SUPPORTED TEXT IN ELECTRONIC READING ENVIRONMENTS

Abstract

Electronic reading environments use computer-based text and multimedia supports to provide students a new medium in which to learn. This article describes the most common electronic reading environment, "electronic books," and share examples on the use of such environments to improve the reading fluency and comprehension of students with reading difficulties. This research suggests that, given an electronic reading environment designed to support studying and learning of content-area materials, students with reading difficulties (a) can and do take advantage of the resources available; (b) develop specific, consistent patterns of resource usage; (c) do not interact with all document pages in the same way; (d) can use electronic documents to accomplish school tasks; and (e) use the supportive resources in ways that suggest they are "studying" rather than just reading.