Literacy through technology

It might seem noticeable to say that a child’s background makes a change to how literate they are. What is less palpable, until you look at the facts, is just how stark an impact it has.

Take, for instance, research published last month by the National Literacy Trust, which finds that United Kingdom children from more privileged backgrounds are eight times more expected than less advantaged children to have an above standard vocabulary by the age of five. It could seem, in the UK at least, that the richer the parents, the more probable the child will have a love for reading.

Now draw this picture global, and you soon start to think why 781 million people are not capable to read or write adequately. How, in the 21st century, will someone apparently be born into illiteracy, a inadequacy that can then fetter them for life?

But this same report adds a heartening glimpse into a probable solution – possible if we make it so. It has uncovered proof that technology is assisting to eat away at these ingrained disadvantages, inspiring and enabling children from all backgrounds to connect with stories and to build up a love of reading.

Three in ten children from low earnings families are probable to read for longer when using technology. And boys, historically a harder to inspire group than girls, are also more thrilled to stay reading for longer via technology than textbooks.

What a game-changer; what an opportunity, what a gap-closer.

Technology is not a silver bullet, but it gives unprecedented opportunities to open up education to everybody around the world who wants it. It will help us reach the children for whom books are not just there, lying around; the children for whom reading is way, way down on their list of things to do; the children whose parents can’t read, so can’t read to them.

These latest findings include to the relentless swell of evidence that displays the power of technology to transform education. It will never replace the committed teacher or, the responsible parent. But what it can do is get stories into student’s hands – or onto their screens – and so start to level the literacy playing field. Literacy is such bedrock of approximately every other thing that happens in education, that technology is a chance worth grasping with both hands. Technology provides online education and online tutoring a boom. So child easily learns and change begins in their life.