 |
| Reading online can be complicated by all of the extraneous elements we find on web pages. |
There is a tool that can help make reading for information online a less distracting task. It is called Mercury Reader, and it is an extension that can be used in your Chrome web browser.When you install Mercury Reader, you can click on it to remove all of the extraneous information from a web page you are trying to read. Here is a side-by-side comparison of what an article on CNN.com looks like without Using Mercury Reader, and what it looks like when the extension is being used.
Benefits of Mercury Reader
- Easy to toggle on and off.
- Takes away extraneous and possibly distracting information such as ads or links to content which might not be related to the content being read.
- Allows the reader to adjust font size and style for easier reading.
- Allows reader to choose a theme which puts white print on a dark background.
- Can aid dyslexic or visually impaired readers who are reading content on the web.
How to Use Mercury Reader
Below is a 4 1/2 minute tutorial I recorded which shows how helpful Mercury Reader can be while still being very simple to use. I hope this tool will be of benefit to you and your students. Please take time to comment on this post if you decide to try Mercury Reader or if you have other tips for making reading on the web easier.
All original work in this post by Sandy Kendell is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). Please see specifics on my re-use policy before re-posting/re-using any of my blog content.
