Introduction
Overview of the Problem
Reading has always been seen as a way that families can bond. It can be a personal yet educational experience for the entire family. In light of this, we desire to create a system that will allow grandparents and grandchildren to continue the age old tradition of reading with one another. In today’s fast paced world, distance, varying time zones and differing schedules can make it difficult for grandparents to schedule quality time with their grandchildren. This can result in a weakening of family ties.
The International Children’s Digital Library (ICDL) has created an online library that can be found at www.icdlbooks.org, for teachers, children, parents and many others from varying backgrounds and nationalities to visit and read books online. ICDL wanted to expand the usage of their website to include a way for grandparents and grandchildren to correspond through reading books together online. Our group has provided a unique solution to achieve this goal. We propose that grandparents and grandchildren correspond via voice recordings of their chosen books. The idea is that grandparents and grandchildren will come to a centralized website, record their stories and leave them there to be listened to later by the other individual.
This system will include a single interface for grandparents and for grandchildren. The interface will include the option to find ICDL books, record readings, in whole or in part, and then upload the recording to the system. The system will also provide a user’s guide for uploading voice recordings to the system.
Relevant Web Sites
This idea to provide grandparents and grandchildren the opportunity to go online and make voice recordings of books has proven to be very unique because there has not been much work done in this area by others. The few papers or relevant websites that have discussed problems similar to this one include:
-Grandparents as Parents
Overview: An increasing number of grandparents are finding their later years different from what they expected. Many grandparents have taken on the role of surrogate parents to their grandchildren. Recent legislative activity is also likely to contribute to an increase in the number of grandparent-grandchild families in the future. Living nearby, the grandchild knows grandmother and grandfather; they're part of everyday life. Being far away is different, geography causes gaps between them.
Comparison to GGBooks: GGBooks website allows grandparents and grandchildren to interact with each other through reading book. This matter makes it possible for grandparents to take role of parents and to be apart but still to get in touch with their grandchildren.
-Grandparents Today
Overview: According to Erik Erikson, psychoanalyst, there are several stages of development within the life cycle. These stages were formulated from extensive experience with children and adolescents. Grandparents can help their grandchildren develop trust, autonomy, initiative, identity and industry during the particular stage of their life by having interaction with their grandchildren.
Comparison to GGBooks: According to Erik Erikson, GGBooks website helps grandparents to teach their grandchildren different aspects of their life such as: trust, initiative, and autonomy, etc. With GGBooks the matter of distance and time zone could not prevent grandparents from teaching their grandchildren. In the GGBooks website, grandparents are be able to pick the book which is related to one of these aspects from the ICDL website and tell their grandchildren how to use these aspects in their life to be successful. They can support and encourage their grandchildren by reading and recording books to them that teach such values and morals.
-Palaver Tree Online
Overview: Palaver Tree is an online community that supports kids interviewing elders to build up a shared database of oral history. This system is designed to integrate oral history to a typical middle-school classroom. The intended users are kids, teachers and elders. Palaver tree has four main componenst; Profiles, Discussion Space, PavalStories and a Home Screen.
Comparison to GGBooks: Unlike Palaver Tree which targets middle-school kids and recruited elders by teachers, GGBooks is a website designed specially for grandparents and grandchildren. Besides enriching the child’s education, GGBooks provides a way for grandparents to share their values and culture with their grandchildren and helps the child to develop the habit and love of reading. PavalStories, the shared stories in Palaver Tree, are the reports that kids write based on historical experience or memory that elders have. However, the shared stories in GGBooks are the voice recordings of grandparent and grandchild based on ICDL’s book collection. The Discussion Space is very similar to the GGBooks’ message board. However, unlike Palaver Tree, GGBooks allows the users to send and receive voice recordings. Also it provides a painting environment for the kids.
-Children’s Books Online
Overview: Children’s Books Online is growing volunteer project by Network for Goods. It provides children, parents and educators with hundreds of antique, illustrated literature, which are being translated into 22 different languages for educational purposes. Some of their objectives are to create sound files for their books and to increase the number of books online.
Comparison to GGBooks: Although this website’s audience includes children, which is similar to the GGBook Reading website, it does not provide the proper navigational structure that children can follow. The website is a text based site with fonts that are too small for children. As a result of these, some users will probably experience difficulty finding a story to read, except when helped by an adult. GGBook Reading website on the other hand, is designed with the notion of users (children) being able to access the website on their own to bring about learning. Therefore, the proper navigation such as visual guide and graphics is used.
-Reading Is Fundamental, Inc.
Overview: RIF is the oldest and largest children and family nonprofit literacy organization in the United States. Its programs combine three essential elements to encourage children's literacy: reading motivation and family and community involvement. It also provides articles and tips to help parents bring about good reading habits in their children.
Comparison to GGBooks: In order to bring about family and community involvement, this web site integrates a login system for children and adults. This idea of a login system is related to the login concept of the GGBooks Reading website. However, the GGBooks website has two different designs for the child and adult interface while the RIF website uses only one design. The interfaces for the GGBooks website allows back and forth interaction through posting and receiving messages, drawing and recorded stories between both users (grandparent and grandchild). Whereas, the RIF interfaces permits the user to send only text, and / or drawings.
-Suggested Reading for Grandparents & Grandchildren
Overview: A group by the name of Relatives as Caregivers from Erie County, New York made a website and a guide for its community's children and those who take care of them. Many caring for the children are relatives, often grandparents, who assumed the care of their grandchildren due to societal problems. This online resource provides information, support and activities for caretakers, with special attention shown to grandparents. One of the resources is a reading list that is divided up into two parts, one for the grandparent and the other for the grandchild, each includes a summary of a book and a suggested reading age.
Comparison to GGBooks: Many of the goals of ICDL and this community site are similar, by linking up with grandparents with a useful activity (reading) and advocating loving relationships. Both websites have the same general audiences, but differ on the methodology and objectives. Erie County's website deals with a personal one-on-one interaction with the caretaker and child, whereas ICDL bridges people separated by time and distance. Also the organizations of the websites are different. Erie County's website consists of a list of several books, a summary, author, date and a suggested child reading age. ICDL also makes the distinction of the child's age but also makes a special effort to incorporate different cultures and backgrounds; where Erie County objective is to address specific societal and family problems. ICDL also takes into account a global audience, and does so by including a Multilanguage feature, where it is lacking on Erie County's website. Specifically, the GGBooks reading club plans to implement features that will bring grandparents and children separated by long distances and time together to communicate and share experiences that Erie Community is promoting locally within their community.
Discussion of Previous Work
There has been a lot of discussion about the role that grandparents play in the lives of their grandchildren. Some of the work done to bridge the communication gap between grandparents and grandchildren has been that of providing a shared database of oral histories online by way of children interviewing their elders. There also are websites that contain children’s books online. Some of these websites include audio files of these books. Although these efforts are worthwhile, there hasn’t been any progress towards having personalized book reading between grandparents and grandchildren. With the lack of having a system to provide personalized book reading, GGBooks has provided a unique solution to grandparent and grandchild book reading via personalized voice recordings of books online.
References
Children’s Books Online, 2004, http://www.childrensbooksonline.org
Grandparents as Parents, 1996, http://www.seniorglobe.com/readarticle.php?article_id=52
Grandparents Today, 2001,
http://www.uwex.edu/ces/flp/grandparent/understandingmygrandchildren.pdf
Palaver Tree Online, 2001, http://www.cc.gatech.edu/elc/palaver/papers/pt-chi01.pdf
Reading Is Fundamental, Inc., 2005, http://www.rif.org/readingplanet/
Suggested Reading for Grandparents & Grandchildren, 2001, http://www.erie.gov/depts/seniorservices/rac/suggested_reading.phtml