Knowledge

They are called “Reading Lilli”, “Antolin” or “Reading Caterpillar”. Their common home is the Internet. Behind these names are web-based reading promotion programmes for school children. The children are motivated not only to browse but also to learn to deal with the computer.

Annabel, Pauline and Joshua belong to the “Silva Tigers”. Together with their classmates form Class 4a of the Silva Primary School in Heimstetten, they have created their own homepage for their favourite books, with reviews, self-painted pictures and short readings. They recorded and cut the sound clips themselves. Excited and a little breathless, they read from Lilli the Witch Turns the School Upside Down or The Mystery of Tutanchamun..

One minute was allotted for each short reading, explains their teacher Angela Hilger. “They spent a whole afternoon searching for their favourite passages and then practiced with a stopwatch”. The result is impressive, and the children of Heimstetten (near Munich) sent the link out into the wide world; “one child”, says the teacher, “even wrote an e-mail to an aunt overseas.

Creating the homepage was literally child’s play, for the children took advantage of the specially designed free programme Primolo. It is a web-based reading promotion programme in which a robot named Liselottindaria Libraria, or “Reading Lilli” for short, motivates the children to browse in books. The children find plenty of reading material in the “reading workshop”, the school library equipped with computer stations.

Reading training by the way

In the Silva Primary School reading printed books and using the computer belong together from the first class on. Angela Hilger, who is also director of the school, uses several programmes. For example, the Tyrolean Reading Caterpillar from Austria. It offers several online games for children.

In one game words slowly topple over a colourful image and have to be sorted correctly with the mouse: the “drill” belongs in the box marked “tools”, the “ruler” under “school supplies”. “Reading in these games is something purely incidental”, says Hilger. “The children don’t even notice that it’s actually an intensive form of reading training”. In the same way, the children are also training their media skills in dealing with the computer.

To this purpose the Silva Primary School also uses the commercial learning programme Antolin. Here the young readers can collect points for each book they read when they correctly answer the posed quiz questions.

A ranking lets the most eager pupils enter into a competition that is highly motivating: “Even boys with the reputation of not liking to read take part in this because they can do something on the computer. The contest with the machine excites them”. At the end of the school year, “reading kings” are crowned. They receive a certificate and the gift of a book.

With so much praise for the avid reader, it is important to ensure that those who have not gathered many reading points are not left behind, says Hilger. “At the end of the school year we now set the score back to zero”. The infrequent readers had protested that otherwise “we could never catch up”.

Bridge between traditional and new media

The commercial project Antolin, which is run by the educational publisher Schroedel, is one of the most widely distributed web-based reading promotion programmes. It is used in German schools in several countries, even in Finland, Italy and Malaysia. According to the publishers, “more than two million school children have a personal reading account at Antolin. Licenses giving access must be purchased by schools, but libraries can also participate.

Because only material that has been previously read offline is deepened at the computer, programmes such as Antolin build bridges between traditional and new media. Licensees of Schroedel’s offering can also buy stickers for their libraries so that the children know with which books they can collect points. According to information from the publishers, the number of titles is now about 30,000, mainly books in German, but also some in foreign languages, including English, French, Polish, Spanish and Turkish.

Computers are allowed to penalise

The core of Antolin is the quiz question, which comes in two categories: simple and in-depth questions about the reading. Correct answers are rewarded with plus points, false ones penalised with minus points, so that the children refrain from wild guesses. It has been Angela Hilger’s experience that “the children aren’t angry with a computer when it says something is wrong”. It’s different with teachers, whose corrections the children sometimes take personally.

Nevertheless, says the Hilger, online reading promotion can only complement, never replace, the work of a teacher. If teachers use online aids with the right sensitivity, these aids can be very successful in bringing young people to the printed book. Summing up, Hilger says: “I have the impression that the children in my class read more and like it, even at home!”