develop vital language and social skills. Indeed, it can open up
whole new worlds by providing the means to access an enormous range
of information and knowledge.
"Research has indicated that building a story based on a child's
own life has been proven to increase their confidence and social
skills. What Our Story does is build on this to produce an app that
provides an easy to use means for parents to take their own photos
and ideas and create personalised story books and games for their
children. This use of familiar pictures and scenarios helps
children to relate to the content and thus become more engaged in
learning. Not only does this provide a foundation in reading for
children, but it means parents can really take part in creative
storytelling activities. In fact, some of the most famous
children's books were initially written by authors for their own
children."
The app has been developed by a team of child psychologists and
education specialists at The Open University including Professor
David Messer, Natalia Kucirkova and Dr. Denise Whitelock. Using Our
Story, parents can create stories for their children by putting
pictures, sounds, speech and text on 'ecards' to build storyboards
which can be based on anything from real life events and trips, to
stories that focus on family and community. Trials have shown that
young children enjoy both listening to a story using the app and/or
taking part in the creation of a story.
The app is suitable for ages one year and upwards and can be
adapted to various levels of a child's ability. This makes it
flexible and a sensitive way to target each child's needs and
differences.
Our Story is free to download from the Apple store:
A short video showing the app in action: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z76jcP-np60