Text Media for Idiots

There is no medium more ubiquitous than print, and no mode more familiar than text in its many forms. Print was part of the first teaching machine—the book—and books were the first mass-produced commodity.

 

• Advantages:
  • Cost- print is one of the lowest cost one-way technologies.
  • Flexibility and robustness
  • Portability and ease of production—with desktop publishing hardware and software, printing has become enormously simpler and its quality much higher. In addition, costs can be reduced with local production.
  •  Stability- organization and sequencing are positively affected, since text-only printed and online materials can be reorganized and resequenced with relative ease by cut-and-paste operations, using word-processors and HTML editors.
  • Convenience, familiarity, and economy—instruction and feedback are facilitated by the medium's familiarity, as, for adept learners and the highly literate, are higher-order thinking and concept formation (Pittman, 1987).
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• Disadvantages:
  •  Print is static, and may fail to gain adequate involvement from low-functioning readers. Attention, perception and recall, and active learner participation may thus be lower for less able learners.
  • Print is relatively non-interactive, or at least non-responsive, and may lead to passive, rote learning.
  • Print often requires substantial literacy levels.​

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Print is accessible (to the literate), and comparatively low in cost; furthermore, online text is easy to produce, translates well across various platforms and operating systems, and in some of its forms, may be manipulated by the user if desired. However, print may be seen by some as the “slightly seedy poor relation” of other instructional media. Text's lack of appeal is exacerbated by the alternatives to reading which are increasingly appearing, and which use multimedia (especially audio and graphics) and improvements in voice recognition and reproduction technologies to make reading less critical for users. As a result, non-print multimedia-based technologies could come to be regarded as cost-effective, especially in cultures or industries where high levels of literacy cannot be assumed, or where the costs of reading inefficiencies are high. Developments such as instant text messaging and e-paper could reverse this trend, giving print and print-based materials new life, at least until e-paper-based multimedia evolve to make text less important once more.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sources:

Fahy, P.J. (2004). Media Characteristics and Online Learning Technology. Retrieved July 16, 2013, from http://cde.athabascau.ca/online_book/ch6.html

Agustin, A.D.M. (2010, October 2). Instructional Media Resources. Retrieved July 16, 2013, from http://diceydoodle.wordpress.com/opus/instructional-media-resources/