Children’s literacy, oral and language development are enhanced through digital technology like iPad apps, allowing interactive, play-based learning. Jones (2012) terms this “collaborative multimodal dialogue.” iPads are already prevalent in popular culture, so students need no convincing to see their relevance in learning. Many students already know how to navigate iPads before entering school, despite their limited literacy skills. Picture books can be read aloud on iPads and eBooks, and using Apps students can then create meaning from these narratives through creative responses embedded in the App. This might include an oral retelling of a story with the support of a stimulus like finger puppets or the Playschool ArtMaker App. Students can be encouraged to draw on their own experiences in the retelling and connection to these stories. Students benefit from storyboard scaffolding in the App, encouraging a structure of ‘beginning’, ‘middle’ and ‘end’ in a story retelling. This process is entirely student-centred. Jones (2012) found that using Apps in this way greatly improved development of student’s oral language development.
We also explored the Storyboard App, allowing you to create professional storyboards with annotations, backgrounds and animations. It would encourage students to sequence narratives However, we found it hard to navigate, even as adults. It was hard to find the functions for enlarging texts and adding photographs. With some training, students in Stage 3 may be able to access the program on a limited level.
Reference
Jones, M. (2012), ipads and kindergarten- students literacy development, SCAN, 31(4), 31-40.
Launching classrooms into Cyberspace 