Developing an educational e-book for fostering kindergarten children's emergent literacy.

This preliminary study investigated the effects of a novel educational electronic book (e-book) developed by the authors to further kindergarteners' emergent literacy skills within a “paired-learning” versus “individual learning” context. Of the 72 children randomly chosen from three kindergartens in a low SES township in the country where the research was conducted, 24 were randomly assigned to work individually and 48 (24 pairs) to work in pairs during the three e-book activity sessions. Pre-and post-intervention emergent literacy measures included word meaning, word recognition, emergent writing, phonological awareness, and letter naming. The findings show that overall emergent literacy levels of children in both learning groups improved from pre-to post-intervention. Implications for educators and e-book designers are discussed.