Role of Parents and Annotation Sharing in Children's Learning Behavior and Achievement using E-Readers

Although previous studies have highlighted the advantages of using e-books for learning, most have compared learning achieved with traditional textbooks with that achieved with e-books in a classroom situation. These studies focused on individual learning instead of on interactions among learners, learning behavior using ebooks after school, and parental observations of children using e-books for learning. This research investigated the use of annotatable multimedia e-readers (AMEs) for elementary school-level English and examined the effects of annotation-sharing mechanisms inside and outside the classroom on learning and achievement. The research findings suggest that reading the annotations of high-achieving learners (HLA) via the annotationsharing function can reinforce learning. Moreover, HLA annotate significantly more in class and after school than do low-achieving learners (LLA). We found a positive correlation among parents’ perceptions of afterschool learning with AMEs, learners’ after-school annotation recording, learning behavior while listening to such recordings, and children’s learning achievement.