---
title: "Innovations in Reading and Writing:"
subtitle: "What Should Learning Technologists Know?"
author: "Dominik Lukeš, @techczech"
outline_version: 2
auto_title_slide: false
auto_thanks_slide: false
---

## Innovations in Reading and Writing: What Should Learning Technologists Know?
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Dominik.Lukes@ctl.ox.ac.uk | @techczech

## This is a quick top level overview!
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## More on bit.ly/oxfordreadinglab
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![Screenshot of an embedded slide deck titled “Reading and Writing Innovation Lab Showcase”: “What is available for hands on trial at the Centre for Teaching and Learning”, with a Next button, at slide 1 of 17.](assets/media/img-ca4dfd1815c93ca7.png)

## Is this what it is about?
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![Photograph of a round wooden table with a tablet, a laptop and an e-reader, each showing a highlighted and annotated document, and styluses lying beside them.](assets/media/img-dedc43f8b4479383.jpeg)

## Or is this what it’s all about?
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![Photograph of many study-skills books spread over a table, among them Reading at University, Planning Your Essay, Reading & Making Notes, Studying with Dyslexia, Writing for University and Where’s Your Argument?](assets/media/img-9f71283aa9e17fde.jpeg)

## Strategies come before technologies.
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## Technologies can help but also get in the way.
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## Just came out bit.ly/ readingaffordances 2021
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![First page of a journal paper, “Towards a digital reading lab: Discovering and learning new affordances”, with its abstract and the start of the introduction, beside a dark panel with title, author, keywords and DOI.](assets/media/img-9c6a42a77ae51d5a.png)

## Articulation of Reading
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### Reading is an articulated activity
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- Decoding
- Understanding
- Planning
- Strategic attention

### Reading modalities
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- Text
- Audio and text
- Audio
- Video

## What makes reading easier
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### Five principle of readable content
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- Enlarge
- Listen
- Navigate
- Strategize

## Enlarge: Reduce barriers to decoding
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### Enlarge: Reduce barriers to decoding
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![The sentence “An employer can choose to offer more leave than the legal minimum. They don’t have to apply all the rules that apply to statutory leave to the extra leave. For example, a worker might need to be employed for a certain amount of time before they become entitled to it.” set with letters squeezed tightly together.](assets/media/img-3d146304037e3edf.png)

### Enlarge: Reduce barriers to decoding
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![Two white text boxes on a grey slide showing the same paragraph. The upper box has the letters set so tightly that they overlap and are hard to read; the lower, larger box has normal letter spacing.](assets/pages/page-16.png)

An employer can choose to offer more leave than the legal minimum. They don’t have to apply all the rules that apply to statutory leave to the extra leave. For example, a worker might need to be employed for a certain amount of time before they become entitled to it.

The slide shows this paragraph twice: squeezed in the small upper box (“I hey” appears for “They” because of the overlap) and with normal spacing in the large lower box.

### Enlarge: Reduce barriers to decoding
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![Photograph of cars on a road, blurred by their speed, with grass and trees beyond.](assets/media/img-4247441fa67fc317.jpeg)

### Enlarge: Reduce barriers to decoding
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![Screenshot of a blog post, “Book Review: Evolutionary Psychopathology” on Slate Star Codex, shown in a browser with a long line of small text and side columns of links.](assets/media/img-3f4b55d6ed999eb1.png)

### Instapaper view of the review
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![The same book review in the Instapaper reading view: one narrow column of text with a plain heading.](assets/media/img-39a273da333624c4.png)

### My instapaper
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![Two phone screenshots from Instapaper. Left: a list of saved articles, “Classroom Teaching Then and …”, “Introducing: Asabiyah”, “Learning From Old China”, “tianming 天命 (www.chinakn…”, and “Meta-rationality: An in…” with a “4 Notes” tag. Right: the article “Classroom Teaching Then and Now” with its first passage highlighted in blue.](assets/pages/page-20.png)

Left screen, the Instapaper article list: Classroom Teaching Then and… (larrycuban.wordpress.com); Introducing: Asabiyah (scholars-stage.blogspot.com); Learning From Old China (scholars-stage.blogspot.com); tianming 天命 (www.chinakn…) (chinaknowledge.de); Meta-rationality: An in… (metarationality.com), marked “4 Notes”.

Right screen, the open article with the highlighted passage: “Most policymakers, researchers, and parents believe that good teachers and teaching are the keys to school improvement yet these very same folks know little about how teachers teach daily.” The text continues “And that is the rub. Good teachers and teaching are the agreed-upon policy solutions to both high- and low-performing students”.

### New Edge has Immersive Reader built in
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![Screenshot of the University of Oxford news page “Oxford leads first trial investigating dosing with alternating vaccines”, with a photograph of vaccine vials, in Microsoft Edge.](assets/media/img-2d8b20a5d2a99fe4.png)

### Advanced text display options
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![Original slide 22 as rendered: the Oxford vaccine news article shown in Edge Immersive Reader with a cream background and larger text, and the Read aloud, Text preferences and Grammar tools buttons at the top. The original is an animation, not included here.](assets/pages/page-22.png)

### Additionally also supports line focus
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![Edge Immersive Reader with the Reading preferences panel open and Line focus switched on; the text is dimmed except for a few lines.](assets/media/img-544958814fcf301c.png)

### Additional language support features
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![Original slide 24 as rendered: the same Immersive Reader view with the pointer over the Grammar tools button. The original is an animation, not included here.](assets/pages/page-24.png)

### Can even help with some languages
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![Two screenshots of Microsoft Immersive Reader with Syllables switched on, one above the other. Top: Russian text split into syllables with dots and coloured by parts of speech (nouns purple, verbs red, adjectives green). Bottom: Czech text split into syllables, “Zná·mé znač·ky mi·zí z cen…”, with Nouns highlighted, and a note in the panel that parts of speech cannot be highlighted for some languages.](assets/pages/page-25.png)

Immersive Reader’s Grammar tools panel (Syllables, Parts of speech with Nouns, Verbs, Adjectives and Adverbs, Show labels) is open on both screenshots. In the Czech screenshot the panel warns: “Can’t highlight parts of speech for some languages”.

Visible Czech text, split into syllables: “Zná·mé znač·ky mi·zí z cen… Pra·hy. Ko·ro·navi·rus vy·h… fir·my z lu·kra·tiv·ních ad·r… opuš·tě·ných pro·de·jen při·bý·vá”. The right-hand ends of the lines are hidden behind the panel.

The Russian screenshot begins “На·валь·ному за·ме·ни·л…” and its right-hand ends are hidden behind the panel in the same way.

## Reading with your ears
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### Natural voices
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![Original slide 27 as rendered: the poster frame of a screen recording of Edge Read aloud on the page “Oxford leads first trial investigating dosing with alternating vaccines”. The video itself is not part of this package.](assets/pages/page-27.png)

### Reading with your ears
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![Screenshot of an iPad showing Winnie-the-Pooh with the sentence being read aloud highlighted in yellow and playback controls at the bottom.](assets/media/img-6deba40b8af3068a.png)

### Reading with your ears
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![Screenshot of the iOS Accessibility settings for Speech: Speak Selection is on, Speak Screen is off, followed by Voices and a Speaking Rate slider.](assets/media/img-03694b64dd4f1c74.png)

### Voicedream reasder
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![Screenshot of the Voice Dream website with its Reader app: the words “reader, Reading Reinvented” and “Read anything. Read anywhere. Read your way.” beside a head silhouette filled with books.](assets/media/img-a609734887200700.png)

### VoiceAloud reader
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![Screenshot of the Google Play page for @Voice Aloud Reader (TTS Reader), with a loudspeaker icon and two app screenshots.](assets/media/img-cd057d2ff3117892.png)

### Reading with your ears
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![Screenshot of the @Voice PDF Crop Plugin: a PDF page shown cropped in a dark overlay.](assets/media/img-050759733c2872cf.png)

### Listening tips
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- 2x: Listen at higher speed
- Crop: Remove footers
- Skip: Find shortcuts to navigate

## Navigation
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### Texts have structures
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- Abstract
- Introduction
- Methods
- Results
- Discussion
- Conclusion
- Acknowledgements
- References
- Appendices/Data

### Navigation Pane in Word is an essential tool for reading and writing
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![Screenshot of Word with the Navigation pane showing the headings of a document about six tasks of effective instructional videos, beside the document text.](assets/media/img-a96697b7223c7ef3.png)

### Chrome PDF viewer
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![Screenshot of Chrome’s PDF viewer showing the paper “Business Models, Business Strategy and Innovation” by David J. Teece, with a Bookmarks outline open on the right.](assets/media/img-38ae61f34cb81b58.png)

### Microsoft Edge PDF viewer
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![Screenshot of the Microsoft Edge PDF viewer showing the same paper with a Table of Contents pane on the left.](assets/media/img-38eead19166a6290.png)

## Read strategically
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### Read strategically
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> “The vast quantities of information that are available mean that it is important that you read as intelligently as possible. For most social science literature, this means ‘skim reading’ a document or book before reading line-by-line.” (Steve New)

![Cover of the Academic Writing Skills Guide 2018-2019 with a large orange quotation mark.](assets/media/img-6c4c19aa9ca192fe.png)

### Three Modes of Reading
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**Linear**

- Read from start to finish
- As in fiction
- Most texts formatted for this

**Skiming**

- Read for gist to get a sense of overall meaning quickly
- Strategy to decide is more is needed

**Scannning**

- Read for specific information
- Use on second pass or in research

### Most digital reading interfaces assume the linear mode!
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### This is why digital textbooks are so slow to take off!
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### Where does technology come in?
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## Affordances of Reading
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### Definition of affordance
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Affordance is the **property of an object** that allows the user to **interact** with it in order to achieve a particular goal **without conscious deliberation**.

### Affordances of a printed schedule
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![Photograph of an open printed conference programme with handwritten circles and notes beside session entries.](assets/media/img-cbc330208b3d7c9c.jpeg)

### Affordance of a digital schedule
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![Screenshot of the online schedule of ALT’s Summer Summit 2020 with a search box containing “user ex”, matching sessions highlighted, and a sponsor logo, Brickfield Education Labs.](assets/media/img-bc739baba665dd84.png)

### Affordances of books
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![Screenshot of a YouTube video titled “Paperback VS Kindle E-books ! Who Wins??”: a woman holding up an e-reader and a paperback Harry Potter book in front of bookshelves.](assets/media/img-29d06dadce8eb165.png)

### Affordances
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- Physicality (Weight / 3D)
- Touch
- Ink absorption
- Visibility – Comparison
- Movability

### Most e-reading tools do not take into account key affordances of reading. We must evaluate them from this perspective.
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### It took Amazon 13 years to figure out people read books non-linearly
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![Original slide 52 as rendered: a hand holding a Kindle e-reader in front of a web page headed “The Kindle ha… System”.](assets/pages/page-52.png)

### Affordance of the body
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![Photograph of hands holding a thick printed book open, with a diagram in the text and a thumb marking a page.](assets/media/img-9902760694753f23.jpeg)

### Publishers seem to be remarkably ignorant of the affordances of reading.
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### Not thinking about the ereader as content consumer but as paper replicator
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![Screenshot of ProQuest Ebook Central showing a book on reading and making notes, with a table of contents on the left and the heading “Now you are at university” beside a table comparing school and university.](assets/media/img-484b8e88cb1fcf80.png)

## Reading hardware and software
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### What can you read with
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- Computer
- Smart phone
- Tablet
- E-reader
- Scanner

### Comparing hardware solutions
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**Computer**

- 👍 Always there
- 👍 Many tools
- 👎 Bad posture
- 👎 Screen glare

**Smart phone**

- 👍 Portable
- 👍 Flexible
- 👎 Small screen
- 👎 Battery
- 👎 Screen glare

**Tablet**

- 👍 Portable
- 👍 Large screen
- 👍 Side by side
- 👍 Pen option
- 👎 Screen glare

**E-reader**

- 👍 No screen glare
- 👍 Long battery
- 👍 Touch/pen
- 👎 Single function
- 👎 Slow refresh

**Scanner**

- 👍 Stand alone
- 👍 Printed text
- 👎 Single purpose
- 👎 Expensive

![Original slide 58 as rendered: five tall rounded columns, one per device, each with an icon, a name and its short list, above a wide grey double arrow.](assets/pages/page-58.png)

## E-readers
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### Remarkable
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![Photograph of a Remarkable tablet showing an annotated PDF, with a stylus resting on it.](assets/media/img-baf66c4fdddb54f6.jpeg)

### Kobo
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![Photograph of a Kobo e-reader standing upright on a stand, showing handwritten notes on a page.](assets/media/img-408c8976797b9a8a.jpeg)

### Boox Max Lumi
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![Photograph of a Boox Max Lumi e-ink tablet lying on a wooden table with a stylus.](assets/media/img-4897baa66adbe2a3.jpeg)

### Onyx Boox
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![Photograph of an Onyx Boox tablet showing a page with handwritten notes, with its pen on the table.](assets/media/img-5dd75b434b4e6169.jpeg)

## Scanners
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### Cpen
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![Photograph of a white pen scanner resting on a printed page.](assets/media/img-ed28af8c153d93bc.jpeg)

### ORCam Reader
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![Photograph of a woman holding a pen-shaped reader above an open book.](assets/media/img-fc16d2075308ab0b.jpg)

## Tablets
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### iPad
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![Photograph of an iPad with a keyboard case, showing a document with passages highlighted in several colours.](assets/media/img-bd8349f64d1ca3c6.jpeg)

## Touch interfaces
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### Active styluses
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![Photograph of an Apple Pencil box with an Apple Pencil and two other active styluses.](assets/media/img-5b52e613056460d4.jpeg)

### Passive styluses
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![Photograph of boxed passive styluses with soft and fine tips.](assets/media/img-d5ecc23ff6ab8baf.jpeg)

### Drawing tablets
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![Photograph of a small drawing tablet with a pen resting on it.](assets/media/img-b72dc36c73e39e27.jpg)

## Apps
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### MarginNote – reason to get an iPad
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![An iPad showing MarginNote: a mind map on the left, with orange chapter nodes such as “Chapter 12 Skorohod Embedding and Invariance Principles” and “Chapter 15 Stochastic Integrals and Quadratic Variation”, and a mathematics PDF on the right with coloured highlights and excerpts. The blue MarginNote logo is overlaid across the middle of the screen.](assets/pages/page-74.png)

### Margin note features
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![Screenshot of the MarginNote website’s Features page, with six thumbnails: reading mode, display notes on margin, editing a note as a card, auto-create mind map, drag to mind map and emphasize.](assets/media/img-e1254a90853c10e3.png)

### LiquidText finding new affordances
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![An iPad showing LiquidText with documents, highlights and collected excerpts, with the LiquidText logo and a play button over it.](assets/media/img-06ed7499c041cd4f.png)

### Touch affordance demo
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![Original slide 77 as rendered: a frame of a video of a finger touching a tablet screen. The video is not part of this package.](assets/pages/page-77.png)

## DRM – Elephant in the room
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### What does download mean?
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![Screenshot of a Bodleian Libraries catalogue record for “How to use your reading in your essays” by Jeanne Godfrey, with buttons Read Online, Download and Add to Bookshelf, and print and copy allowances of 10 per cent.](assets/media/img-bd10d06d52f4d800.png)

### Reading experience with DRM is bad
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![Screenshot of Adobe Digital Editions showing a protected ebook with a table of contents and two columns of small text.](assets/media/img-762ad4abf59321a0.png)

### No tool that is designed to support DRM has kept up with reading innovation! Publishers, shame on you!!!
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## Workflows
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### Workflows are just as important as the tools.
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### Amazon pioneered workflows with the Kindle.
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### Types of workflow
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- Books to e-reader
- Books to app
- Annotations from app
- Annotations into notes
- Notes into memory

### Readwise.io
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![Screenshot of the Readwise home page: “Get the most out of what you read. Readwise makes it easy to revisit and learn from your ebook & article highlights”, with a Get started for free button and a laptop and phone showing a daily review.](assets/media/img-a1893112f60101f5.png)

### Readwise Import Options
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![Screenshot of Readwise’s Import Highlights page, suggesting Kindle, Apple Books and Goodreads, with Instapaper, Supplemental Books, Pocket, Twitter, Medium and Hypothesis already connected.](assets/media/img-3e194e38313f76b6.png)

### Review what you imported
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![Readwise’s Browse Highlights menu: Books, Supplemental Books, Articles, Tweets, Highlight Tags, Favorites, Discards and Mastery.](assets/media/img-07e94d0625017661.png)

![A Readwise daily review card with a highlight from “Vanished Kingdoms” by Norman Davies, with Discard, Master, Feedback and Keep buttons.](assets/media/img-a8de86ba88c0d64a.png)

### Readwise export options
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![Screenshot of Readwise’s Export Highlights page, with Notion connected and Evernote and Roam available to connect and sync.](assets/media/img-df670d8b2c1b3135.png)

### Strategies before technologies
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Thank you and more on bit.ly/**oxfordreadinglab**