I was doing OK with Instagram, until I created a second page. Sorrow and woe ensued. There was some nonsense about taking a picture in one account, and sending it to another account, and where to put it, and if it came from a message.
I tried looking for directions, but nothing seemed help. Not even my next-door neighbor who told me she knew Instagram. (More sorry and woe; now she is confused, too.)
The issue, I believe, is that I didn't know enough to define the problem, and so was thrashing around, randomly pressing and clicking and eventually making SOMETHING happen... Sometimes even the right thing, but... because it came from random thrashing, I couldn't remember what I had done.
I was so distraught about what to do with the image that I just didn't take the </explicative> shot at all.
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| Linda Blair Head Spinning Dummy, from the Exorcist |
Case in point: A crucial set of points goes into explicitly making sure that your learner always knows exactly where to go and what to do.
"Surely," one might say, "all this is not necessary. They are (fill in the blank) students; they can figure it out."
You know what? Sometimes, for one reason or another, they can't. Perhaps its an off day. Or the kid is sick and the learner is up too late. Or the learner may have any number of neuroatypical glitches that require support. (Like adult ADHD, like me! 👩)
More importantly, learners shouldn't have to expend energy figuring out where to go. An individual's capacity for taking in information at a single point in time has limitations. Would you prefer that a student get what might seem like an overly detailed course map and/or set of instructions, or to be spending energy wandering around lost in an online course.
So, I don't love Instagram quite yet, but my experience has left me happier to expend the energy in making sure learners don't have to wander in an online wilderness.
Gotta love the unintended consequences of social media.
