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#IrrelevantTwitterNews: LeVar Burton Seizes Control of @ReadingRainbow
LeVar Burton, star of Reading Rainbow.
The Strollerderby team received an email labeled BREAKING NEWS this morning about how the Twitter handle @readingrainbow had been “taken and held by someone not using it and not connected with the show.” The horror! This takes me back to my childhood, not just because I have fond memories of watching Reading Rainbow on PBS, but because this rivals the terror of the Iran Hostage Crisis! What’s a guy to do in an insane situation like this?!
Turns out, if you’re LeVar Burton, you just tweet the account and ask if you can have it. And two hours later, it’s yours. (Duh. No one messes with La Forge.)
Burton wanted control of the account because he’s developing a Reading Rainbow app with his company RRKIDZ. Fine. But I hate that his PR company claims that Reading Rainbow “encouraged reading among children through a medium that captured their attention at the time,” implying that television is no longer captivating to children. Um, first of all, I’m pretty sure that kids still *looooove* TV, and secondly, we’re encouraging *reading* here, right? Not technology literacy. When it comes to apps and websites that supposedly encourage reading, I’m a bit suspect. I mean, you know what else encourages reading? Just handing your child a book. (Not a Kindle. Not a Nook. A book! Calling Maurice Sendak…)
My daughter’s school library just purchased access to an online program that will read children books out loud, featuring illustrations and all. I don’t mean to be a Neo-Luddite, but I don’t really think that’s reading, do you? I’m all for anything that encourages literacy, but are apps and websites the way to do it? (I love you LeVar, it’s not personal. “Butterfly in the sky… I can fly twice as high! Take a look, it’s in a book, a reading rainbow!!!!!”)
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2 Comments
cephgal commented on Feb 01 12 at 3:02 pmWhile “just handing kids a book” is often a good strategy, the program that reads the book aloud could actually be beneficial to those who have learning disorders and have trouble learning to read as other children do. A lot of children can’t absorb information the same way as others, and including other avenues of learning helps keep them up to date with their peers (which in turn aids in social functioning and general mental and emotional well-being).
Hampton commented on Feb 28 12 at 1:10 pmI agree with CEPHGAL. As long as they use headphones if there’s more than one in use at the time.
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