Thank you for visiting my blog. For more regular content on digital media, follow my Twitter @SpeedofLightOSU
I hope you have learned something that will be helpful. Technology should always make our lives easier, not harder, so don’t be afraid to try new things out.
If you have further questions or need individual help you can email me at light.42@osu.edu
This interactive model breaks up the presentation on digital clutter into 4 sections. The first is to show examples of digital clutter and determine where the user is coming from with a quiz. Next, the learner would explore how to eliminate and organize computer files. The third part explores how to declutter your email inbox. Finally, the presentation explores social media and phone decluttering.
The infographic shows an image of a person’s room and the devices they may have in their home. Using different parts of the image, I show how technology plays a role in a person’s life through 60 Seconds of Internet. This shows what can happen in just 60 Seconds on the Internet and how various devices or digital content consume our time and cause overload.
Multimedia Design Principles
Signaling Principle – Content in the image will be organized and connect to the different parts of the image to signal remembering the concepts.
Pre-Training – This infographic will help pre-train a user to explore other content later on.
Multimedia principle – Including words with pictures to illustrate a point, then only words.
Here is the project proposal for my class project. It can be downloaded here
Topic for Instruction – Digital Overload
Technology can be overwhelming to a digital immigrant. A digital immigrant is someone who grew up before common use of technology. Digital clutter slows down your computer and fills up your smartphone over time and leaves you with little space to store your files and personal data. Technology can either be distracting and weakens your productivity or it can make things smoother. Learners will learn how to streamline digital devices so that they work for us rather than against us.
Target Learners
Attributes:
The typical learner is a 40-50-year-old person. She has her bachelor’s degree and uses computers in her daily work. She works in the educational field. Sally had computers towards the end of her college career, but mainly used them in college computer labs.
Values:
Because they are in the educational field, they value lifelong learning. She wants to stay connected to her students through technology, but often feels as if she can’t keep caught up with all the latest and is overwhelmed.
Goals:
Wants to learn how to use technology to make her life easier. Learner feels as if there is so many digital tools that it is hard to keep up with. Between their phone, email, computer, and online resources they are overwhelmed.
Technical:
Learner bought into the latest iPhone, and contact with her kids and students. She realizes she does not know all its features and wishes that her local Verizon store provided more training. She has a laptop she brings home from work, but she does not use it much at home. Her kids got her an iPad for Christmas, so she explores new apps, social media, and websites on that.
Learning Objectives
Proposed Products
Infographic/illustration
The infographic would show an image of a person and/or house. Using different parts of the image, show how technology plays a role in a person’s life through statistics and examples.
Interactive learning object with video/audio
A narrated interactive video or animation that shows how a learner how to reduce digital clutter on their phone. Educator will share tips and tricks to reducing the clutter.
Interactive learning object with quizzing
An interactive object that shows how technology plays a role in our daily lives. Learners can take a quiz to see what type of digital user they are and what areas in their lives they could improve with technology. Similar to a Myers Briggs Test.
Justification
Usually, with digital immigrants, they do not know where to start with technology. These multimedia object will allow the learner to get a basic starting place and start exploring their current use and familiarity with technology. The infographic will show the learner areas of their life they did not consider technology could play a role. The interactive video will give practical examples and demonstrations about how to reduce digital overload. Finally, the interactive quiz will show the learner how they approach technology. This will help the user know what their weakness might be and further tools to strengthen it.
Multimedia Design Principles
Infographic/illustration
Signaling Principle – Content in the image will be organized and connect to the different parts of the image to signal remembering the concepts.
Pre-Training – This infographic will help pre-train a user to explore other content later on.
Interactive learning object with video/audio with quizing
Redundancy principle – Including graphics with audio minus the text so that the user is not overwhelmed.
Personalization and Voice Principle – By using audio in the author’s voice, it becomes more of a conversation style than formal.
Multimedia principle – Including words with pictures to illustrate a point, then only words.
Segmenting Principle – The quiz will allow the learner to explore at their own pace, while giving them a direction to approach technology by breaking it into four types.
Remember the days of Legos and other toys that did not plug in? For those of you who have teenagers or if you are related to one, In this section, I share the ways that I balance parenting with technology. If you plan on handing a tech device over to your kids, these posts will help you be one step ahead of your teens.
Remember when you first got a phone that could also get on the web. I remember thinking that this phone has more memory than my (30 MB!) computer had in college. While this was exciting at first, little did I realize as a parent how hard it is to keep up with technology in today’s fast pace world. Every time Facebook rearranges things or I get a new phone, I feel like I am starting back at square one. It seems like technology changes at the speed of light.
My First Smartphone
As parents, we are also trying to keep up with our kids and the technology that they use. My hope is that by visiting my site, I can share with you what I have learned from researching current technology. I also conduct field research with my own teens Justin (17) and Megan (14), as well as my teen leaders I work with in Hardin Couty 4- H Youth Development.
Don’t we wish technology was like Legos?
Just when you think you have mastered Facebook, there are all these other social media sites to join. I will help you navigate which ones are worth signing up for and for what purposes.
Keeping track of all the social media choices can be overwhelming
We know what clutter is around the house or office, but what does it look like in the digital world? Just like in real life, if we do not have a place for everything, digital clutter can creep up on us and make it difficult to get things done. Explore how to cut through all the digital clutter in our lives and get to the stuff that is meaningful and matters to us. SIMPLIFY
Even digitally our content can get overwhelming if it is not organized well.
So do you every wonder if you really need 1,500 Facebook “friends”? Are they really your friend or did you just meet them somewhere and add them? If you delete someone, then they might appear later on as a “suggested” friend and then you are busted. Instead, you can hide that annoying coworker from your Facebook feed and customize it so that only your close family and friends show up.
To do this, hover over the right corner of the post. An arrow is displayed. By clicking on this it gives you options to hide this post, or unfollow that person. This means they are still on your friend list and you can visit their page anytime you want. But you don’t have too. So sorry Rick, I really don’t care what you ate for dinner.
One of the key things I look for when I find an app is, “How will this save me money?” This helps me justify the cost of my data plan and monthly cell phone bill. Gas buddy is one of my go-to apps.
Image from https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=gbis.gbandroid
Gas buddy helps me plan out when I am going to get gas and where. It works via crowd sourcing, so everyone who has the app can update the prices while they are at the gas station. You can sort by price or distance. My wife was at an away swim meet with my daughter. She called her gas buddy (me) to find out where the gas was cheapest. (Despite having the app on her phone she calls me). I found it was $2.60 near her and $2.39 at a station on her way home. $0.21/gallon x 20 gallons = $4.20 saved in one setting!
It also will alert me when gas will be going up, so that I can go on my lunch hour to fill up. This app alone saves me over $500 a year and it is free to download on Android and Apple.
(speedometer image from shutterstock.com)
Eliminating the “red zone”
We see the number in red next to the app. It overwhelms us because we can’t keep up, or we consistently check the app to eliminate that number. Most of us do not have such pressing business that we need to know every time we get a message, new facebook post, or email. The good news is that we can turn that feature off. The messages still arrive, but we don’t feel the need to constantly click. Learn more below.
Apple products
Click on Settings > Notifications, and choose the specific app. In Apple (iOS) the red number is called a badge, so to get rid of it, you slide that button to the left. You can also disable any sounds for that app. You can eliminate all notifications by shutting off the “Allow Notifications Button”. For some apps like Gas Buddy, I still allow for notifications, because I want to know when gas is going up in my area, but I do not have to see the annoying red number beside the app.
Read more about notifications: http://www.tomsguide.com/us/turn-off-notifications-iphone,news-21195.html
Follow us: @tomsguide on Twitter
Android Products
Android makes it easier to get rid of. When a notification comes up you can long press on the notification and it will take you to that app’s notification. You can also adjust the notification by going to Settings > Apps > select the specific app. Toggle off or uncheck “notifications”.
Read more about specific Android phones: http://www.digitaltrends.com/android/how-to-deal-with-android-notification-spam/#ixzz4BYsoH8pL
Follow us: @digitaltrends on Twitter