48 Hour Media Diary

Saturday, September 5, 2015

Sunday, September 6, 2015

The mediums that I did not use were the traditional printed media. Everything that I did over these two days revolved around my iPhone, iPad, or laptop – a connected device. I don’t very often look at the news (maybe I should), I did spend a lot of time looking at and thinking about education. I didn’t document all of it because it happens all of the time – but I easily checked my phone couple of times each hour to see what had been posted on twitter under #oklaed and #gamification. I also know that when I have a few minutes alone with myself on the weekend, I turn on a game console and veg out with no distractions – this is my two hours to just play, and I do it while my kids spend “quite time” in their rooms. Another thing that I did not log was that there was music on in the house almost non-stop. Between what I was listening to and what my kids were playing, there was continual musical noise coming from all corners.

I chose to use my phone and laptop more than traditional print media because I like to interact with like minded educators (or those that give me things to consider). Newsprint and magazines do not give me the opportunity to do that. I have learned to use my voice over the past three years and the best place for me to do that is through blogging and micro-blogging. These forms of media give me the chance to share and have dialogue with others. I can be questioned and answer why I feel like I do. If you can present a strong enough argument for your case, I can change my mind. The social media aspect of this has been great for me – I wish I had found it sooner in my career.

I did spend a lot of time on a particular blog post (Thoughts While Mowing) – I had to get the thoughts running through my head from the TED Radio Hour and Freakonomics out into cyberspace. The TED show was all about education and different points of view on how learning happens. It was fascinating. This was followed by Freakonomics. The person being interviewed was the first female president of Harvard, Drew Gilpin Faust. She was incredibly interesting and made some very thought provoking statements. These two podcasts led to a first post on my blog, in what will probably become a series: Thoughts While Mowing.

Looking back over the weekend, I wonder how I ever survived without some kind of connected device. I was constantly going to the internet to read or look up something. I even used the internet for my music! The only time that I did not directly use the internet was when gaming on a console – but the machine still went out to the internet to pull information to load into the home log in screen. I chose not to use it. Looking at this experience, the thing that I could not live without is my connectivity. I went for the internet to many times over the weekend! I can live without the newspaper or magazines or other traditional printed items. I have done so for quite a long time. But I am afraid that if you were too take away my internet connected device, I may curl up in a fetal position and openly weep.