In week 2 of EDLD 5318 Instructional Design, a major theme seemed to resonate louder than ever before and in my every move. That continuous, booming and ear piercing sound unfortunately was not coming from my new JayBird wireless headphones. It was the sound of cognitive overload taking over my life. Cognitive overload can be defined as a situation where a person is given too much information or too many tasks to learn simultaneously, resulting in the learner being unable to process this information. The task at hand is to design an online course using the Learning Management System of our choice. Seems easy right? Not so fast Kemosabe! Allow me to set the scene for the kind of week I just experienced. On Mondays, our very large cohort of talented educators and professionals meet to discuss the week ahead. While the meetings are highly informative and helpful, I sometimes find myself leaving the meeting with more questions than I had at the beginning. However, having questions is not always a bad thing. Remember what Clayton Christensen says about inquiry. He believes that questions are places in your mind where answers fit and if you haven't asked the question, the answer has no where to go. So with Monday evening class behind me, I set out to conquer the world or at least do the following: ask and answer discussion questions, reteach myself how to use my LMS of choice...Schoology, drive a school bus full of kids on a 350 mile round trip journey to tour the campus of Texas A&M, teaching my classes, coaching other teachers, grocery shopping, cleaning house, cooking supper, getting over walking pneumonia and a 24 hour stomach bug...it was only Wednesday. Needless to say, I was officially deep in the throes of cognitive overload. Or was I? A majority of these tasks, such as driving the school bus to College Station for field trips, grocery shopping, cooking and even sickness were tasks I had no problem mastering. Why? Because as taxing as they all were on my body, I had routinely completed them all before. If I am so familiar with accomplishing these tasks, what was still taxing my mind? A very good question to ask at this point and it did not take very long for the answer to fit like a glove in a place called Cognitive Capacity Land. When I took on the task of creating an online course in Schoology, I jumped into a place that was somewhat familiar. I knew a little bit about Schoology from being compliant with my school district's requirement that every teacher set up a Schoology account. Now, by creating an online course, I was faced with using Schoology in an entirely new and unfamiliar context. In retrospect, it was not so much that I was in full cognitive overload as much as I was operating at full cognitive capacity. Something had to give because someone was about to give up. Enter in Simon Sinek's talk on Millennials in the Workplace. This talk made me realize that in order to complete the task of creating an online course, I had to stop doing some of the other things that were weighing down my cognitive load. When stress presented itself in the form of designing an online course, I coped by turning to Facebook for hours at a time. After listening to Simon Sinek speak on the importance of quieting the noise in your life. I believe as Simon does that there is nothing wrong with social media. It is the capacity stealing imbalance of use that causes all the problems. With a new perspective on productivity killing social media, I decided to give myself back the gift of time by deactivating my Facebook and Twitter accounts Monday through Friday and Sunday. This leaves me only looking forward to...Social Media Saturdays! I thought I would miss it, but I can honestly say after day two I did not. I was able to quiet the noise in my head that contributed to filling my cognitive capacity. By getting rid of social media, I freed up space in my mind to actually think for myself, to wonder, to create and to innovate. I was able to free up so much space that once I got going, I completely designed and built my entire five week online course in the span of ten hours on Saturday. Yes, that's right, on Social Media Saturday, I was taking advantage of my new found creative flow and accomplished 100% of an assignment that only called for 50% completion by the end of this week. I did not even log onto Facebook until 10:00pm that evening and never even thought about checking Twitter. As I wrap up one of my most introspective weeks in the Digital Learning and Leading program, I can say with confidence that the process is in full effect and I am loving it! Simon Sinek - Millennials in the Workplace. (2016, December 28). Retrieved February 03, 2017, from https://youtu.be/5MC2X-LRbkE
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AuthorMadeline Brandi Collins is a Louisiana girl through and through. Raised by her beloved Maw Maw and namesake, she moved to Texas 13 years ago to pursue a career in education which proved to be one of the best decisions EVER!
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