Collen -Part 6
Listener Attentiveness and Movement
Both times I read Axle, the total movement of the children during the two types of storytimes differed. There was more total movement during the digital storytime versus the traditional storytime. However, I observed two different types of movement during the digital storytimes - one type of movement occurred when the children looked away from the screen and toward me when the digital wireless mouse was used to turn the pages. This looking away, which was momentary, did not occur while the story was being read but when I finished reading the text on each page and was in the process of advancing to a new page on the screen. While I turned pages, there was no story reading going on.
The other type of movement I observed - what I would call "fidgety preschooler" movement - included looking away from the screen or the page during the actual reading. There was far more of this type of movement during the traditional storytime than there was during the digital storytime. In fact, as illustrated in Figure 3, the movement looking away from the book versus looking away from the screen during the reading of Axle is more than double during the traditional storytime.
Figure 3: Axle the Freeway Cat - Looking away from book/screen during storytimes.
I observed exactly the same difference in attentiveness to the reading during the two Hunterman storytimes - when subtracting the momentary glance at me as the digital pages were turned, there was much more movement during the traditional storytime. This movement and attention difference during the Hunterman storytimes is illustrated in Figure 4.
Figure 4: The Hunterman and the Crocodile - Looking away from book/screen during storytimes.
