Collen -Part 9
Impact of Size of Pictures on Story Understanding
The size of the picture books when projected on the screen during the digital storytimes was almost triple the size of their hard-copy counterparts (see Table 3).
Table 3: Hard-copy versus Digital Image.
| Table 3: Hard-copy versus Digital Image. | ||
| Axle the Freeway Cat | ||
| Screen Image | Hard-copy of book | |
| Double-page Spread Size | 3" X 4" | 9" X 16" |
| The Hunterman and the Crocodile | ||
| Screen Image | Hard-copy of book | |
| Double-page Spread Size | 3" X 4" | 10" X 20" |
In the questions generated by the children in the poststory discussions, there was a distinct difference between the types of questions the children asked, depending on whether they attended the digital or traditional storytime. After both of the digital storytimes, the children in both groups asked questions that raised both text-based and picture-based issues about the stories; in the traditional storytimes, children in both groups asked only text–based questions. Table 4 sets forth the number and types of poststory questions asked by the children.
Table 4: Picture- and Text-Based Questions in Digital and Traditional Storytimes.
| Table 4: Picture- and Text-Based Questions in Digital and Traditional Storytimes. | ||
| Picture-based Questions | Text-based Questions | |
| Axle-Digital | 3 | 1 |
| Axle-Digital | 0 | 2 |
| Hunterman-Digital | 1 | 2 |
| Hunterman-Traditional | 0 | 5 |
One element - the size of the picture-book illustrations when projected on the screen - may be the reason that the children in both digital groups generated questions that addressed completely visual components of the books; none of the questions asked by the children in the traditional storytimes addressed visual components of the stories.
That children in the traditional storytimes asked no picture-based questions and children in both digital storytimes did ask picture-based questions suggests that the larger–format presentation of the stories' pictorial components in the digital storytimes may have resulted in an enhanced understanding of the story, based on an enhanced visual experience.