TinkRBooks : tinkerable story elements for emergent literacy

Printed words are an abstract representation of concepts. Today parents teach children how to read by demonstrating how text is related to imagery. I present textual tinkerability, an idea for demonstrating reading by using multisensory gestures to expose and alter the text-graphic relationship within the story. Tinkerability allows readers to physically express words as they read, giving them some degree of control over the narrative. Two interactive storybooks called TinkRBooks demonstrate how tinkerability supports parent-child emergent literacy. Design guidelines were developed to showcase how tinkerability can be used for creating educationally meaningful interactivity. TinkRBooks allows parents to gesturally modify and discuss how text relates to concepts within a narrative. TinkRBooks allows children to actively explore the abstract relationship between printed words and their meanings, even before this relationship is properly understood. This ability to explore textual representation changes the way parents read to their children during emergent literacy. When using a TinkRBook, parents spend more time talking, discussing more comprehensive ideas with their children and provoking more meta dialogue than with regular books. TinkRBook also encourages children to drive their reading inquiry, by actively demonstrating the concepts relating to vocabulary schema within the narrative. The result is a new story sharing experience that benefits both parents and children by allowing them to understand how the choice of words impacts the story experience.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Architecture. Program in Media Arts and Sciences.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2011

Author dc:creator

• Chang, Angela, 1975-

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Cynthia Breazeal.

• Architecture. Program in Media Arts and Sciences.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/69519

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/69519