Critical review up-dates

Sustainability, electronic media and the effects of printing on paper for children’s picture books.
my first initial thought when thinking about this question my tutor came up with, was that digital electronic books must be better for the environment, compared to getting children’s picture books always printed onto paper.
After having looked into to it a little and researched the subject, I was surprised to find a very different outcome!

http://www.wejointhedots.co.uk

The digital sector has a significantly large footprint on the environment, it is responsible for 2-4% of global emissions and is increasing the energy intensity. The amount of energy consumption outweighs the potential eco and energy saving benefits and practices of digital media.
Whereas printed media on paper has been considered not as sustainable or eco friendly, it has in recent years made huge strides in the practices, being more eco friendly and sustainable. Being more responsible for sourcing materials have had a big impact on the environment, also recycling and using recycled paper has had a higher rate compared to electronic media waste, which also is a challenge for disposal and recycling of digital media.

But the biggest and main issue that I found out was that the impact on children’s learning was substantially lower on digital media than on traditional printed books. Which I wouldn’t have thought would have mattered or that there was a difference!
Printed media facilitates better reading comprehension, especially for educational and complex written texts. Digital media has benefits of accessibility, customisation and portability.

Ideally both printed media and digital media should be used side by side, using paper books most of the time for education and learning, digital books for portability on the go, short uses for travel etc. actually the findings of this research were that children / people who used both tended to enjoy reading, read for pleasure as well as learning. Whereas people that used one or the other only read because they had to.