If this research is to be believed, your professor’s ugly PowerPoint fonts make you more likely to remember his lectures, and you’re gonna forget that book you read on your Kindle or iPad because the screen is too crisp.

Is the takeaway that good graphic design leads to bad education? Or is it that anything that gets students to participate more actively–even if only to squint their eyes–stimulates learning more than passive edutainment?

http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/JYXsb_CnfUQ/ via Byline When students read books printed in hard-to-read fonts like Comic Sans, they retain information from them better than material printed in traditional fonts.

Meanwhile, on Slashdot:

http://idle.slashdot.org/story/11/01/14/1527207/Research-Suggests-E-Readers-Are-Too-Easy-To-Read?from=rss via Byline New research suggests that the clear screens and easily read fonts of e-readers makes your brain “lazy.” According to Neuroscience blogger Jonah Lehrer, using electronic books like the Kindle and Sony Reader makes you less likely to remember what you have read because the devices are so easy on the eyes. From the article: “Rather than making things clearer, e-readers and computers prevent us from absorbing information because their crisp screens and fonts tell our subconscious that the words they convey are not important, it is claimed. In contrast, handwriting and fonts that are more challenging to read signal to the brain that the content of the message is important and worth remembering, experts say.”