The Importance of Motivating Learners to Read

Motivating learners to read is key to developing successful learners, not just in the language arts but in other academic subjects as well. Classroom practices that aim to encourage interest in reading often adopt visual elements such as the use of graphically-illustrated books, or the introduction of drama through practices such as Readers’ Theatre that increase engagement through performance. While technology affords teachers multimodal learning pathways, in the form of animated digital storybooks, for example, such software still presents reading in a largely mechanistic structural framework of learning.

Moo-O, which employs what we call ‘immersive’ learning technology, enables teachers to transform how reading is understood and taught. From a purely cognitive process in which the learner is seen as decoding or analyzing the text as an external stimulus, reading is re-conceptualized as social practice,  in which readers engage with the text as an authentic context that affords opportunities for learning, creating and imagining. Moo-O is transformative in enabling the child to not only engage with the text through interpretation, but to also personalize narratives by being part of them. Hence, Moo-O frames reading more constructively as grounded in the agency of the learner and the social recursivity of the process, in which the learner does not simply read passively, but can imaginatively personalize and transform the text through the reading process. Reading is also done in collaboration with other learners, thereby situating the learning process in relation to participative learning frameworks such as communities of practice (Wenger, 1998).