Internet Tools for Language Learning

This article does a great job and helping us realize the real and perceived reasons why people feel that reading on paper is more benefitial for them. At this point in history, people do tend to remember more if they read from paper.  We can often remember which region of a page we learned something even if we read it several weeks ago.  We like the transition of one side of the book being heavier than the other as we progress through the pages.  Book designers take great efforts to design how books look, feel and smell.  Digital books are disrupting our experience and interaction with the written text.  Many people are in a mental state before reading a printed text that it is more serious and meaningful.  This mindset may be changing how we engage the brain and thus how much we remember.

But why, one could ask, are we working so hard to make reading with new technologies like tablets and e-readers so similar to the experience of reading on the very ancient technology that is paper? Why not keep paper and evolve screen-based reading into something else entirely? Screens obviously offer readers experiences that paper cannot. Scrolling may not be the ideal way to navigate a text as long and dense as Moby Dick, but the New York Times, Washington Post, ESPN and other media outlets have created beautiful, highly visual articles that depend entirely on scrolling and could not appear in print in the same way. Some Web comics andinfographics turn scrolling into a strength rather than a weakness. Similarly, Robin Sloan has pioneered the tap essay for mobile devices. The immensely popular interactive Scale of the Universe tool could not have been made on paper in any practical way. New e-publishing companies like Atavist offer tablet readers long-form journalism with embedded interactive graphics, maps, timelines, animations and sound tracks. And some writers are pairing up with computer programmers to produce ever more sophisticated interactive fiction and nonfiction in which one's choices determine what one reads, hears and sees next.

When it comes to intensively reading long pieces of plain text, paper and ink may still have the advantage. But text is not the only way to read.

Using technology to quickly share and crowdsource information. This was recently suggested by many as a way to avoid overwhelming cell phone bandwidth limits in Boston.

This looks like fun for grandchildren and grandparent alike:-)