While it is my normal manner to jump right into something, I do go back and read directions and manuals shortly after beginning. In New Media, there are some standard things to learn: keys and mouse clicks to move characters in visual games, buttons and menus for keeping track of moves or accumulations of items or notes, key words to respond in order to progress in interactive fiction, etc. And while most programs have built-in forms of mapping progress, I find myself going back to notebooks and pencils. I now have a divided notebook where most of my notes are kept neatly in sequence–or scribbled in the heat of battle–so that I can go back and check them if I need to locate something or go back to "begin" if I’ve gotten killed and forgot to save my place.
Learning something new like Storytron, especially when the program itself is still in its testing stages and being warned by the creators that it is complicated in its concept to learn, I printed out and bound a neat manual complete with the information and the tutorials offered on the site. For me, working with a hard copy is just easier than clicking back and forth to new windows of information when trying to maneuver within new software.
It seems particularly incongruous to be using a "book" however, to learn a program or story that is meant to replace it.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology