I sure hope so, Shauna! Sometimes, when my kids were being difficult, I used to console myself with the thought that, one day, they would have children of their own, and I would be the grandparent that spoiled them rotten. My hour has come around at last :-)

Just found this post - congratulations! It's so much more fun being a grandparent - and your face shows that you'll enjoy it immensely. Such a great adventure.

Thanks Mary - yes, I am loving it!

"It ain't what you do, it's the way that you do it!"

Do you mean that the way an e-reader device is used in the environment will be a more important consideration for comfortability (i.e., eye strain) than what e-reader device is used?

@Steve - not so much, although that is probably something to factor into any study. I mean that it is not important that it is an e-reader, but it is important how it is designed.

There are way more current and possible designs for e-readers than for p-readers (notwithstanding - or perhaps because of  - thousands of years of evolution) and, if any of the design factors make a difference (and I am sure most do), it is always possible to design them differently. It's significantly more complex than that, too, because of the rich interplay between design elements.

It's exactly the same issue as comparing e-learning and p-learning and expecting to find some universal qualitative difference in learning. It's a bit like saying all paintings are better than all drawings, or all blues music is better than all classical music. Makes no sense. We can probably fairly reliably find out how one particular design configuration compares with one other design configuration, and we can probably find out that some things (e.g. shining 100 lumens of light directly into someone's eyes) are (almost) always a bad idea for at least some kinds of activity, and we might even be able to discern some generalizable patterns that have held in the past but, unless they have held 100% of the time across all contexts, there is no reason to suppose that, given our capacity to alter the design, they will hold in the future. Of course, if we do find something is a universal problem, then the next step is to look for a solution. But it is no more sensible to investigate whether learning (or reading, or art) is better (or worse) with or without electronic media than it is to investigate whether it is better (or worse) with or without glue.

Based on your noting that there is a difference between direct and indirect light to the eye, would it be useful to research human interactions to visual displays?  In example, a cinema display of reflected light is a different interface to the eyes, from a digital display screen of the same size (your flashlight note). The majority of humans (with 1B+ smartphones) have adapted to digital displays. This adaptation to non-natural/virtual direct light has no biophysical change? or has exposure to such technologies been too short in our species timeline (or human lifetime) to investigate?

Interesting but not so easy. And a few links away from there is the old news. I can say that if Bruce Schneier doesn't talk about it we don't need to worry

Well, at least it's easier than replicating a retinal scan.

Interesting. This is a related free webinar:

Jon,

Thanks for sharing this article. It was great to see such a succinct discussion of the topic and research.

I am in the midst of creating a syllabus for a course i am teaching in the next semester on Educational Psychology. I am going to add this reading to the courrse.

By the way, the course is going to be self-directed and take place in Pace Commons (my Elgg site).

Best,

Gerald

Good point. I hadn't thguhot about it quite that way. :)
- Janisa

Jon,

This is a beautiful tribute to your mentor. Thanks so much for sharing it.

Your writing put me in mind of my mentor at Pace, also named Sandra. It is amazing to see how we are shaped and influenced by the people in our networks. And how their sense of things gets tranferred and interalized by us, the mentees.