Collen -Part 7
Location of the Reader
In the traditional storytimes, I sat in front of the children in the usual manner for read–aloud storytimes. In the digital storytimes, I sat with the children, rather than in front of them. The traditional position of storyreader in front of the children required that I turn my eyes away from the children to actually read the text on the pages of the storybook; during the digital storytimes, I faced the screen along with the children and never had to avert my eyes completely away from them — although I was looking at the backs of their heads, I could see that they were attentive to the story. This new position of storyreader sitting with the children did not interfere with the story experience for the children, and the children actually appeared to be more attentive — and far less fidgety — during the digital storytimes.
Story Understanding
The poststory discussion for each book was intended to encourage the children to ask questions that allowed me to assess whether they had a basic understanding of the story and its elements. However, the poststory discussions were not intended as formal tests of story memory and thus not a quantitative measure of it. I also asked questions designed to probe specific textual or pictorial components of the stories. Each set of my questions grew out of the actual discussion with each group of children; therefore, I asked different questions and a different number of questions with each group.
Axle the Freeway Cat
During the Axle digital storytime, the children sat quietly and attentively for the entire story - there was only one comment made while the story was in progress. After I finished reading the Axle story, I closed it on the computer and asked the children whether they liked the story (there was a chorus of "yeses" to this question, with one child asking for another story), and I then asked whether they had any questions about the story. The children generated four distinct questions about the story, and talk about these questions threaded its way through the entire poststory discussion. The children asked no questions and made no statements about the navigational picture frame that is part of the ICDL interface.
I coded four questions asked by the children as higher-level - none of them could be definitively answered by looking at the literal text or pictures. Of the four questions, three of them addressed pictorial elements of the story.
The children asked:
- How did this story have a cat that stood on two legs, when most cats are small and square on four legs?
- Where did Axle keep his food?
- How did Axle make his food?
One question addressed a text-based element of the story.
- Why didn't Axle use brakes to stop Little Cat's car from crashing?
I did not attempt to provide direct, specific answers to the children's questions; rather, I encouraged the children to speculate on the answers to the questions, and a lively discussion among the children ensued.
I asked the children seven questions about the story.
- What was Axle's job?
- What was Axle's "best" piece of trash?
- What instrument did Little Cat play?
- Did Little Cat have a name?
- Does Axle have a kitchen?
- Why did Axle have a harmonica?
- Do you think Little Cat likes music, too?
In answering my questions, the children in the digital storytime, as a group, were able to respond with accurate answers.
When the children in the traditional Axle group entered the preschool library for their storytime, they asked why there were video cameras. I explained that the cameras were being used so I could remember everything about the storytime when I went home, then I introduced the book. One child said, "I don’t even know what the story is." When the storytime began, most of the children sat quietly and attentively, but one child interrupted my reading once the story began, first stating, "Excuse me, excuse me," and then asking "Why, why does it not be fixed?" - a question related to the fact that Axle lives in a broken-down car that, according to the text, cannot be fixed. This question - about Axle's car - persisted throughout the discussion of this book. Further along in the storytime, the children made multiple spontaneous utterances.
After the story was completed, I closed the book and, even before I could ask the children whether they liked the story, the child who asked the question about Axle’s broken car, immediately asked this question again. This was one of two child-initiated, higher-level questions that continued throughout the poststory discussion. Both of the questions generated by the children were textual in nature; neither question addressed purely pictorial issues.
The children speculated about many possibilities for the answer to the first question about Axle's car; there were 13 separate ideas generated by the children as to what happened to Axle's car and why it couldn't be fixed. The second higher-level question concerned why Axle helped Little Cat. The children had three speculative answers to this question.
I asked four questions.
- What was Axle's job?
- Did Axle have a kitchen?
- How did he fix his breakfast?
- What was the best piece of trash Axle had found?
In answering my questions, the children in the traditional storytime, as a group, were able to give accurate answers to the questions.