Ruckus Adds New Long-Distance Reading Feature with Grant from NSF

Just when it seems that digital publishing has reached the peak of innovation, someone has to make it even better. Ruckus Media Group, known for its interactive enhanced children’s ebooks, announced that it received grant funding from the National Science Foundation to make a collaborative ebook which will enable parents and their children to read and play embedded games within the same title, even when they are physically separated by distance. “The challenge to collaborative learning comes when the parent is not co-located with the child — when a parent is away from the family home serving in the military or on a business trip, for example,” explained Ruckus in a press release. “Currently eBook platforms do not provide the opportunity for mobile devices like smartphones and tablets to work, in real time, with non-mobile devices like desktop and laptop computers; by automating the process and tapping into the growing ubiquity that networked, mobile technology can address, Ruckus' RTWA technology will provide a parent and child with the experience of being co-located so they can take advantage of the value of synchronous collaboration.” This collaboration between parents and young readers, even while apart, not only fosters a love of reading and establishes the importance of literacy, but can also greatly benefit emerging readers who are still only learning. "Nothing fosters literacy like parents, caregivers and kids reading and sharing books together," says Jason Root, Ruckus' Chief Content Officer. "Storytelling has a rich read-along, read-out-loud heritage. We are honored to have been selected by the NSF to further our idea of utilizing proprietary mobile technology to create remote read-together experiences in real time. Parents may be separated from their children due to military or business assignments or divorce, and grandparents often live in different states or countries — yet they all want to read with their children. Our goal, simply, is to keep families connected through reading, whether they are physically co-located or not." For its part, the NSF funds not only science, but broader spectrum approaches to education. Its annual budget of approximately $7 billion goes to support a number of projects in education, for which it received about 50,000 requests each year. Ruckus Adds New Long-Distance Reading Feature with Grant from NSF is a post from: E-Reader News

URL: http://goodereader.com/blog/electronic-readers/ruckus-adds-new-long-distance-reading-feature-with-grant-from-nsf/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=ruckus-adds-new-long-distance-reading-feature-with-grant-from-nsf