In this study, he found that people took in hundreds of pages "in a pattern that's very different from what you learned in school." It looks like a capital letter F. At the top, users read all the way across, but as they proceed their descent quickens and horizontal sight contracts, with a slowdown around the middle of the page. Near the bottom, eyes move almost vertically, the lower-right corner of the page largely ignored. It happens quickly, too. "F for
fast," Nielsen wrote in a column. "That's how users read your precious content."
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vimipa
It looks like a capital letter F. At the top, users read all the way across, but as they proceed their descent quickens and horizontal sight contracts, with a slowdown around the middle of the page. Near the bottom, eyes move almost vertically, the lower-right corner of the page largely ignored. It happens quickly, too. "F for
fast," Nielsen wrote in a column. "That's how users read your precious content."
Highlighted by
jimbeau
In the eye-tracking test, only one in six subjects read Web pages linearly, sentence by sentence. The rest jumped around chasing keywords, bullet points, visuals, and color and typeface variations. In another experiment on how people read e-newsletters, informational e-mail messages, and news feeds, Nielsen exclaimed, "'Reading' is not even the right word." The subjects usually read only the first two words in headlines, and they ignored the introductory sections. They wanted the "nut" and nothing else.
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lu-tao
"After seven years, there was literally no evidence it had any impact on student achievement — none."
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rubyrubyruby
maybe this also depends on how you measure student achievement. changing the tools with which you conceptualize the world is bound to change the meaning of what we regard as achievements.
That's the drift of screen reading. Yes, it's a kind of literacy, but it breaks down in the face of a dense argument, a Modernist poem, a long political tract, and other texts that require steady focus and linear attention — in a word, slow reading. Fast scanning doesn't foster flexible minds that can adapt to all kinds of texts, and it doesn't translate into academic reading.
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rubyrubyruby
Although i would also regret the decline of slow reading, i think this picture is not complete without making a distinction here between the different tools/media that generate "texts".
Maybe these new tools (computers, internet, ...) are not the best media for the dense texts generated by the "older" media. There are ways of representing information that more easily allow for "fast-scanning" (mind-mapping sofware like compendium and freemind), in fact pushing the hypertext idea to the extreme.
Because the internet today is imho still not using the original hypertext idea to its full potential (see Engelbart's "Augmenting Human Intellect). Basically, it's just old media (webPAGEs) linked together. See Lev Manovich for an interesting discussion on what we today call "new media" (The Language of New Media).
Once again, this is not so much about the content students prefer — Facebook, YouTube, etc. — or whether they use the Web for homework or not. It is about the reading styles they employ. They race across the surface, dicing language and ideas into bullets and graphics, seeking what they already want and shunning the rest. They convert history, philosophy, literature, civics, and fine art into information, material to retrieve and pass along.
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jimbeau
It equates handheld screens with
Madame Bovary, as if they made the same
cognitive demands and inculcated the same habits of attention
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jimbeau
on 2008-10-04 by
jimbeau
Isn't this equation the authors? 'It equates text messages with Madame Bovery' or 'It equates handheld screens with books' . This is the point he's trying to make, yes?
I just don't believe the Web is optimal for delivering this experience.
Instead, let's praise old narrative forms like books and sitting around a
flickering campfire — or its modern-day counterpart, the PowerPoint
projector," he says. "We should accept that the Web is too fast-paced for
big-picture learning. No problem; we have other media, and each has its
strengths. At the same time, the Web is perfect for narrow, just-in-time
learning of information nuggets — so long as the learner already has the
conceptual framework in place to make sense of the facts."
Highlighted by
dcoleman
Screen reading is a mind-set, and we should accept its variance from academic
thinking. Nielsen concisely outlines the difference: "I continue to believe in
the linear, author-driven narrative for educational purposes. I just don't
believe the Web is optimal for delivering this experience. Instead, let's praise
old narrative forms like books and sitting around a flickering campfire —
or its modern-day counterpart, the PowerPoint projector," he says. "We should
accept that the Web is too fast-paced for big-picture learning. No problem; we
have other media, and each has its strengths. At the same time, the Web is
perfect for narrow, just-in-time learning of information nuggets — so long
as the learner already has the conceptual framework in place to make sense of
the facts."
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cjpeterso
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