Is the notion of interactivity more efficient on children’s learning in traditional or digital illustration?

Since the creation of the Internet in the early 1980’s, this new media has considerably grown and changed our everyday lives and behaviours. In all domains and for every one, the power of New Technology influences us in our choices and decisions. This also includes children that arenowadays very used to manipulate computers at a very early age. This fact has changed the way that kids are brought up and the way they learn to grow up. Education now has to deal with the use of New Technology; the traditional books aren’t the only elements in children’s learning processes. The number of computers has increased in homes but also in schools. Moreover, it seems that teachers have tobe nowadays real technicians and reorganize their teaching methods.
Learning processes have certainly evolved a lot these last few years, and we can ask ourselves which educational techniques is best for our child? Should we continue to use traditional books and illustrations or should we make the most of what proposes the Internet? New technology in general offers a high level ofinteractivity and his known to make the user participate, but is this a valuable reason to forget the old traditional methods that have worked quite well before the invention of the World Wide Web?
To be able to answer these questions, we will see in a first part the children’s business Industry and we will go through a large palette of websites for children that all have learning incomes. Then in asecond part, we will be capable of establishing a comparison between educational methods through digital or traditional illustration. Finally, in the ultimate paragraph of this essay, the conclusion of this analysis will be completed with teacher’s thoughts on this subject.

Kids have become a big business – a multi-billion dollar big business. They are an extremely powerful target audience.They are so powerful that they now have their own TV networks, stores and websites. Communication and Design industries are putting a lot of effort into this business, understanding that the “little ones” are worth a lot of money. Every product or service designed for children are highly marketed and the thinking process behind them is complex. Children also influence what their parents consume,the cars and food they buy or the places they go in holidays to. Branding, positioning, advertising, every thing is made to target children as well as possible. A culture of “child design and technology” has been established and children are now viewed as design partners. They often take part in experiences in order to analyse their reactions and behaviours toward new products. The children’s marketoffers a huge amount of possibilities for industries to make money. This is also relevant for the online or ecommerce. They are many different websites targeted for children and most of them propose entertainment with learning incomes. Therefore they very often also permit the child to be able to buy different kind of products or services.
The “Telegraph” paper made a list of the most usefulwebsites for kids and families*. These websites are designed to attract kids attention and are often related to the children business. As an example, the nick.com website is a continuation of the TV channel. It is a highly interactive site; the child is capable of navigating between a big amount of information. On the home page, you can access games, TV shows, Videos, Movies, but most of all you canalso create your on profile page. This allows the child to personalise his “virtual space”. This website is a perfect example of how a child can be entertained but has commercial purposes have to interfere in this. It is possible to go to a shop in order to buy different products. The problem of most of these websites is that the Internet has become the biggest supermarket on Earth. This means…