The complexities and learning opportunities

of personalisation in children’s digital books

Dr Natalia Kucirkova The Open University

Digital Literacy for Preschoolers 26th of June

Personalised books

Image from www.clker.com, edited by NK

Once upon a time, there was a little girl called ………… One morning, after she had got out of her bed, she had some …………………. and went to the park to play with her friends ……………..

Child’s name: Natalia

Favourite breakfast food: porridge

Friends’ names: Jill and Kate

Effects of personalisation on children’s

language with paper-based books

Kucirkova, N., Messer, D., & Sheehy, K. (2014). Reading

personalized books with preschool children enhances

their word acquisition. First Language, 34(3), 227-243.

●-children learnt more new words embedded in PBs

than NBs

Kucirkova, N., Messer, D., & Sheehy, K. (2014). The

effects of personalisation on young children's

spontaneous speech during shared book

reading. Journal of Pragmatics, 71, 45-55.

●-PBs initiate more spontaneous but also more self-

referential speech

Audio rep Visual

rep

Touch

screen

Interact-

ivity

Custom-

isation

Personal

-isation

Paper Books No Yes No No No No

PC books Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes

Simple E-books Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No

Interactive e-books Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

New affordances of digital books

From: Kucirkova, N. (2014) iPads and tablets in the classroom: personalizing

children’s stories, UKLA Minibook 41. ISBN: 978-1-897638-90-3

Personal or personalised ?

From: Kucirkova, N. (2014) iPads and tablets in the classroom: personalizing

children’s stories, UKLA Minibook 41. ISBN: 978-1-897638-90-3

●Focused and joint attention (shared activity)

●Rich linguistic environment

●‘Scaffodable’ activity (parents’ extra-textual talk)

●Enjoyment, parental warmth

●Profoundly social process, embedded in parent-child

relationships

● ….personalization….and reciprocity….

SBR: what makes it successful?

Agency and aesthetics--reciprocity

Empowerment

Confidence building

Authorship

Ownership

Agency

CREATE

SHARE

Our Story app What is that? ibook

Design-based research

Understanding the processes . . .

Designer dilemmas …

Image taken from Natalia’s personal blog, available at:

http://personalized-multimodal-stories.blogspot.co.uk/

Digital personalised stories used at home

Kucirkova, N., Messer, D., Sheehy, K. And Flewitt, R. (2013) Sharing personalized stories on iPads: a close look at one parent-child interaction, Literacy, 47, 3, 115-122.

Digital personalised stories at schools

Kucirkova, N., Messer, D., & Sheehy, K., Fernandez-Panadero, C. (2014) Children's engagement with educational iPad apps: insights from a Spanish classroom, Computers & Education, 71, 175-184.

Email Natalia.Kucirkova@open.ac.uk

Twitter @Nkucirkova

Publications: https://open.academia.edu/NataliaKucirkova

Blogs at The Conversation, Booktrust, Children’s Media

Foundation & Open University

Curated topic: Children's literacies in 21st century

Thank you…Any comments/ questions?