I personally don't happen to agree with this statement...
The help file is often worse than useless because it uses the application specific vocabulary.
...in fact I'm convinced the built-in help system that's included with almost all applications is a most valuable resource that's grossly under used. To begin with many school student's have little or no awareness of the existence of this valuable resource, instead relying upon a teacher to tell them what to do. This is often made worse by underpowered school PCs that have severely limited RAM, which mans the help system takes an age to load. Furthermore, many schools have configured their MS help system to default to the horrible 'Clippy' MS-Agent based search interface, which is enough to put anyone off ICT for life! Often the first question I ask a new class of school student of any age (KS2 plus) if anyone has ever shown then how to make best use of the help system, and to date I have never met a single student who has ever answered "Yes"! To me, this is the level one fundamental basic skill, on a par with teaching the 'ABC' as the foundation of English literacy. Once I've introduced my students to the delights of the help system ...as outlined below, the biggest challenge is persuading them to get into the habit of using it. However that's easily handled by turning student questions into a race. When a student put's their hand up for help, I challenge them "See if you find out the answer all by yourself before I get around to helping you. If by the time I reach you, you've already found the answer and you briefly explain to me how you did this, then there are major brownie points to be won! I even give brownie points for a good stab at the answer -- provided of course they have at least accessed the help system. I find my students love this sort of challenge. Furthermore it encourages them to become independent users of ICT without being dependent upon the necessary presence of a teacher from the earliest possible age. Oh, and the biggest number of brownie points go to the student who shows a colleague how to find the function the want inside the help file, rather than simply telling them what to do! So what's the secret of reading a standard windows format help file? Well, this is structured very much like an Outliner, or even a MindMap. Furthermore, a great deal of vital information can be gleaned from opening up just the fist couple of layers. However the starting point should always be the 'Contents' page, at least while a student is familiarising themselves with the help system of an unfamiliar application. Yes, they might find the information they want quicker using the Index or Search functions, but by drilling down manually to the information they are after, they'll be sub-consciously hovering up a great deal of other information that's bound to be useful later on. I also point out that help systems provide detailed explanation of individual functions that are laid out using a format that mirrors the drop-down menu system -- which ties in with my earlier post on using the drop-down menu system when introducing a new application. I won't elaborate in much more detail here, but I also demonstrate to my students some basic speed reading techniques that enables them to get to the information they want fast. Furthermore, these these techniques can also be readily applied to reading web content or printed material, and they are also portable across the whole of the school curriculum. This post is long enough already, so I'll stop here... David Bowles TeacherLab / Education-Support