Blog post — September 20, 2021
Too much information —
While it is so much easier to stay completely informed in today’s digital world, everyone can become overwhelmed with too much information or “information overload.” It’s as if our brains go into error mode because we can’t contain or remember everything we hear or read. From a physiological standpoint, we should not even try to hold onto all those details.
“The deluge of information in modern times by the media and other information sources has led to daily “bombing” of the average human brain… [A] study, conducted by researchers at the University of California-San Diego, [shows] that people are, every day, inundated with the equivalent amount of 34 Gb (gigabytes) of information, a sufficient quantity to overload a laptop within a week.” Harris Andrea, Tech 21st Century
However, there are limits on what we can possibly hope to retain. Even though we have a huge capacity for storing memories, we have limits on our attention. We naturally prioritize the important information from useless details and forget a lot of everything in between. With our limited attention, we must become smart consumers of information.
“We can only pay attention to a small number of things at once, and paying attention is usually necessary to create new memories. Because we have only so many waking hours (and a good night’s sleep is necessary to create lasting memories), this limits how many new memories we can form.” Russell Poldrack, Brainfacts.org
Parents at Amelia Academy have immediate access to their children’s grades and assignments as well as school events through Gradelink. This beneficial tool can help students and parents keep track of progress throughout the year. However, it can also become one more example of a time-consuming search for the most-useful information. To help avoid this pitfall, Gradelink has shared a short tutorial for parents to find out more about this great resource. We hope it proves useful.