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Computer screens have become ubiquitous, with every office desk boasting one. Libraries and classrooms are full of them. There is talk of every child being given one.
The benefit of screens everywhere is that people could have access to almost limitless information anywhere. Disks and networks can carry the vast resources of the Internet to anyone who wants any kind of information.
Using screens ranging from mobile phone and handheld scanners to big conference room projectors businesses and organisations should be able to share information more effectively. Any process should be more efficient.
Of course, there are some teething problems - programs that don't work well or won't connect together. Networks are complicated and some are costly. There are copyright issues for some information, privacy issues for others.
A point that doesn't get much attention is that screens don't work very well. The current generation of screens are flat, bright and colourful - but they don't show much information.
More alarmingly, screens seem to depress comprehension and retention of information. This is not just a matter of people finding computers unfamiliar, clumsy and slow. Even when computers are familiar and users are very accustomed to them evidence suggests that reading from the screen might be around 20% less productive than reading a paper page.
Conceivably this could mean that the researcher looking at reports in a library, the doctor looking at case notes on a screen, and the child eading for exams at home are all potentially and unwittingly being hobbled by using screens.
Reading and writing are a bit of a mystery, there are a great number in how the mind works.
A quick description is that we turn pronounceable words into easily drawn symbols and back again. Europe and the US generally use "Latin" symbols which are supposed to be phoenetic. The phoenetic nature of speech is confounded a bit because there are over 40 phonemes in English (varying slightly with accent) and only 26 Latin letters (including the J, W, and Z added at various points by European scribes). The Romans only used upper case, lower case is another innovation by 5th century scribes which was later adopted and promoted by Charlemagne. The basic shapes of characters and conventions on layout had become accepted by the 16th century. Printed books then created and maintained standards.
If a global culture is emerging then reading and writing will be one of the trouble-spots. The majority of people use Chinese scripts (CJK). Much key material is in Latin script. Biblical authorities are in Hebrew, Arabic, Cyrillic and Hindu scripts.
There are lots of problems with reading and writing. People assume that, because they can do it, they know how it works.
Reading
The processes people think they do to read may not reflect what they do - for instance if their eyes are tracked or if they read in a brain scanner. Someone reading English text does generally proceed along the lines and down the page in a systematic fashion, but their eyes also do saccades and pick up information elsewhere on the page. This is one eason why tiny little scrolling messages like those on pagers and some advertisements tend not to work very well.
There is ongoing argument about what is the best way to teach children to read. There doesn't seem to be much doubt that quite a large number of people are "functionally illiterate" - perhaps up to 25% in the UK and US. In both countries there are undoubted flaws in the education system and in the culture which may help explain illiteracy.
Reading can be significantly faster than the spoken word, depending on whether the material is "sub vocalised". Even amongst the literate quite a few people seem to think they could read more "efficiently". There has been a market for speed reading and suchlike courses for many years - academic esearchers have said products are "snake oil". On the other hand many people find strategies like marginal notes and underlining keywords a help. 
There seems to be curiously little research into whether writing systems could be improved to make them more readily comprehensible. The main focus with fonts and new symbols both on paper and on web pages seems to be cosmetics ather than comprehension. John Malone created the 40-letter "Unifon" alphabet in 1940 intending it as an introductory alphabet for teaching. No experimental alphabet seems to be used much. Existing ways of reading and writing have become "irreversible investments".
Writing
Most people write much less frequently than they read. Computer filesystem statistics suggest they make 6 read actions for each write as well, so a law of infrequent writing is lurking somewhere.
Latin script written by hand typically involve 3 or 4 pen actions per character (rather depending on whether script is cursive or angular). Since there are about 5 characters in the average word even the most skilled handwriting is significantly slower than the spoken word. Before the advent of tape-recorders special shorthand scripts were developed as a way to ecord live speech. Shorthand might have been expected to catch on widely but it remained a secretarial skill.
Readability is a major issue with handwriting, especially anything written quickly and in an "educated hand". Doctors prescriptions have been notoriously unreadable. Readability became such an issue that typewriting became standard practice for anything going outside and organisation. The problem was that since typewriters were relatively expensive and the ability to type a special secretarial skill most material had to be handritten.
Computers changed things. The idea of a small computer that could be owned by an individual occurred to several people in the 1970s. Apple computer more or less created the industry and IBM decided not to be left out. The IBM Personal Computer (PC) became an industry standard that could be mass produced at fairly low cost. By 1990 is was cheaper to buy a PC than a typewriter. It is fairly easy to type on a PC, because mistakes can be backspaced out. Most of today's text originates in a PC - even if it is then printed as though it were typescript.
Computers have made writing easier and there is some evidence that it has increased as a result - publishers are innundated with scripts for novels from would-be authors.
Computer Learning & Techno-Optimism
Most people probably assume that computers enhance the learning experience. The idea that computers might assist learning has a long history.
Computer screens look as though they should have a lot of advantages over traditional media like books and blackboards as a learning medium. The computer can make material available over a network. It can use animation and sound, it can interact and it can change its behaviour according to feedback. Computer material can be tailored to the user. Programmers at Stanford University and University of Illinois began work to present lessons using computers in the 1960s.(Hackbarth 1996).
There are quite a list of technology assisted learning methods:
| Computer Assisted Learning / Instruction (CAL / CAI) - presentation of material on screen with some supporting actions - pre-tests, summaries, lists, highlights, epetitive drills, game based drills, post-test. The first general purpose CAI was the "PLATO" System at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. |
| Computer Managed Learning (CML) |
| Simulation - appealing where learning could be dangerous - very useful in teaching science |
| Multimedia - text, graphics, animation and sound (as per Hitchikers Guide). The suggestion is that minds handling multimedia can use "dual coding" to learn - more cognitive paths. |
| Hypermedia is multimedia without a single imposed structure - so the learner is (partly) in control of what happens next. |
| Social Software - wikis and blogs. |
These ideas all tend to overlap. CAL has been particualrly popular with lingustics specialists as CALL - Computer Assisted Language Learning. The idea that technology can help learning is very popular . One of he latest ideas in this field are a range of DVDs intended to stimulate babies in their prams.
Theresa Holleran gives an overview of literature to 2002. (see below)
Computers and Education
Compared with the printed page a computer screen, disk and network can do so much more. In principle all knowledge can be in the machine or available on the network. Actually implementing learning technology is more difficult.
Ted Nelson's "Computer Lib / Dream Machines" (1974) inspired many people - apparently including Tim Berners Lee who created the Web in 1990. Nelson's hypermedia ideas might well be excellent learning tools but have never esulted in a commercial product.
Mathematician and educator Seymour Papert promoted the idea that computers should be "carriers of powerful ideas and seeds of cultural change". Papert devised the "Logo" language to help children learn mathematical ideas in a constructionist manner (for instance, making a turtle draw shapes) and experimented with introducing children to computers with an experiment at Dakar and another (still running) in Costa Rica.
Use of computers in education still has a dedicated following. Seymour Papert, Nicholas Negroponte and Alan Kay are motivators for OLPC - the One Laptop Per Child project which intends to distribute sub $100 portable computers worldwide.
Most private (in the US "public") schools boast of the number of well equipped computer labs they have. British education ministers seem to sees it as a duty to "catch up". There are potential problems:
Well designed information may work - but designing information is a time consuming and uncertain job.
Most information is not designed by experts to meet a specific learner's exact need. In principle, releasing kids onto the Internet may make that point very well, so they learn to discriminate between good and bad sources. However there might be problems with material on the Internet - and not just those of distraction, games, gambling and porn.
If it is true that people's comprehension and retention is reduced by using screens that might be rather disasterous.
Information and Design
There doesn't seem to be much reason to doubt that if information is well designed for the computer screen and its capabilities then it can convey information very effectively. The same is evidently true for well made documentaries and science programs on TV.
Information might be perfectly designed for its pupose. A description of VoIP telephony would slip perfectly between the ears of someone already clued up about TCP/IP and telephony, leaving no doubts and raising just a few questions readily answered with some further mouse-clicks. This easy progress rarely happens.
Unfortunately designing information very well tends to make it expensive to produce and give it a very narrow focus.
A potential problem with any discussion of education is what people think happens. A lot of people think education is:
| something which happens once in a lifetime to schoolchildren - actually its happens continually and unpredictably throughout life. |
| some sort of "tablet" which is swallowed (learned) and gives facts and figures ever after. This gives the quiz approach "who won the 1966 football world cup". Unfortunately most facts and figures are forever changing, so education is about how to find out - rather than what you know. |
| something that happens in a classroom. Classrooms can work well as places to challenge preconceptions but ideally people learn continually in the "university of life". |
| delivered with care by experts. Perhaps most of the really useful lessons of life happen accidentally. |
Lots of information is not well designed - and that is not necessarily a fault.
Motivations for reading things vary - but lots of people don't seem to enjoy anything that looks like formal learning. It is curious that most classrooms are still fronted by a teacher with a blackboard (or whiteboard) and not just a projector. In an ideal world someone should have devised the perfect lesson on long division, standard deviation, statistical significance or the works of Charlotte Bronte, delivered it and recorded it and everyone would now learn it that way. In practice the technology to deliver a lesson to everyone exists (CCTV or Video) - but all the prospective pupils are starting with different existing knowledge and motives. Interacting with a teacher seems to be important.
A lot of information is not intended to have a very wide audience. It would be ludicrous to spend several weeks providing animations and music for a factory memo on cleaning the canteen microwave oven - it isn't eally even worth getting excited about layout and spelling.
Animations and music on inkjet, laser and themal printer mechanisms might be nice - and might allow an audience of engineers and support technicians to grasp ideas more quickly. Once again, it is difficult to justify the cost.
There are some subtle dangers as well.
Animations of things petrol engine will certainly help people who are not much motivated to grasp some rudimentary ideas. It may not help people who are motivated to then understand diesel, 2-stroke and deltic engines from engineering manuals. Some people don't want to see the film until after they read the book.
Highly designed information of any kind tends to be very expensive to produce. Production tends to fall into the hands of centralised, autocratic bureacracies. Innovation and ideas that might distract tend to be filtered out.
Brevity can mislead -oversimplifying and reducing things to slogans and catch-phrases. Some of the academic papers mentioned later in this section are over 100 pages long. Summarising them introduces innacuracies.Many political disasters result from oversimplifications and generalisations
Some things initially motivate learners but later distract. Web pages in particular are often designed to be attracting - to the point of distraction. The distraction is often an advertisement but sometimes it's the designers own bright idea - a javascript "contact us" logo for instance. Spending an age devising a text then wrecking comprehension with a flashing logo seems peculiarly obtuse.
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Ideally all information would be specifically tailored both for the person getting it and the medium delivering it. Computer delivery would allow this - in theory.
Unfortunately that might put far to much burden on the communicator.
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Research into reading may be a help because silently and unnoticed something may be going wrong. People don't generally seem to read and comprehend from screens as well as they can from paper. Many people do intuitively feel that something is wrong with screens, they print out anything that looks complicated which they feel they must read.
This is OK if people can easily print, don't feel pressured not to and can easily tell what they should print.
There will almost certainly be a grey area, information that people don't print and cant adequately comprehend from a screen.
If screens do cause a problem with comprehension this may go some way to explaining the Solow Paradox - the gap between expectations of economic growth from automation and the patchy, slow growth actually seen.
There has always been something wrong with reading on a screen. Despite a lot of scientific research and a lot of custom, practice and folklore people don't seem to have grasped quite what to the point of overcomming the problem.
History of Reading Research
Ellen Lupton of DesignWritingResearch.org looked at the scientific literature on typography.
Lupton points out that research needs to distinguish:
| Legibility - the ease with which a letter or word can be recognised (as in an eye exam) |
| Readability - the ease with which text can be understood |
Fonts
In 1929 Donald G. Paterson and Miles A. Tinker analysed type sizes, setting texts in 6, 8, 10, 12 and 14 point type. Their emphatic conclusion was that 10 point is the optimum size for efficient reading for texts with a line length of 80mm. ("Studies of Typographical Factors Influencing Speed of Reading: II. Size of Type" . Journal of Applied Psychology, 13,2 (1929) 120-30.)
Later they tested ten different fonts for legibility including serifed and sans serif Kabel Lite. The only two which gave a significant dip in eading speed were monospaced American Typewriter and Cloister Black 2 which has a decorated neo-medieval look. ("Studies of Typographical Factors Influencing Speed of Reading: X. Size of Type" . Journal of Applied Psychology, 16, 6 (1932) 605-613.)
Screens
In 1987 IBM isolated and tested variables that have an impact on screen and page including image quality, typeface and line spacing. They concluded that the screen wasn't the problem, it was the way information was presented. (Gould, Alfaro, Barnes, Finn, Gischkowsky and Minuto "Reading is slower form CRT Displays than from Paper: Attempts to Isolate a Single-Variable Explanation" Human Factors, 29,3 1987: 269-299)
In a second paper the IBM team eliminated the difference by making screens look more like ordinary print. Black, anti-aliased typefaces on light, high resolution screens worked well. These features were unusual at the time but became more or less standard on Windows screens. (Gould, Alfaro, Finn, Haupt and Minuto "Reading from CRT Displays Can Be as Fast as Reading from Paper", Human Factors 29,5, 1987: 497-517.)
In 1998 a team at Carnegie Mellon compared Times Roman with Georgia, a serif font designed for the screen. The team found no difference, but users said they preferred Georgia. A second test compared Georgia with Verdana, a sans-serif face designed for the screen. Users expressed a slight subjective preference for Verdana but performed better reading Georgia. (Boyarski, Neuwirth, Forlizzi and Harkness Regli, "A study of Fonts Designed for Screen Display" CHI 98 18-23 April 1998).
Line Length & Vision Span
Typographers have tended to believe that short line lengths of seven words per line or forty to sixty characters work best. White space has been presumed to be a good thing. This hasn't been confirmed - rather the opposite. (Duchnicky and Kolers, "Readability of Text Scrolled on Visual Display Terminals as a Function of Window Size", Human Factors 25,6 1983 683-692) and Kolers et al cited in Mills & Weldon "Reading Text from Computer Screens" ACM Computing Surveys, 19,4 December 1987: 329-358.
People do seem flexible about reading long lines although such things are rare in print. Printers tend to keep line lengths to about seven words - although they also aim for justified right margins. Newspaper and magazine articles, which are intended to be scanned as much as read, tend to use narrow text columns.
The physical underpinning for limiting line length comes from eye structure. One human eye has a visual field spanning about 120 degrees of arc - the position of the two eyes gives the 16:9 ratio now adopted by TV manufacturers.
Most of the visual field cannot read - there just aren't enough sensory cells (rods or cones) in the retina to resolve ordinary text. Only an area called the macula has sufficient cells to give the accuity needed for eading. The macula is a small area of the eye immediately opposite its lense with a lot of rod cells (mono, fast acting) some cone cells (colour, slower acting) and the fovea in it's centre. The fovea has accute vision using about 6 million cone cells but covering as little as 0.2 degrees of arc. The macula covers about 6 degrees of arc.
With an object about 500 millimetres away 6 degrees or arc covers about 60mm - about 7 words. This seems to be what the eye can read without having to move. Anything wider requires the eye to move the centre of vision. People move their field of vision all the time in actions called saccades. To change accurately a visual fixed point helps - solid fields of unbroken text pose problems.
Computer screens tend to break all the old rules of typesetting.
The standard terminal screen has traditionally been 80 characters wide - rather wider than generally assumed for the vision span although it is usually a bit further away than a book would be. Traditionally computer printers have had 80 or 132 column widths.
132 column print-outs do give users difficulty - the page is too wide for eyes to follow text or even to comprehend columns of figures. For this eason this kind of paper traditionally has a light green or grey horizontal marking intended to help the eye follow text.
Page layout often isn't a stong point with computers. Even web-browser layout which might often seem very design-conscious has limited control.
Many people open web-browsers full screen. If the text of the page does not specify a width (arguably it should not) this often results in text being set unreadably wide, which in turn might make for reading problems. Many naive users seem to get flustered at the idea of resizing a window to a reasonable width for reading and insist that they are "fine as they are". Physiology suggests they cannot be.
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Paper, Screen, Comprehension and Retention.
M. F. Wyles at Villanova University produced a small study asking ten random students at the Computer Center to read some texts about 100 words long for a minute. One text was presented on a DEC VT100 CRT screen, another on computer printout paper. In both cases the text was on a 60 character line with mixed upper and lower case, no space filling and left margin justified. Three or four questions were then asked on a seperate piece of paper and the student given ten minutes to answer.
In a pilot study there was no distinction between CRT -accustomed subjects and others but the danger that people become accustomed to working with a screen was recognised. In the main study there were equal numbers of both types. The conclusion was that performance using a CRT was significantly worse. As the paper points out " Electronic mail, word processing and electronic spreadsheets are already in common use. Paperless offices are promised as the ultimate in office automation. Will a computer on every desk amplify or cripple our productivity? Reading comprehension from CRT screens is a factor of profound importance when pondering this question."
Wyles cites Wright and Likorish and Gould and Grischkowsky finding that paper was superior to a CRT in proof reading. These studies emphasised eye fatigue as a cause and made no mention of retention differences.
Wyles own study is very small and may have lost relevance because black writing on white windows screens is now common rather than the green or white on black used on a VT100. However the comprehension test used was suited to screens - just 100 words. Presumably with a longer text screen performance would be worse.
A Comparison of Textual Information Retention from CRT Terminals and Paper M. F. Wyle ACM SIG-CHI Bulletin 1987
Garland, Anderson and Noyes found a similar effect. "The Intranet as a Learning Tool: A Preliminary Study" (Iris '98 Conference Papers) prepared a short history course as a printed text booklet, a conventional screen file and as an "ergonomically designed" web presentation. The 19 participants were all given four regularly spaced 30 minute study periods and test sessions over an eight day period. (The participants were from the psychology department at Bristol University)
"Results showed that the amount of historical knowledge acquired by the end of the study was greatest for those participants who learnt using traditional methods, and that over the four test sessions this group consistently outperformed both computer groups. Moreover, we found that the way in which knowldege was aquired was qualitatively different in the groups with the traditional group exhibiting more 'Know' responses while the Intranet group exhibited more 'Remember' responses. This finding has important implications for the quality of learning and the durability of any learnt knowledge which are described below. Finally, we found, using useability questionnaires, that participants preferred learning via traditional methods to screen and Intranet presentations, and that participants who had learnt using computers felt that their learning experience had suffered. ..."
The study might be criticised - the groups are small and the effects is not massive but is considered statistically significant. The intranet site presumably did not use all the tricks of the Internet trade - lots of graphics, links to other sites and so forth. However just breaking the material down into Intranet form had presumably already used more time in preparation
Guy Kellog "Students' reactions to reading electronic v. printed documents." The Fourth International Conference on Language and Development. October 13-15, 1999.
Kellog's specific field is students learning English as a second language (EFL). Naturally the Internet, being global, is a particularly valuable esource. Kellog finds:
"Reading in a second language has traditionally been one of the most investigated areas of second language acquisition. ..." [some are listed] "No studies were found which investigated the question of comprehension based on short reading passages in paper and electronic forms."
"The purpose of this paper is to report on a classroom experiment designed to answer the question: Does reading a document on-screen have an effect on leraners' reading comprehension in the EFL classroom? "
The students taking part in Kellog's research were two groups (A & B) of 28 randomly selected second-year students at a science and technology university in Japan.
Two short reading passages were used. The passages were just under 300 words and non technical to eliminate special knowledge. The material was prepared as a Microsoft Word for Windows document in 12-point Times New Roman font. The study took place over three days.
On day 1 Group A was given reading passage 1 in digital form on floppy disks for use in Fujitsu FMV Biblio laptops, all of the same generation and screen quality. The students were given 7 minutes to read the passage for a quiz and then took 3.5 minutes to do a comprehension test. Group B did the same with reading passage 2.
On day 2 Group A was given reading passage 2 in printed form, with the same instructions, time and administrative procedures. Group B got the same treatment with passage 1.
On day 3 an 11 item questionnaire asked the students impressions and attitudes to the two distinct media.
Comprehension scores were calculated: Paper scores were 4.23, screen scores were 3.77 and Kellog gives calculations showing that the result is statistically significant
The analysis of student opinions is also interesting. Most students had no strong opinion in favour of screen or paper, but a majority prefered to read on paper. However some very clearly prefered screens - feeling they were more "interesting" - and that they were the future.
"Although it is problematic to know why individual student scored better on tests after reading on paper as opposed to on-screen, it is interesting to note that, at least in terms of attitude, some students prefer to ead on screen."
Kellog's students seem to come from an environment (a science and technology university) that would favour screens, their comments suggest they know this. Nevertheless there is a clear problem that even with a short passage comprehension went down when screens were used.
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Theresa Holleran's PhD Dissertation "Use of Strategies for the Comprehension and Retention of NonFiction Text In Computer Environments" Ohio State University 2003 uses large groups - 152 students in four groups of 38. Holleran focusses on a student's ability to use "learning strategies" - marginalia, underlining and notes. The tests conducted find a eduction in comprehension and retension even when some limited learning strategies are allowed. To quote from the abstract:
"Participants who used strategies performed better than those who did not use strategies. Participants who read the text on paper performed better than those who read from the computer screen. "
Holleran's initial assumption seems to be that any effect of screens arises from lack of learning strategies and not some other 'affordance' of screens versus paper (pace Sellen & Harper). For instance she observes that "... when asked to read and process text on the computer, learners of all ages commonly print the text then read and process the text on the printed page. Why? Simply put, current computer environments do not encourage or facilitate the use of the same strategies that learners have come to use and depend on to process the printed page."
Learning strategies that mean marking the page aren't easy to use with paper. Libraries take a dim view of underlining and marginalia. Nor is it always true that users print and then annotate - sometimes they just print and read. Nevertheless, if something about screens does limit comprehension then stategies might help.
" ... the goal of this research was to take s subset of known learning strategies (i.e., determining importance: underlining, highlighting, and writing notes within the text or margins) ... and impose them on the reading and processing of online text. ... "
A problem with computer texts is that they are fixed and don't usually allow much alteration so Holleran makes a controlled subset of paper methods available.
Students at Holleran's University (Ohio Dominican) are all expected to take a couple of "Liberal Studies" courses and she is able to get staff to cooperate in using different materials in these courses.
Students are familiar with computers, they have to lease an IBM ThinkPad notebook. 78.9% had taken a computer class or training of some kind, although only 11.8% had created a personal web page. Altogether they were fairly computer literate, poor mouse skills weren't limiting them.
A brief text relevant to the course was found and modified - it was 2,300 words long and rated somewhat more difficult than average to promote use of strategies.
Students were divided into groups of 38, (incomplete papers were excluded). They got either
| paper they could mark as a stategy and strategies suggested |
| paper they couldn't mark - strategies weren't suggested |
| a sequence of linearly linked HTML documents presented on the screen. |
| the HTML document with the Track Changes feature of Microsoft Word enabled allowing underlining, highlighting and writing notes - and use of these strategies suggested. |
The students did a Pre-Test, a PosTest1 and a PosTest2 4 to 6 weeks later.
Students were not entirely ignorant of the subject matter so they were able to answer some pretest questions. As expected after reading the paper their score rose, but sank back a bit on (different) questions a few weeks later. Average test scores for the groups are:
| Group | PreTest | PostTest1 | PostTest2 |
| Computer with Strategies | 5.3 | 7.2 | 6.7 |
| Paper with Strategies | 5.0 | 7.8 | 7.3 |
| Computer, No Strategies | 4.8 | 7.2 | 6.8 |
| Paper, No Strategies | 4.9 | 7.4 | 7.1 |
"Although the computer, strategies group performed better on the PreTest measure than the other three groups, this group had the lowest mean score on both the PosTest1 and PostTest2 measures; so, it appears that not only did the computer, strategies group learn less from the reading, but they etained less than the other three groups. Also of interest the two paper groups performed better on both the PostTest measures than the two computer groups. It seems that the paper, strategy group learned and retained more from the text than the other three groups."
Halloran perfoms a great deal of statistical analysis on sex, age and social factors which does suggest that young people are slightly more familiar with computers than older women but doesn't undermine the idea that eveyone learns better from paper - and that using stategies helps this a bit. The groups are large enough and the effect large enough to be significant.
Carrie Bartlett in a short article "Reading Comprehension on the Web" looks at how a class of sixth grade students coped with a real assignment using a web site.
Students prefer the online experience and quotes Whitney "When I ead a book, I get bored and want to fall asleep. When I'm on the computer, I don't want to sleep."
Students were frustrated when they lost their place after scrolling down the page. Some used the cursor to try to keep their place. They also hated typing URLs.
"About two thirds of students had some difficulty determining how the website was organized." It seems they ignored the first page that told them how the site worked. Nevertheless "There were four students in the class who did not seem to understand how the information was organized, but still showed evidence of having learned a good bit ..."
Microsoft's old "help" system used in Windows and NT was only popular with a few users. Useful if you already knew but had forgotten how to do something - but only on a few occasions did it actually help better than just leafing through the options on a toolbar. Too terse, no context.
Microsoft announced their Microsoft Reader software in 1999. The product was the culmination of two years of effort researching typography and the psychology of reading. To quote the press release:
"They concluded that reading is a form of pattern recognition. Readers become immersed in a book only when the word recognition is a subconscious task and the conscious mind is free to read the text for meaning. And word ecognition is only subconscious when typographical elements such as margins, the shape and thickness of letters, and the spacing between characters work together to present words as easily recognized patterns."
Microsoft Reader is "Designed to deliver an on-screen reading experience that approaches the quality of the printed page" using ClearType Technology.
Microsoft claims sharper, print like pages from its ClearType sub-pixel font-enhancing technology
The press release quotes Dick Brass, Vice President of Technology Development " I think this is going to jump-start electronic books and periodicals" ... " I think it's going to overcome the two biggest barriers that eBooks have: 1) that until now paper has been a superior medium, and 2) that until now there's been no ubiquitous standard software to create a large market for electronic reading that encourages publishers to make a large number of titles available."
"The vision of a paperless office was a big thing in the '70s and '80s, but it never happened - it was a bust ... and one of the reasons it was a bust is that people don't like to read on the screen, because it's not as comfortable as reading on paper."
Microsoft Reader is a program for presenting e-books in OpenBook format on the screen (The files has the suffix ".LIT" for literature). At launch in 1999 the "ClearType" subpixel rendering was considered a particular innovation .
Books can be written in Microsoft Word and output in the format.
The reader supports note-taking, doodling and scribbling on text, automatic finding of the last page viewed, and maintains a library of all the books a user owns. Books can have a cover image and can contain images.
Microsoft Reader has been built into the ROM on Pocket-PC devices since Windows CE 3.0 but some of the latest Windows Mobile devices omit it
"Business Guide to Paper Reduction - A Step-by-Step Plan to Save Money by Saving Paper" by Heather Sarantis, ForestEthics September 2002.
Businesses "are finding that reducing paper consumption can improve efficiency and reduce costs. Additionally, it can earn them a eputation for being environmentally conscious."