Are they Working their Reading?

Kids play on WebkinzDuring a conversation that I had yesterday with Owatanna Schools’ Superintendent, Tom Tapper, he described how his four year old grandson was using Webkinz, a recent arrival (April 2005) to the virtual pets genre of children’s web destinations and current obsession for thousands of young children.  There’s been much written about concerns over the time children spend at computer interacting with games and with other children, and I do not want to minimize this concern.  I can still hear my mom telling us to go outside and play, as we sat glued to Saturday morning cartoons.  It was the only time with extensive children’s programming back then.  Nothing new here.  Kids will be kids, and parent need to be parents.

But what dinged in my head, as Dr. Tapper talked, was a comparison between his grandson’s play at a computer and my experiences watching Captain Kangaroo and my children’s with Sesame Street.  Although I made hats and newspaper trees along with the captain (I can still remember the sound of his scissors on construction paper), and my children sang along with Big Bird, I see something different in what children invest in their virtual pets and the social networking that happens.  They are not merely learning the information, but they’re working it, on its own terms.

Again, it’s critical that children learn to sing, play with other children, build with blocks, play in the sand, and read books.  But I wonder how learning to read, within the context of these online experiences, might differ from how we traditionally learn.  For this four-year-old, reading almost immediately becomes a tool that improves his experience.  It’s a skill that he uses to work his environment and, in this case, feed his pet, buy cloths, interact with and impress other children, and teach and learn.

Image Citation:
Chapman, C.C.. “Kids play on Webkinz.” CC Chapman’s Photostream. 22 Feb 2007. 22 Jan 2008 <http://flickr.com/photos/cc_chapman/398712827/>.

14 thoughts on “Are they Working their Reading?”

  1. I do agree that exposure to tools like Webkinz can be a boost to reading and provide a connection for kids between technology and learning. The concern I have is what happens when those kids progress to the elementary school level. I am writing this during a break in a Web System vendor review meeting. I had a chance to look at a lot of teacher pages and I know how little my colleagues are doing. It just seems like it will be frustrating for students who are used to using technology as a valuable learning tool to end up in a school that rarely uses technology, or uses it only in superficial ways. Now we need to do a better job of helping the reluctant teachers to understand the value of integrating technology in education, and then helping them to make the transition. Right now, the four year olds are ahead of many of the their future teachers.

  2. David–
    I agree that well balanced is best…kids need to get out and play, read books, do crafts…

    Sesame Street and other TV programs are still very passive, the content is delivered, yes some kids get up and sing and dance, but they have no control and no intrinsic motivation but what I have noticed with my own small children is they way that games engage them. Muy kids are motivated to read because reading provides them with information, forces them to make choices and decisions. It is no wonder that my son’s second grade teacher clocked him at over 180 wpm (twice the average speed of kids his age) why? I have no doubt that it is because of the decision based games he plays…and as a result he devours books as well Yes reading is a skill…a skill that my son learned at a very early age that he “needs” to get ahead…

    Here is one of my great fears…just as kids who lacked a literacy rich environment in their early years fell behind in school, those children who do not have technology rich early environments are going to be at an even greater disadvantage when they get into skills. Because many children are learning these “skills” at an early age the digital divide may cause more problems than expected…

  3. I’m with you on reading, but what is really social about using your toy in conjunction with anonymous others in really primitive cheaply produced software? How is this richer than playing with dolls/animals/blocks/cars/the long-gone imaginative play/dressup corner in bygone classrooms?
    Have you seen the Webkinz software? It makes Math Blaster look like high art.
    Webkinz is undeniably a brilliant stroke of tschochke marketing. Kids may even love them.

    However, isn’t there a danger of projecting too much educational and sociological significance onto an elephant purchased in an airport gift shop?? Just because some of
    us found a voice online does not mean that everything changes.

    PS: I suugest adding Sherry Turkel’s books (The Second Self & Life On The Screen) to your reading lists.

  4. What I haven’t read yet is that Webkinz and other sites like this are usually just one of the many things kids do. My daughter plays Webkinz, rides her bike, reads books, plays with friends, does gymmastics, plays with her DS, watches TV, talks with me, plays with dolls, makes crafts, and wants to do karate.

    What’s nice about Webkinz, as mentioned, is that it often gives them a reason to read that they understand. My daughter is 8 now, and for her, it teaches her about taking care of something and even budgeting money. She always asks if she can “buy” something with her virtual money, and then she goes out and plays games that make her think to earn back what she spent. Even as a dad, I cannot do that good of a job instilling good money habits.

    Like anything, would you want your kid spending 8 hours a day reading a book? 8 hours a day playing outside? No,it’s all balance.

  5. With my students (I see 70 1st-6th graders a week), they get bored very easily if the software/website doesn’t have staying power. Like everything else, in a few months Webkinz will be sooo yesterday.

    Dave, remember the first interactive show on TV? For those of you too young to remember, there was a show on TV (ended 1953) called The Winky Dink Show. For 50 cents you received by mail a square of plastic that you would slap on to your TV screen. With special markers you would “save” the characters by drawing a bridge, a ladder, etc. More>>> http://www.tvparty.com/requested2.html

  6. Winky Dink is as responsible for inspiring today’s digital artists as just about any other influence.

    It also ran again in the 1960s.

    That said, the webkinz software is still crummy.

  7. This discussion reminds me of how I learned to type. All through school, up to a BA in General Studies (smile, don’t laugh at me!), I refused to do it. It was soooo boring.

    Then, in 1995, I got a personal computer and signed on to aol (this was before graphics, it was entirely text based). Now, if I couldn’t type, I couldn’t talk! I banged through that typing program in 2 weeks, and was up to 50-60 WPM in just a few more.

    Sure, if I had learned to type as a youngster (I was about 38 when I finally did), I might be able to type 80-120 wpm, but I don’t really need to- I can type about as fast as I can think : ).

    Every educational institution I have worked for since has viewed chatrooms as dangerous and detrimental for students, or at the very least, a waste of time. I just always shook my head. The desire to communicate with others about a topic you are interested in is a powerful motivator- why not harness that and put it to good use? As the technology gets safer for young people to use (the adult being able to moderate the conversation, and limit access to the rest of the web), teachers and districts are beginning to see the value of this technology, but still, they have many concerns that border on irrational given this point in the technology’s evolution.

    And THAT’S a disservice to those children who don’t have access to the internet and a parent internet-savy enough to guide them at home.

  8. My daughter and many others at our school love webkinz. And I think perhaps that Gary thinks the software is “crumby” because he is not the demographic target. The target is kids and they love it.

    My 10th graders used the Webkinz to create an online safety course for our elementary school and it was an incredible success! We are planning a follow up! The students can still remember everything they were taught: do not share passwords, only add friends that you verify via voice, and other things about safety that were intertwined into the course.

    Anything can be used to teach if it is planned and thought through and adapted for what it does well.

    This is how our children relate to one another it is part of their lives. They also congregate on xbox live, play each other’s Mii’s and all sorts of things that take them out of their cocoon. However, we cannot discount their experience as a valid one. Yes, they still need exercise and to be well rounded.

    What bothers me is why older generations always feel that the younger generation is only valid if the younger childhood relates to their own. I can remember my parents “kicking me off” sesame street telling me to go play outside.

    Let them be who they are and join them. It is fun and we might learn something. Or we can just stomp our feet and say “be like me” as they look the other way and laugh.

    Listen. Learn. Help the students be what they should be. Listen to what they say about what they are doing. We might all learn something about how to be better teachers and to relate better to today’s student.

  9. I was definitely a fresh air kid growing up, never had a game system, didn’t have a computer until I was 28 and still in college, and television was not a priority. Once I did get a computer one of the first things I did was download HTML tutorials so that I could convert my DOS based web site to a graphics based site. Since then I just can’t get enough, but I spend every moment I can outdoors. I am glad to say my kids are similar. Just like what Mike shared, my kids ride their bikes, hike, camp, work in the yard with me, go to dance and band practice, build web pages, and yes my kids also have Webkinz. The Webkinz experience does allow my kids an additional reading experience as well as a simulated real world application of math/money management skills. In addition they have to prioritize, organize and take care of something other than themselves. They have been taking care of their Webkinz for about seven months now, and though their enthusiasm has wavered a little they still enjoy it and I like some of the things they are learning.

    In response to what Vicki said, that Internet safety course your 10th graders created sounds great. I didn’t think you could do anything like that with the program. I’m doing an Internet safety course with my computer lab students, I’ll have to look at that. I have to say also that I am blessed to have kids that do a great job achieving a balance between their tech world and their real/physical world.

    Looking back at the article one thought it elicits is the reality that, according to another article I read recently, kids are reading less, so we need to make reading as interesting or desirable as possible to keep them reading. We make our kids read real books, but getting them to read the amount we want them to be reading is an easier task because of the Internet and software. I think we need to make our kids go outside and play, get off the computer, turn off the television, write a letter by hand and so on, but we also need to equip them to be able to navigate the digital world confidently, responsibly, and successfully. They are the digital natives, and I want my kids and my students to embrace that world in such a way that they are not intimidated by it. I agree very much with other postings, it’s all about balance.

  10. Both of my children played the online game ToonTown before they could read. I do not believe that the game had any impact on when they STARTED to read but I do think it sped up their reading process once they had already started. Realizing that they could read those squiggly lines on the screen and that it would HELP their game play was huge incentive.

  11. There is increasing value being put on both written language and graphic representation of ideas, and less on face-to-face interaction. Entry into kindergarten serves as an anecdotal example. In the past, students were expected to learn the alphabet during kindergarten, and are now expected to know it before coming into kindergarten. As I checked out Webkinz, (thanks to a friend with young children) I was astounded by the textual requirements necessary to get the most out of the site.
    In your last statement about how we “…traditionally learn”, I feel as if you are implying that children learn differently today than in generations past. I think there may be another possibility; that with more modes of learning, human learning potential is increasingly being met. It might not be that people are adjusting to the different modes of learning, but that the increasing number of modes are introducing us to what have always been more efficient ways for many people to learn.

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