Although the acceptance of educational apps and their contributions to learning have been widely researched, none of these studies have examined links between teachers' acceptance of apps and their students' skills. The present study investigated this issue with respect to a new, French-language educational app for helping preschool children…

Tablet-based educational technologies provide a supplement to traditional classroom-based early literacy education, especially in regions with limited schooling resources. Prior work has probed how children generally interact with and learn from these technologies, however, there is limited research on student engagement with applications that…

While mobile devices are becoming increasingly ubiquitous (even in low-income families in the United States) and are being used for educational purposes, it is unclear how these technological tools may benefit letter learning (a foundational precursor to early literacy achievement) in preschool children. To contribute clarity, this study tested…

Emergent literacy abilities of young children are strong predictors of future academic success, however, biological and environmental risks can impact their progress. Parental interventions that promote home-based stimulation of preschoolers can enhance literacy development and ensure school readiness. mHealth technology may be a viable approach…

This paper explores the design, development and evaluation of an early childhood literacy iPad application, focusing on the English Alphabet, called "A to Z Safari" trialled in Australian classrooms. A to Z Safari was designed to assist students in the early years of schooling with learning the alphabet and building on their knowledge of…

As portable devices become increasingly available in elementary classrooms teachers are expected to use these new technologies to engage students in both traditional print-based literacy learning and digital literacies practices, such as multimodal composing. Teachers face the daunting task of integrating apps into their current research-based…

Given the increasing use of app books with young children, research is needed to inform their selection and design. Although broad guidelines exist, more fine-grained guidance is needed. To address this need, we explored the relations among app books' digital affordances, readers' behaviors with these affordances during both buddy and individual…

Young children living in technology-based communities are using touch-screen tablets (e.g. iPads) to engage with the digital world at an early age. The intuitive touch-screen interface, easily downloadable apps (applications) and mobility of tablets drive their increasing popularity with pre-schoolers. This review examines research to date on…

This article highlights considerations for teachers when selecting and using e-books and e-book applications (apps) with beginning readers during guided and independent reading. A framework for examining e-books and e-book apps is suggested, and several apps and related digital features are described. The article also includes an overview of…

Interactive app books are increasingly part of young children's literacy ecosystem. However, most previous studies examined buddy reading with traditional print books or CD-ROM books. Little is known about whether and how buddy reading with app books might be related to subsequent individual reading. To address this, informed by multimodal…

To understand young children's experience with multimodal digital texts, we investigated how 53 kindergarteners' (ages 5-6) buddy reading behaviors (reading mode selection, sequential/non-sequential reading, hotspot use, use of modalities, use of monitoring) were related to their individual comprehension outcomes (prompted retelling,…

To date, applying what is known about child development to educational app design has been minimally studied and rarely tested. Using developmental and learning sciences research (e.g., Hirsh-Pasek et al., 2015), this dissertation identifies whether evidence-based teaching strategies are used in the design of existing educational apps and…

This paper reports on some data on the effects of screen-based interactivity on children's engagement with storybook apps during family shared book reading that were gathered in a 2-year, small-scale ethnographic case study in Spain. Data analysis focuses on the complex interplay between the storybook app's interactive features and the children's…

This study employs a sequential multiple assignment randomized trial (SMART) design to develop an adaptive intervention with personalized print and digital content for kindergarten to Grade 2 children (n = 273). In Stage 1, we ask whether it is better for children to receive an adaptive intervention based on (a) 10 conceptually coherent texts or…

This dissertation sought to produce and empirically test a theoretical model for the literacy construct of print concepts that would take into account the unique affordances of digital picture books for emergent readers. The author used an exploratory study of twenty randomly selected digital story applications to identify print conventions, text…