The advantages of digital reading

In the past year or so, I am guessing educators have become aware of a controversy related to whether learners are best able to learn from content presented on paper or a screen.  I am certain some researchers will continue to compare the comprehension of content appearing in a book versus on a screen, but whether or not such research reaches a conclusion one way or the other (see reference from recent meta-analysis), we have already switched to heavily relying on information we can access from our devices. It makes more sense to accept that learning with a phone, tablet, or computer will be involved in a significant proportion of our learning experience and consider how best to use the unique capabilities of these devices. What does digital reading look like and what presently neglected skills are being ignored that educators can help learners acquire? 

I do many different kinds of reading and I think this is true of many learners. I read for pleasure and I read to learn. Those who study reading probably can come up with many more meaningful categories, but these two are sufficient for my argument. I like to describe these reading activities as associated with shallow and deep goals. Some who study different reading activities seem to describe deep reading a little differently than I do. My use of the term implies the intent to learn, retain, and apply information gleaned from reading. I also see an opportunity for digital reading when retention and application follow initial exposure to text by longer periods of time than would be involved in the delay until the next examination. A unique advantage of digital reading is the opportunity to externalize immediate insights and personal interpretations in ways that take advantage of storage, organization, and search capabilities of technology. Some describe this as using technology as a second brain. Accept that human memory is far from perfect. If we think about reading a little differently and consider that reading could also involve efforts at external storage, the time invested in reading to learn may have a bigger return on investment in the future.

What follows are four books (linked to the Kindle version from Amazon) that take on the notion of digital reading. Yes, I have included one of my books among them although this book is focused more on how educators can take advantage of technology to facilitate how students learn when they read. All of these sources explain what I mean by the externalization opportunities technology make available. If you want a single recommendation, it would be “How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking”. I find the title a bit misleading as the text is concerned with far more than taking notes. The author considers learning from reading and learning more generally. I make this recommendation because offers both solid theory and concrete suggestions for practice. 

Grabe – Designing Instruction Using Layering Services: Educators and students guiding learning

Cohn – Skim, Dive, Surface: Teaching Digital Reading

Kalir & Garcia – Annotation

Ahrens – How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking – for Students, Academics and Nonfiction Book Writers

My Diigo account should provide me notes on all of these books.

Reference:

Furenes, M. I., Kucirkova, N., & Bus, A. G. (2021). A comparison of children’s reading on paper versus screen: A meta-analysis. Review of Educational Research, 0034654321998074.

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Annotation examples

I have not written about layering in some time. I encountered something I was unfamiliar with when reading about how to help students to learn to read with technology. The content I was reading was discussing how to help students understand what the annotation of a digital text might look like and suggested that students be shown examples. One source for such examples was the annotated articles from the Washington Post.

I was unfamiliar with this service, but a search revealed information about the explorations they have conducted and are being conducted by the Post. My example (see below) is from a speech by President Obama because more recent examples (e.g., a piece about Fauci) were not available as I have exceeded my free views. If you have a subscription, search “washington post annotated articles” to find other material. If you explore the linked example, click on highlighted material to view associated comments.

The Washington Post annotates with Genius. The idea is to have a commentator familiar with the issues add these annotations.

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Weava

Weava is another of those tools attempting to provide an efficient and powerful way to do Internet (and pdf) research. It is a browser extension that allows web pages to be highlighted and annotated, to organize the information that has been determined to be valuable by the user, to export this information, and to collaborate with others in online research. There is a free version of the service and a paid version. I think with a coupon the present rate is $12 a year, but I have also found prices of $7 and $4 a month.

Like many extensions, Weava is activated and deactivated from the browser menubar. This will bring up a side panel that provides access to various features – e.g., the active storage location for highlighted pages. The “House” icon provides access to the service dashboard. Explore the dashboard to become familiar with all program features.

Once activated, Weava will bring up this small panel each time text is selected. The panel shows the active storage folder and allows the selection of the highlight color. Weava recommends using different colors to indicate different types of information.

In the images below, you can see a page with highlighted text.

From the Dashboard, a user can accomplish multiple things. You can share the highlighted material stored in a folder.

You can export the additions you have added to web pages you have read. The content can be exported in multiple formats. You can also generate a citation stored with a link for the annotated pages.

The present pricing structure (beyond the free version) has been reduced during the pandemic.

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Annotation and Layering

I have generated multiple posts explaining and offering examples of the online services I describe as allowing educators to design educational resources by layering elements on top of existing online web pages and online videos. This interest also generated a short book on the same topic. A book (Annotation) by Remi Kalir and Antero Garcia has recently been made available and offers a related, but more general perspective and may be of interest to those who have read my content on layering. Both make useful contributions (my opinion) for anyone interested in this topic with my book better suited to K12 educators and Annotations for researchers and anyone wanted a more comprehensive view of the history and potential application of annotation.

As someone who writes about this relatively novel topic, I find it interesting how different individuals came to explore and write about this topic. One immediate commonality is obvious – we both explored the same tool for annotating and sharing comments on online text – Hypothes.is. My own perspective stems from a career long interest in highlighting, notetaking, and adjunct (inserted) questions in assisting students of all ages in learning from text. A second, but indirect, perspective emerged from my reaction to how research on learning from text read from the screen and a traditional book was being presented to educators. I have relied almost exclusively on digital content for many years now and was troubled by the argument that comprehension was superior from traditional books. As I considered the research, I decided both sides may have a valid perspective. I would describe my interest as studying rather than reading (any extended use of text content after the initial reading) and reading on a device offered obvious advantages (storage, search, efficient review, etc.) for anything beyond the initial exposure to content.

I have been thinking about annotation and my perspective of layering and how best to explain these differences. While it seems possible to reach the same end from either perspective, here are some thoughts on efficiency.

  1. The authors of Annotation do mention the potential uses of what they describe as “multimodality”, but seem strongly influenced by hypothes.is and the focus of this tool on text. What can be done with a text-first tool limits perspective – text first heavily focused on the annotation of text with text. Tools that allow layering on video or audio may end up being more important with increasing interest in presenting in this fashion saving class time for other activities.
  2. Layering emphasizes the clarity of a physical separation between content creator and secondary contributors and also the control of visibility of multiple sources. The opportunity of an end user to turn on and off the added elements can be important in satisfying individual differences and in allowing strategic roles that may differ over time.
  3. A focus on hypothes.is limits the clarity in understanding that multiple tools that can be applied by the one adding elements and the intended person targeted for these additions. Depending on service, multiple tools may be available – e.g., text, highlighting, questions, discussion, audio/video. My own writing is focused on the use of such elements to encourage productive processing of the information (text or video) to which the elements have attached. A perspective I like is that existing online content has not necessarily been created as what an educator might describe as a learning resource.

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Social annotation with Hypothes.is

Hypothes.is was the first online service I explored when learning about what I came to describe as a “layering” technology. The descriptive term, layering, I decided to apply was based on the fact that the original content (a web page in the case of Hypothes.is) was not modified when a layering service was used to review and extend that content. However, the composite as experienced by the student is a combination of the content created by the author and the additions contributed by others (e.g., students, teacher). My interest in the benefits of generating and continuing to use these contextualized contributions. By contextualized, I mean that the original and added content is related in space unlike say notes taken in a notebook while viewing the same web content. 

Educators and researchers interested in the application of Hypothes.is offer various suggestions for those considering use of the service. Some of these efforts have resulted in a series of videos. The one I am focused on here considers social annotation. Most of us have long annotated as a personal study tool. We highlight and if we read digital content such as ebooks from Amazon we annotate as part of studying or preparing to use notes for writing. In contrast, social annotation involves sharing annotations with other students and possibly with a teacher. The author of the video talks about “making thinking visible” which I like. More traditionally, I would describe the likely benefits of social annotation as generative processing. 

The layering options in Hypothes.is include highlighting and note-taking. In a social situation, these additions can be used in many different ways. An educator can highlight for emphasis, add comments to extend the information provided by the original author, and ask questions. Students can answer such questions, ask questions of peers or the teacher, and make personal observations. The annotated material can make thinking visible as a source of modeling or as a type of “show your work” others can use to evaluate your understanding.

Look for these ideas and suggestions for application in this video.

Here is a video I created some time ago to describe the basics of using hypothes.is.

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Layering from the perspectives of research and practice

I have been writing about online services that allow content elements (e.g., highlighting, notes) to be layered on existing online pages and videos without modifying the content as intended by the original author. The options for both layering web pages and online videos have grown since I began commenting on this type of service. Because I mostly write for educators, there comes a point at which it might be useful to rank or at least differentiate these services. For example, what is the best free service? What is the best service no matter the cost? 

My early interest in this category of tools was encouraged by an exploration of Hypothes.is. I think I remember the origins of this service promoting “annotate the web” with a general emphasis on general interaction focused on the content the web made available. Fair or not, I think companies, even open source efforts, can become limited by their early vision. At this point, this service seems a general application with relevance to education, but not necessarily designed specifically for education. The tool options – highlight and annotate – seem limited in comparison say to the tool set available from a similar service – Insert Learning. So, for example, while Hypothes.is.’s annotate function could be used to ask questions or encourage discussion, Insert Learning has tools specific to annotation, questions, and discussion. The Insert Learning tools are flexible (e.g., a multiple choice tool) and can send the responses from individual students back to a dashboard from which the educator can see who has responded and who has not and assign grades or easily keep track of participation. This differentiation of tools and integrated data collection system is educationally very useful. Of course, Insert Learning is a paid service. 

In some ways, I still see Hypothes.is as driving developments in this field. It is a service with roots in a research community and I think this base is important for productive developments. These roots come with what might seem limitations to some as a noncommercial approach has limits on the resources necessary for rapid innovation. For example, the Hypothes.is blog describes the Indiana University social annotation project and interest in using learning analytics to investigate annotation.

I find myself working and writing at the intersection of research and practice and I can appreciate both of the services I have described here from these perspectives.

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DocDrop + Hypothes.is

I have not generated a post about layering for some time. I found a description of DocDrop and thought it provided a great example of how the concept of layering could be applied to the study of video.

DocDrop is a service that allows the simultaneous display of a YouTube video and the associated text normally displayed as closed captions.

This dual display alone may have value, but it is the integration of DocDrop and Hypothes.is that offers the opportunity for educators and learners I see as having the greatest potential. Hypothes.is was the first layering system I explored and the first I used in a class. It allows the personal or collaborative annotation (highlighting, notes) of text content. I see the value here as a way to improve the processing of text for learning and retention.

Now, the following is a demonstration of the possibility of combining of DocDrop and Hypothes.is.

If this video interests you, I was not focused in the demo on explaining Hypothes.is. The following video was generated a couple of years ago to explain the use of Hypothes.is.

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