Although digital media has been exploited to improve digital libraries,
social networking sites, and book promotion for adult and child
stakeholders, but encouraging children who have the choice to either
read from a book or on a screen remains limited worldwide, including
Jordan. This interest has meant that data about children¿s reading habits
were needed, and the present study was intended as a contribution
towards this aim.
Interviews were conducted with Jordanian writers, publishers, child
specialists, and various children¿s cultural centres. The managers and
personnel unanimously showed that Jordanian children are not good
readers and that a limited number of books are published for children as
there are actual boundaries preventing Jordanian writers from publishing
books.
In particular, subjecting the typical sorts of children¿s websites ¿ 'Club
Penguin', 'PBS Kids', 'A Story before Bed', 'Baraem', 'Storyline Online',
and 'Raneen' ¿ to evaluation showed that 'Club Penguin' got the highest
rank among the other websites in terms of multimodal features, usability,
and language, while 'PBS Kids' got the highest rank regarding
interactivity, and 'A Story before Bed' got the highest rank in reading
activities. Although it was realised that most children were satisfied with
the aspects of usability and ease of use rather than the structure or the
aesthetic of the website, and were more attracted to the websites that
provide multimodal features such as special characters, narration,
gesture, and interactivity.
The targeted websites¿ parameters obtained from the survey were used
as guidance in the design structure of the KITABAK website, as a virtual
reading environment for children¿s reading practices. The evaluation
results that were obtained showed that there is a significant correlation
towards encouraging children¿s reading habits and reading from printed
books accompanying the website; girls showed more interest in reading
iv
than boys; and there is an obvious willingness for the adaptation of the
website as a part of the Jordanian school curriculum. In addition, the
KITABAK website was accepted significantly more than 'Club Penguin',
mainly because the KITABAK website has facilities, games and reading
activities. Also, results showed that children who were subjected to
testing the KITABAK website for a one-week period proved to accept the
website significantly more than those who were subjected to testing it
once. / Applied Science University
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:BRADFORD/oai:bradscholars.brad.ac.uk:10454/6299 |
| Date | January 2012 |
| Creators | Jurf, Dima R.M. |
| Contributors | Goodall, Mark D., Allen, Patrick T. |
| Publisher | University of Bradford, School of Computing, Informatics & Media |
| Source Sets | Bradford Scholars |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis, doctoral, PhD |
| Rights | <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/"><img alt="Creative Commons License" style="border-width:0" src="http://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc-nd/3.0/88x31.png" /></a><br />The University of Bradford theses are licenced under a <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/">Creative Commons Licence</a>. |
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