This is a load of horsecrap. I can't see a difference between reading on an e-book reader and a physical book; I read on an e-book reader since I'm 14 and I barely touch physical books anymore; there's just no point. It's simply a bunch of morons opposing progress. Parents, don't listen to them.
Many believe that this change is for the worse and will further shorten the attention span and affect the literacy of children.
Yes, it WILL affect the literacy of the children. For the better. It won't shorten the attention span - instead, it will get the kids to quickly drop boring books and read interesting stuff instead. When you have an access to thousands of books (let's face it: who the hell
buys e-books?
), you won't waste any time on boring crap - kids will only read what's interesting and not what's forced by school, etc.
E-books engage children by adding a new level of interaction between the child and story. Some see this this interaction as replicating video games.
And what's so bad about that? I've learned more from video games than an average obsolete "parent" can imagine.
Another possible negative of this change is the replacing of adults in teaching children to read. With interaction integrated into e-books, an adult is not needed to engage the child.
Not all skills require a teacher to be taught efficiently. In fact, some are better learned on your own. That's how I mostly learned to read. I didn't need an adult buzzing over my shoulder the whole time; nothing wrong with that. Basically, adults are simply afraid that kids will learn faster than they want them to.
Emperor, what an outrageous bunch of crap. I swear, the only toys my kids will ever get will be tons of computer hardware and software to play around with; who the hell wants to waste time with anything non-digital? I remember myself as a kid - once I was able to start messing with computers, I was not interested in any crappy "toys" that kids are supposed to play with (toy cars, etc) - in our age, learning can be MUCH faster if not artificially slowed down by crappy media which forces kids to watch retarded non-educational cartoons and "shows" and convinces them to waste their time staying away from tech. I never had any kind of Internet access restriction, "safe for kids" devices or whatever modern hypocritic media overflows with. Give the kids space and opportunity to experiment and develop, remove negative outside influence of the "media", and they'll pleasantly surprise you.
/rant over