Virtual Laboratory as a Strategy to Promote Reading in 5-Year-Old Children

Learning to read during the first years of life is a subject of extensive research and intervention at the level of public, social and institutional policies. The objective of this research is to design a prototype of a virtual learning laboratory, integrating didactic, technological and trans-media inclusive resources that contribute to the development of reading competence in 5-year- old children. A mixed quantitative-qualitative, exploratory-descriptive design was applied, assessing the interactivity and usability of the virtual laboratory “LecturLab”, using as instruments the LORI-AD questionnaire [1] with the following criteria: quality of content, correspondence with the objective, feedback and adaptation, motivation, design and presentation, interaction and usability, accessibility, reusability; and an ad-hoc observation sheet to know the children's skills in relation to the designed resource. It is concluded that “LecturLab” allows children to handle technological resources independently and intuitively, awakening motivation and active participation, as well as the development of phonetic, syntactic and semantic awareness, which are integrated when using visual and auditory resources. In the results of the teachers, 57.1% indicate that the resource is good, the design of this type of laboratories expands the access and use of digital tools with a variety of activities to initiate the reading process in face-to-face or virtual spaces. The creation and use of digital resources makes visible new forms of teaching- learning in early childhood and the need for further research, since the reading process is not limited to the exclusive use of concrete material as it was a few decades ago.