How Does David Mccandless Deal With Information Overload?

If a person wishes to be up to date on what is going on the world around them, in all facets and walks of life, then they must spend a considerable portion of time merely skimming the water of each pool of knowledge, never having the time to truly sink their feet in. This correlates directly back to the massively increased availability of information and writings, whose shoulders Birkerts puts the blame of our loss upon. Nicholas Carr cites a study done on the “behavior of visitors to two popular research sites” which gives its users an even larger degree of online texts.

Students may easily lose their attention and concentration with easy access to such incredibly rich store of information. With such new technologies as television, internet and social networks, people nowadays tend to multitask more often as they have easy access to large amount of information. However, such easy access may sometimes be a distraction. Study report “Your Brain on Computers” shows that heavy multitaskers perform up to 20% worse on most tests compared to performance of light multitaskers. Working efficiency of people, who multitask, are claimed to be significantly lower. The same is with concentration. As a result, they are not engaged in working process. Students tend to be easily distracted with this situation. For example, combining doing homework with operating on Twitter, phone or YouTube results in poor engagement of a student into deep thinking process, according to Winifred Gallagher, who is the author of Rapt. He also points out that nowadays high school and college students have decreased capacity of serious thinking because of multitasking and distraction. Moreover, Tyler Cowen, economist and famous blogger, claims that nowadays information tends to come in shorter and smaller portions and that explains why our generation encourages short reading. Since online information is always presented in short written passages, the web prevents user from concentration and contemplation. As an illustration, Nicholas Carr, the speaker at MIT and Harvard,

"Ausbel (1963) originally rationalized the use of graphic organizers by speculating that a learner's existing knowledge which he referred to a s cognitive structure, greatly influence his or her learning. When the cognitive structure expands and strengthens by incorporating new information, learning occurs. To facilitate this process, graphic organizers provide learners with a framework for relating their existing knowledge to the new information." (Kim et. Al 2004).

The significance of this triad is that they all relate to the “unlimited coinage of silver” in order to balance the economy during The Depression of 1893, which was overall unsuccessful because William McKinley (pro gold) won the election in 1896 and President Grover Cleveland made gold the main money supply of the nation. The panic of 1893 was the worst depression up to that point in the U.S. Thousands of workers lost their jobs, the economy was falling, and European investors were claiming funds. President Grover Cleveland made things worse when he made gold the nation’s money supply and repealed the Sherman Silver Purchase Act of 1890. If Cleveland had supported silver currency, the nation could have had more money

The internet that so many of us have come to depend on is a vast trove of information that is readily available to all of us. Having access to all of that information is an amazing thing but we should also consider what we may be loosing because of the way that we consume that information. Is reading these short bites of information one after another causing us to loose the ability to actually focus on one longer piece of text and contemplate its meaning? This is the question that Nicholas Carr looks at in his article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”

I feel as though Nicholar Carr succeeded in demonstrating the importance of how the Internet changes our brain’s ability to absorb information. The opposing views of his claim would be that there is not a change in our thinking or that the Internet is not what is responsible for that change. My position is most closely aligned with Carr’s. I believe that the Internet’s convenience has altered the expectations we have for how easily information should be presented. We prefer information to be short, to-the-point, tidbits that are easy to

Christopher Johnson McCandless was a young man who decided to walk alone into the wilderness. Chris was a great student, he graduated from high school in 1986 and from college in 1990. He saw titles and honors as unimportant and later would go on and say that university is a 20th century fad and not something to aspire to. Shortly after college he decided to leave his family behind and go on an adventure that would change his life. As Chris goes on a adventure Jon Krakauer uses many writing strategies to develop the true story of Christopher McCandless, but the three that help the reader understand the story are conflict, setting and irony.

This explosion of technology has opened many doors to the way we think and process information. Instead of the mundane linear cognitive thought processes involved in reading a book, the Net offers instant access to social media, games, shopping, and many other exciting and stimulating programs. This not only changes the entire spectrum of knowledge, but it also changes the way we look at the world. That is something the book has done, but not to this extreme.

Tufte's "The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint" is a direct and well-versed attack against PowerPoint. With a humorous but confident tone, Tufte provides an easy, captivating read. At this point, the sheer charm of the text alone creates a receptive audience who, even if they disagree with his words, continues reading nonetheless. With key phrases such as "a conclusion that can only be reached by not reading Miller's paper" (Tufte 160), Tufte creates the idea that he has indeed read the aforementioned

He also connects the color yellow, on Doctor T.J. Eckleburg’s glasses, with the greed and wealth of the characters.

In this article, Nicholas Carr attempts to explain how the way information is presented on the Internet has changed our way of thinking. He uses many different methods to do this, playing on the audience’s emotions as he uses anecdotes, research, and his own observations to try and convince the audience that the Internet has been detrimental to our thinking and learning processes. For the most part I believe his argument is ineffective because of his organization, his choice of sources, and his tone.

Carr speculates that by consistently perusing material in a quick and superficial manner, we are diminishing our ability to concentrate. He thinks that this is harming our intellect because it is changing our neurological wiring. We are not taking the time to reflect upon the subject matter, contemplate the information, and draw our own conclusions. According to him, this is causing a “rewiring”, or unwiring, of our brains. Ultimately, we lose the neurological connections that enable us to perform a true introspective analysis. He quotes the old adage, “use it or lose it.” Just as muscles must be used or they slowly dwindle away, so will the neurological connections in the

One of my most influential experiences took place with my very first class, ED 523 taught by Dr. Howe. In this course, I learned about the Understanding by Design (UbD) Framework created by Wiggins and McTighe. This framework focuses on a backward design approach that uses big

approaches were (1) a verbal concept organizer, designed to be presented orally; (2) a graphic

The clock is ticking, the work is piling up, and with only a few hours to go before sunrise you stop and realize that you have just read some fifty pages and absorbed almost nothing. Some would agree when I say that this situation epitomizes one of the common problems of the Net Generation. With the help of the Internet, not only has every aspect of life gotten faster and more efficient, but it has changed the way people process information and perform tasks. In addition, while technology does have its benefits, the extensive use of the internet is affecting the way people think.