Online Resources for Information Processing Theory

I found two interesting pages on the topic of information processing theory. 

The first, The Information Processing Approach to Cognition, provides an overview of the theory as well as its general principles.  The best part of this particular page is the section at the bottom called Using the Information Processing Approach in the Classroom.  In this section, there's a two column table

• the left-hand column lists nine common teaching principles
• the right-hand column lists examples of how to apply each principle with an information processing lens

This site could be valuable to both teachers and instructional designers.  The definitions are concise and easy to understand and, for some, would serve a handy quick reference guide.  The table that provides examples on how to apply information processing theory not only compliments the rest of the page, but also provides educators with the essential ideas on how design, develop, and deliver instruction from a congitive perspective. 

The second site I found is an article by George A. Miller published in The Psychological Review in 1956.  The article, The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information, is a very influential paper in the field of psychology.  

In his conclusion, Miller states the following:

"... the span of absolute judgment and the span of immediate memory impose severe limitations on the amount of information that we are able to receive, process, and remember. By organizing the stimulus input simultaneously into several dimensions and successively into a sequence or chunks, we manage to break (or at least stretch) this informational bottleneck."

 As someone invovled in the practice of instructional design, I find this to be an englightening statement.  The article as a whole is insightful and interesting, but when I arrive to my office Monday morning, the first thing I'm going to do is print a copy of the aforementioned statement and tape it on my monitor to ensure that it's the first thing I see every day when I sit down at my desk every morning.