A child's mobile digital library. Collaboration, community, and change: Collaboration, Community, and Change

This chapter discusses experience in adapting and enhancing digital books, small-screen reading, in-context story creation, and collaborative storytelling for mobile platforms. It presents the current research landscape; the interface approaches chosen; the codesign methods used with children as our partners; the design challenges encountered; and the goals for the future. Approximately 80% of children 0-6 years of age read or are read to in a typical day. When books play an important role in young people's lives, their cognitive, social, and motivational development increases. Research shows that the presence of technology might actually increase the presence of books in the lives of people living in the United States. From the Mideast to northern Africa to the United States, the world's children are growing up impacted by conflict, poverty, and lack of school resources. The 20th-century model of shipping books to remote areas of the world is problematic because of skyrocketing costs, ongoing wars, corruption, and crumbling infrastructures. Mobile devices can offer access to digital books, even in developing countries with struggling economies. Experiences from designing mobile reading devices have shown that people want to be social with their mobile technologies, whether there is one mobile device to share among a few people or one mobile device per person. The small screen has its limitations for reading and viewing, but through content sharing and/or content splitting, small size is possible to overcome. It is also seen that stories and mobile technologies are a bridge to bring together children with other children and with adults. Cooperative inquiry methods give adults a chance to better understand children's perspectives. There are many codesign methods that can be used to gain shared understanding.