1. What is information overload?
The internet has brought us access to more information than we could possibly ever want or need. Some of this information is interesting and useful, some of it less so. For example, researching online for this article led me to all sorts of interesting things: from a discussion on Quora about what percentage of human knowledge is available on the internet, to an academic paper on the measurement of human knowledge, to a book about how the internet is rewiring our brains … Soon I found myself bogged down in all sorts of tangential material. Then a feeling of panic set in, as it was abundantly clear that I could never possibly read everything there was online about information overload … You get the idea. You are probably already familiar with the feeling of being overwhelmed by too much data. This is information overload.
2. Why should I care about information overload?
Information overload has some good synonyms: infobesity, infoxication, information glut and (my personal favourite ) data smog. These terms reflect the psychological stress that being exposed to an endless stream of digital information causes us. Countless emails, Facebook status updates, online newspaper articles, blog posts, tweets, YouTube videos, Instagram selfies … Just trying to keep up with reading and viewing all of this can make you feel stressed, giving you the feeling that you are only just keeping your head above water. Add to this the sense that everybody else knows a lot more than you do, and that everybody else seems to be so much more active on their blogs, on Twitter, on Facebook, on YouTube, on discussion lists, etc, and you have the effects of information overload – feelings of panic and inadequacy, with a constant undercurrent of low-level anxiety.
3. What can I do to avoid it?
According to writer Clay Shirky, ‘It’s not information overload, its filter failure’. In other words, you need to accept that the amount of information being pushed your way will only decrease if you put filter strategies in place. For example, I used to follow lots of blogs – probably around 100. Of course, trying to read these required a certain amount of self-discipline and time, of which I seemed to have less and less. Now I only follow a few. These are blogs by people outside the sphere of ELT, who read widely and write intelligently on issues related to educational technology in general – the area I’m most interested in. Applying this sort of filter to almost all of my social media feeds (blogs, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn) means that I only see content that is most likely to interest me. But beware. Filtering is not without its limitations. See Eli Pariser’s TED talk on the dangers of ‘filter bubbles’: www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bubbles
4. How is this relevant to English language teachers?
The internet is one of the greatest free continual professional development resources ever. There are online courses, discussion groups, Facebook and Twitter communities, and lots and lots of resources aimed at English language teachers and learners. Joining an online teaching community can help you filter teaching-related content for your own teaching context. Here are a few recommended online groups you could join to get you started:
- Twitter: #eltchat – http://eltchat.org/wordpress/
- Yahoo! discussion group: Webheads – https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/evonline2002_webheads/info
- Facebook: IATEFL LTSIG (Learning Technologies Special Interest Group) – www.facebook.com/LTSIG; British Council Teaching English – www.facebook.com/TeachingEnglish.
5. What else can I do to avoid information overload?
Here are five extra tips:
Tip 1: Accept the inevitable. You will never know everything, and you will never be able to fully keep up.
Tip 2: Make a list of all your ongoing online professional development sources (Twitter, discussion groups, blogs, webinars …). Prioritise them. Choose just a few to focus on each week or month.
Tip 3: Use time management – allow yourself to log on to Twitter, say, once a day for 15 minutes only. Allow another 20 minutes a day – or every few days – to check your RSS feed and read a few blog posts.
Tip 4: Use personal management tools to help you organise incoming information. For example, use some sort of ‘read it later’ application or strategy to deal with fast incoming info from a source like Twitter. Send tweets with useful-looking links directly to Evernote, to Instapaper or to Pocket, to check out when you have time. Or mark the tweets as favourites and read them later.
Tip 5: Be selective about the links you save permanently. Use social bookmarking (see ETp Issue 96), so your bookmarks are accessible from anywhere and searchable by tags – by you and your network. Delicious and Diigo are two popular options.
And finally, to celebrate ETp’s 100th issue, I’ve written an article called ‘100 ways to deal with information overload’, available on my blog … Just kidding. That would be information overload!
Nicky Hockly is Director of Pedagogy of The Consultants-E, an online teacher training and development consultancy. Her most recent books are Digital Literacies (Routledge), an e-book: Webinars: A Cookbook for Educators (the-round.com), and Going Mobile (Delta Publishing), a book on mobile learning. She maintains a blog at www.emoderationskills.com. Email: [email protected]
