Some thoughts:

As much as one company would like to be the be all end all answer to every learning need. It isn't logical. That would stop us from looking for what else works.

Learning Strategies Corp works with others to produce courses that help us take great strides in our personal, professional and spirual lives. Ever notice that many of our recent programs have included works with the co-operation of others?.

When it comes to producing results we need to focus on producing a quality. Stretch ourselves into to many things we become a jack-of-all-trades and master-of-none. This applies to companies as well as as individuals

As for PhotoReading software consider this. Using the skill free style is much more powerful than hooking yourself up to a computer or mucking around downloading and plonking ebooks into the program before you can PhotoRead it. You've used the 4 minutes it takes to flip pages of a book just getting software ready. If it is on a website, page down or spacebar and you're done in 30 seconds.

For activation you need to ask questions that relate to your purpose. No software is going to be better than what you have between your ears for that. Only you are going to know when you've got what you need and want.

The biggest mistake I see is that people are still looking for a wpm score for a book. PhotoReading is about getting your reading done in the time you have available. Whether a program can help you to improve your information gathering speed the fact remains anything above 600 words per minute is not reading so if you want to have better comprehension you need to have seen it before if you want to know where you need to actually slow down to comprehend what you are seeing.

Now for getting your reading done in the time you have available, I personally consider it a waste of my time, calling up software, having to wait until I get to a computer to get the information I need, prolonged "getting into" the Accelerated Learning State and waiting until my "reading speed" improves. I mean, why would I want to spend 10, 15, or 20 minutes to get into the Accelerated Learning State when I can just PhotoRead a book in three? For an article/report... please! 10 minutes entering ALS? One can read it traditionally in that time... what would be the point? It is not effective use of your time. I like to finish the article in 3 minutes. Even in my PhotoReading class the very first time my participants experience entering the Accelerated learning state it takes about 6 minutes. At the end it's just Ideal state, Purpose, Tangerine, Smile and on to PhotoRead. 30 seconds that's it.

You know how you get a child to give up their security blanket? Don't give them 'one' in the first place give them a variety of options and ways so that when they do feel insecure their world doesn't come apart when they cannot find their security blanket.

So what are the security blankets offered in PhotoReading, Prepare,Ideal stat, purpose, affirm, PhotoRead, affirm, Incubate, activate (variety of techniques for that) Rapid Read (optional) By the way. The difference between manual activation and spontaneous activation.
Manual activation is any technique you use to bring to conscious awareness the information that you had PhotoRead. Spontaneous activation is just that spontaneous... not effort nothing really done. It occures when someone asks you a question and you happen to be able to tell them the answer. Things like Image streaming, freenoting, superreading and dipping skittering as well as forming mind probing questions, are manual activation techniques.

When it comes down to activation with superreading and dipping it's not how fast you can read, it's learning to develop questions and your mind body connection so that you are noticing the answers.

It is possible to PhotoRead and be finished with a book in 20 minutes. I'm not going to add 10 mintues or even 4 minutes trying to convert it into a software program for PhotoReading. I still favour books for activation because the computer is too linear in presenting the pages. A book is faster to activate. Pdfs are marginally better. But reading on a computer screen is on average 20% slower than on paper. The practice of reading on a computer screen has slowed down the ability to read on paper. That's why the average reading speed is now 190 wpm when it was 240wpm a few years ago.

Alex

[This message has been edited by Alex K. Viefhaus (edited December 01, 2004).]