Category Archives: Reflection

Slip off the Digital Leash

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Do you drive your technology or does your technology drive you?

Do you feel a little lost when you forget your cell phone at home or in the car? Could you navigate through a city if all you had to depend on was a map (and speaking to locals)? I’m the first to admit that I have a close relationship with my electronic devices. There is usually one hour each day when I don’t have my cell phone within easy reach. What are the effects of this type of attachment? Well one of the effects is a propensity to multitask, a habit that’s difficult, if not impossible, to turn off. Another effect is the impact of being leashed, even if it’s self-imposed rather than forced upon you..

A Challenge For Greater Balance – 5 Things

  • Don’t check e-mail within one hour of heading to bed. Do something else during that time (preferably something that does not use electronics).
  • Turn your phone on silent, not vibrate, once in a while and give your full attention to the moment.
  • Slow down. Don’t overwhelm people with multiple modes of communication about the same topic. Choose the method based on urgency. If it’s not urgent, relax and wait for a response.
  • Every once in a while (say once a day), when you’re tempted to send an email to someone nearby, get up to find them for a conversation instead.
  • Don’t get swept in the flow. It’s okay to say No. This means that you don’t have to immediately respond to e-mail, or even pick up a phone call. You get to CHOOSE. Just because people can reach out to you doesn’t mean that you have to let them interrupt you.

Some ideas from the web

Slip off the Digital Leash

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Do you drive your technology or does your technology drive you?

Do you feel a little lost when you forget your cell phone at home or in the car? Could you navigate through a city if all you had to depend on was a map (and speaking to locals)? I’m the first to admit that I have a close relationship with my electronic devices. There is usually one hour each day when I don’t have my cell phone within easy reach. What are the effects of this type of attachment? Well one of the effects is a propensity to multitask, a habit that’s difficult, if not impossible, to turn off. Another effect is the impact of being leashed, even if it’s self-imposed rather than forced upon you..

A Challenge For Greater Balance – 5 Things

  • Don’t check e-mail within one hour of heading to bed. Do something else during that time (preferably something that does not use the Internet).
  • Turn your phone on silent, not vibrate, once in a while and give your full attention to the moment.
  • Slow down. Don’t overwhelm people with multiple modes of communication about the same topic. Choose the method based on urgency. If it’s not urgent, relax and wait for a response.
  • Every once in a while (say once a day), when you’re tempted to send an email to someone nearby, get up to find them for a conversation instead.
  • Don’t get swept in the flow. It’s okay to say No. This means that you don’t have to immediately respond to e-mail, or even pick up a phone call. You get to CHOOSE. Just because people can reach out to you doesn’t mean that you have to let them interrupt you.

Some ideas from the web

Information at Your Fingertips

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I found it interesting, in light of the graphs by http://website-monitoring.com, to consider the habits of people, and our use of the extraordinary access that we have to technology. Does it surprise you that Facebook was the most searched for term in Google Search during March, 2013 and Google is the 2nd most searched for term? Would you have guessed that the top 25 sites would contain sites of various country domains, including Japan? Examine the infographic below. What conclusions do you draw from it about society, culture, economics?

en_03_2013_gif

I’ve watched my students Google Gmail, Youtube and Facebook and wondered, “Why don’t they just put in in the address bar with .com?” I’ve actually tried to ask some of them that and they say it’s easier their way. They perceive some advantage to searching for the term and clicking on the link rather than just typing in 3 more characters in the address bar; this baffles me. Is this one of the things that distinguishes them (digital natives) from me (digital immigrant).

Simplicity and Purity

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sfumature by frauBlucher on Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

I recently watched Jiro Dreams of Sushi, a Japanese documentary about 85 year old Jiro. Jiro is a master sushi chef with an exclusive restaurant in Tokyo. He encapsulates the concepts of dedication, purpose and mastery. The most memorable phrase that he says in the documentary (as captioned into English) is “ultimate simplicity leads to purity”. This is a concept that came up again as I listed to The Wisdom of Tenderness last week.

I’ve been wondering about the value of purity and the challenge of simplicity. When I look up the word pure in the dictionary, it is related to the concept of freedom from blemish or influence. In this stimulating world of multimodal communication and opportunities for excitement both virtually and physically, what value do we place in purity. Do we have appreciation for simplicity?

I don’t have the answer but I invite you to think of what parts of your life you’d like to keep pure, undiluted, free. I propose that it’s okay to choose simplicity because it is a component of being balanced. It is okay to experience the moment without fighting to capture it. Extending the concept, purity means aligning who you are online and off. My favorite definition of pure from the Merriam Webster dictionary is “being thus and no other”.  With the opportunity for anonymity, exploration of identity, and detachment presented by the virtual world, it is easy to forget that you are online is part of who you are.

As you navigate the online world, I invite you to be thus and no other.

My Totally Real Online World

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Web 2.0 Digitage by ocean.flynn on flickr

What’s your real life?

I was recently speaking with my grade 6 students about online versus “real life” bullying and had difficulty picking the “right” words to talk about the issue. I shared with students that my online life feels is real to me. When I have a conversation with family using Skype, write a blog post about my travels, share my experiences on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, etc., it’s a real experience, and I’m living my real life.

Two weekends ago, I was in Tokyo for a Google summit. During his keynote, Jim Sill said that we used to be living in a material world and we’re now living in a youtube, Instagram, etc. world. We could say that we’re living in an information world; it’s not such a stretch to say that we live largely in a digital world. One of my students suggested that a person who is cyberbullied can simply close all his/her online accounts. This lead to a good classroom discussion about whether or not a person can live completely removed from the digital world, and whether participation in the digital world is a “right”. I shared that I would feel very isolated here in Japan if I couldn’t use social media and other technology tools to keep in frequent contact with family and friends all over the world.

I read an article browsing through Pulse this morning that talked about how Facebook has healing power and can help people restore their self-esteem. On the flip side, there are people whose lives are adversely affected by online attacks. The opposite of real is imaginary, and while I can take on imaginary personas online, I often use the digital world as an extension of my physical world. If we remove the distance between the digital world and the real world and acknowledge the relationship that exists between them, we realize that kindness, caring, responsibility, love and all those other attributes of a meaningful life matter whether we are online or in the physical world.

Happy New Year

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2012 was a good year. I completed my masters and found a new job in a new country (starting August 2013). Those were the two most momentous events but I have lots of other good memories. 2013 will be a year of (more) change. I look forward to it.

I hope that your 2013 is filled with love and happiness. I hope that many years from now, you will look back at it with gladness in your heart. Here’s to living a good life, which creates fond memories!

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Visit to the tunnel of lights, Nabana no sato, January 4, 2013

Friday Find – How art, technology and design inform creative leaders

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This video made me reflect on how even within change, many things remain the same. Perhaps we can build the future from the past and the current, carrying forward what is “good”.

What does this mean for education? Old or tradition is not the enemy. We need change when what we’re doing isn’t meeting the needs of learners, of society. And even when we change or transform teaching, there is still space for using old methods if they are effective.

Friday Find – September 21, 2012

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Do you believe that fiction can change/shape reality? For me, fiction often extends reality. It’s interesting to consider how it can impact reality.

Tech Tidbit – May 18

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Cell Phones – Less about Talking

It will probably be no news to you that most teens are high volume users of text messaging. In general, teens in the US prefer to text over speaking on the phone. Speaking on the phone seems to be more common between teens and their parents than between friends. In terms of gender differences, girls seem to text more frequently than boys.

Some parents monitor their child’s cell phone use, checking for stored content as well as calls made and received. This behavior is most common (in the USA) amongst parents of girls who are 12 – 13 years old. There is a correlation between parents checking the cell phones of kids and kids reporting that they think twice before sending a text message or before sending sexually suggestive or nude images (known as sexting). Sexting is more common amongst older teens than younger teens.

(Source: Teens and Mobile Phones, Pew Internet)

Nowadays, many cellphones are more than phones, with capabilities for taking photos, recording videos, surfing the web, playing music, accessing social networks, etc. It is important that parents and schools speak with children about appropriate uses of the various capabilities that come with a cell phone. Most schools have an acceptable use policy, an electronic policy and other guidelines to help students navigate the electronic and online worlds. It is important that parents discuss these expectations, as well as family expectations for technology use. Important guidelines include times and locations when children may use technology, the types of technology that they may use, procedures that they should follow before creating online accounts, and guidelines for making responsible and safe choices online. It is up to us adults to help children make safe use of the Internet and electronic technology that they have access to. Discuss rules and expectations with your child to help him/her stay safe online.

I’d be interested in hearing about your rules at home. Please post a comment below.

Citation:

Lenhart, A., Ling, R., Campbell, S., Purcell, K. (2010). Teens and Mobile Phones: Text messaging explodes as teens embrace it as the centerpiece of their communication strategies with friends.

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I think that Google Knowledge Graph is fascinating because of the connections that it can help users make. The more perspectives, the more connections, the richer the resultant learning. Google Knowledge Graph is gradually being rolled out to users.


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When Learning Goes Social

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A few months ago, a friend of mine posted on Facebook that he was going to close his account. I promptly messaged him to ask why, as this is the only way that I keep in touch with him. He responded that it is a complete waste of time and that he spends too much time on Facebook when he could be doing other more worthwhile things. I get his point. I even think that there are good reasons to not be on Facebook. However, I use Facebook and post on it regularly although I don’t spend much time on the actual site or in the app. My twitter account posts to Facebook, and my blogs post to Facebook, so I appear more active “on” Facebook than I actually am. I learn things on Facebook all the time. Sure, I comment on pictures that my friends post and engage in discussions about lifestyle or other mundane topics. However, I’m also part of a personal computer club group, I follow a workout blog, I discuss the use of social media in schools with other colleagues, I read news stories of interests that my friends share in their feeds, I get recipe suggestions from friends, etc.

Social isn’t the antithesis of learning. In fact, learning is a very social activity. When I post an observation, an article, a video, etc. on Facebook, I’m hoping for dialogue, for conversation, for co-creation of understanding with my “friends”. The process of engagement, having friends support me and challenge me strengthens my own understanding of situations and concepts. I propose a paradigm shift, a mental shift where social networks and social media become part of learning, integrated into learning. They’re not illicit activities that people only do to waste time. Sure, one can waste a lot of time online but what if we removed the artificial disconnect between social and learning? What if we start creating environments and opportunities for social to be learning. I think that that would be a step in the right direction rather than continuing to support the current tensions between social media/networks and learning.