Dear Cynthia, Martin, Aline, Maureen, Celia and Yan,

Many thanks for your responses - this is all very useful!

Janice


----- Original Nachricht ----
Von:     Cynthia Nugent <[log in to unmask]>
An:      [log in to unmask]
Datum:   26.06.2016 20:31
Betreff: Re: story apps

> Hi Janice,
> 
> I just finished my MA thesis in children?s lit from UBC. It was a creative
> hybrid of theory and making a story app for the iPad. From my research I?d
> say that ?story app? seems to be the term most used commercially and in the
> popular press, but there is less consensus academically. ?Story app? is used
> to mean children?s fiction picturebook apps. It does not refer to ebooks.
> Because my thesis applied picturebook scholarship to the creation of a story
> app, I used the term ?picturebook app?  which would be understood in
> academic circles. The problem with using ?picturebook app? outside of
> academia is that most people think picturebook is spelled ?picture book? and
> that you?re spelling it wrong when you write picturebook as one word.  I
> would definitely avoid the imprecise ?digital picturebook,? and
> ?storytelling app? seems to suggest the make-your-own-story app, many
> examples of which can be found in the app store.  I?m pasting in 2
> definitions from my thesis:
> 
> Ebook or Picturebook App? The ebook is a digital document, frequently
> associated with EPUB or PDF format, that can include pictures, narrative,
> and video. Its interactive capabilities may include narration, word
> highlighting and pronunciation, dictionary, and format and font adjustment
> with reflowable text. Unlike the ebook, the picturebook app tends to have
> fixed font size but may have word highlighting. The app may make use of the
> iPad?s built-in camera, microphone, accelerometer, and multitouch.
> Technically the app is software, rather than a document. A picturebook app
> is made with limited app-authoring software or custom-built with computer
> code to make incredibly diverse player-activated interactions and effects.
> Warren Buckleitner says to think of the relationship of the ebook to the
> picturebook app as ?a messy continuum between less and more interactivity?
> (?Thinking Outside the Page: Four Views of Children?s eBooks? 10).
> Story App: A common commercial term, along with children?s book app,
> synonymous with picturebook app.
> 
> My app, The King?s Ears, is scheduled to be published in the App Store on
> October 2. I will be offering free download codes to children?s literature
> scholars who would like to review the app for their research. 
> My thesis (Tenets of Selected Picturebook Scholarship applied to the
> Practice of the Adaptation of the Picturebook, The King Has Goat Ears, to a
> Picturebook App) can be downloaded here:
> https://ubc.academia.edu/CynthiaNugent
> 
> Abstract
> This hybrid creative study distills concepts from picturebook scholarship,
> and writings on audiobooks, sound semiotics, multimodality, and reading as a
> form of play to create a set of guiding questions for the creation of a
> story app called The King?s Ears.
> Three important concepts foreground the inquiry. Firstly, picturebook
> stories are played multimodally through the combined contributions of words
> and pictures. Shaping the app?s modes of sound, interaction, and animation
> to interrelate with the words and pictures, and with each other to tell the
> story was the central challenge of the app design. The second significant
> idea that governs this design-based approach is that children read
> picturebooks differently than adults do. The third principle is that the
> interactions, sounds, animations, and navigation of the picturebook app
> should be child-controlled and replayable. From a process of iterative
> cycles of design, enactment, analysis, and redesign to develop an original
> media artifact, a framework emerged that can be used to guide the
> development and assessment of picturebook apps, as well as sharable theories
> that can inform the work of other designers.
> 
> cheers,
> Cynthia Nugent
> [log in to unmask]
> 
> 

......
Dr Janice Bland, Deputy Chair of TEFL, University of Muenster, Germany
Now online...
Vol. 4.1 May 2016 | Children's Literature in English Language Education | www.clelejournal.org/