On Thursday 28 Oct 2010 2:06:36 pm Udhay Shankar N wrote: > Thoughts? > > Udhay > > http://in.news.yahoo.com/columnist/amit_varma/28/kindle-your-children > I am tempted to buy a Kindle for myself. Not for my kids though. My kids are already readers.
Kids learn to read by watching their parents (or some other similar figure) reading. Early reading is often with picture books, so I think a child should be at least 8 or 10 before he is able to comfortably graduate into "words only" books. The other thought I have is about reading in general. Written words are, after all a "translation" of the senses (sights, sounds, feelings) into a transmissible format. Comics, movies and TV are often more expressive and concise, which is why they have eaten into the space that books occupied. After I read Amit's article I Googled for the price of the Kindle in India and imagined what I might do with it. Imagination is not necessarily the same as experience but it occurred to me that my requirement right now is for some form of technological device that will give me instant OCR and translations of Sanskrit and Kannada texts - of which I seem to have hundreds - some of them writen by near ancestors. I wish I had a lens-like device that I can place on a page of a Sanskrit text and have it read out aloud and translated. I believe I can do a lot more with my life if I had such a device and I would be willing to pay the price of a Kindle in India (or more) for such a device. shiv
