Category Archives: technology

Returning to the World

blogging, poetry, technology,

I have been mostly away from the networked world since late March, visiting with family, then completely disconnecting for a few days last week at Fairy Stone State Park in Stuart, Virginia. I did not make any particular commitment to this disconnect but without having to monitor work or students, I found it came naturally when I was with my family in Pennsylvania, preferring to be with them in the moment without the distraction of social media and news feeds.

Once we got to Fairy Stone, it was nature itself that imposed the disconnect. Internet at the park was almost nonexistent: they suggested one particular spot where you might be able to get to access but I did not feel compelled to seek it out. Meanwhile, my phone just displayed SOS instead of bars. I’m not sure if that’s because I could still get emergency access or because the phone was in crisis mode without it and wanted to let me know.

My husband and I both found the quiet liberating and restful. We rocked on the porch of our log cabin, reading, chatting and meditating on the spectacular scenery. We explored the area and I will have some stories to tell about those explorations in later posts. Here are two pictures of the cabin (one of eight in the park that were built by CCC workers in the 1930s) and the view from our porch.

We returned home to lots of gardening so my technological disconnect continued until this past Monday when, after nearly three weeks, I opened the lid of my laptop and reconnected to the larger world, digging into a database project and meeting online with a colleague. My phone and iPad had been sufficient for use during the travels, mostly using them for reading and picture taking and game play. (I do like a bit of Wordle.)

I know my life is very different from that of others now that I am mostly retired and that makes disconnecting much easier. But, I can highly recommend trying find at least a little respite from the constant connectivity. It helped me focus my intentions upon my return related to how I wanted to spend my time and treasure in the next few months. I even generated a few blog post ideas.

During our explorations of Patrick County, we might have been living in a pre-Internet era: at some points, I was navigating using a paper map! (Yes, they still make them.) When I picked one up at the Brunswick County Visitor Center, it was from a feeling of nostalgia. But when I couldn’t get to Google Maps on my phone at some points, the map became a necessary part of our travel toolkit. It is now tucked in the passenger side pocket of the Kia, ready for our next escape.

One of my last blog posts before disconnecting was about World Poetry Day. We are now well into National Poetry Month and I want to go back to Wendell Berry as his poem “The Peace of Wild Things” was very much with me and, as the world seems to spin out of control more chaotically every day, the words continue to echo in my mind: “When despair for the world grows in me…I come into the peace of wild things.”

Here is Berry reading the poem:

Tech Tuesday A Day Late

technology

I had this idea for different daily themes that would help me blog regularly. So, cliché as it might be, I was planning on “Tech Tuesday.” So, I logged in, brought up a new post ready to right about how much fun I have been having with my new digital planner, only to realize it’s Wednesday. A friend said you know you are really retired when you don’t know what day it is, and it doesn’t matter.

Anyway, I am doing “Tech Tuesday” a day late and, as I mentioned above, celebrating my new digital planner. Mine is from Only Planners, and it was an impulse buy related to a general desire to streamline my analog life using digital tools, with a focus on the iPad as my main device.

I have been using it since the beginning of March, experimenting with the various tools and templates to plan and track my life. I still use Google Calendar and other web-based tools for shared events and reminders, but the digital planner has mostly replaced my analog calendar and tracker. I started out using the text tool but have come to rely more on the Apple Pencil. My lettering has gotten better, and it feels more analogy to sit down with a pencil in hand. For now, I have stuck with their built in templates and particularly like being able to have multiple versions of the monthly calendar to track different parts of my life.

I might suggest that, if you are considering moving in this direction, do some research as now that I have purchased the planner, I am getting lots of ads for others.

What I haven’t given up are my morning pages: three pages of long hand writing. I tried it with one of the digital notebooks but didn’t like the “feel” of the pen and paper. I have seen ads for screen protectors that claim to mimic the feel of paper. I suppose I will need to figure this out as the downsizing continues. And then there’s the question of what to do with the 22 years of spiral bound notebooks I have. But I think that’s another blog post.

If A Tree Falls in the Forest

technology, thinking out loud

Today’s existential question: If you do yoga without recording it via your fitness device, did you even *do* yoga?

I have taken to wearing my watch to bed in order to track sleep patterns. But, that means it doesn’t get charged overnight the way it always had so at some point during the day, I am surprised to discover it is down to 10%. That happened this morning just as I got started with my morning yoga. I was tracking the workout and found myself thinking I would have to charge the watch before continuing to make sure I got credit.

Hmm…got credit from whom? The inanimate object on my wrist? Apple headquarters? Steve Jobs? AARP to whom I granted access to my health data? God?

I faced down my somewhat obsessive need to track everything, put the watch on its charger and continued with yoga. But, don’t give me too much credit for fortitude: I knew I would have several opportunities to complete other workouts during the day that would get tracked. At some point, I may need to dive further into this obsession, but as I credit the watch with supporting my weight loss and generally good health I don’t worry too much.

Nostalgia for Old School Aerobics

learning, technology, Video, YouTube,
Fitness Guru Leslie Sansone

I was coming of age in the late great 80s just as the aerobics movement, led by Jane Fonda, was getting started. I may still have a vinyl copy of her first workout album in the days before everyone owned a VHS player. Live classes were everywhere. My mother and I took a class at the nearby community center. The cable access channel hosted a weekly workout led by a local gym instructor. I could set the VHS to record it so I could do it on my own time…an early version of streaming, I suppose.

I haven’t done these kinds of workouts for a long time, preferring my treadmill, Wii and working and walking outside. But, with the demise of my Wii and my need for a bit of excitement beyond the treadmill, I went exploring online and discovered fitness guru Leslie Sansone. She was a contemporary of Jane Fonda, and her signature exercise was simple: WALK. There are a few different steps, but mostly the goal is to keep moving.

I explored her YouTube channel to start with and then downloaded the app and paid the subscription. Leslie is my age, and her upbeat approach was immediately fun and nostalgic. I found myself wishing I had a unitard and leg warmers! One of Leslie’s claim to fame is that she was the first live on-air guest on QVC. I got to know her colleagues and enjoy the wide variety of walking workouts. As COVID moved in, they began streaming live workouts from their studio in Pittsburgh.* They have also added some strength training workouts in the app.

There are plenty of videos featuring Leslie in the app, including archives of some of her original workouts. But, according to Wikipedia, she hasn’t been featured in any videos since 2020, and there is some mystery around where she might be and her current involvement with WALK. There is some speculation on Reddit but otherwise no one seems to know. Hmm…sounds like podcast fodder to me!

*Part of my attraction to Sansone was her ties to Pennsylvania and Pittsburgh.

Once a Teacher

adult learning, teaching, technology, ,
A poster called Choose Your Own Adventure in Technology Land with four items: Making and Makerspaces, Hour of Code, Augmented, Virtual and Virtual Worlds, and Edutainment.
Choose Your Own Adventure in Technology Land poster

My twitter feed is filled with pictures of my K-12 teaching friends as they begin the year, eager to connect with their students. I am excited for them and, even after decades of being out of the middle school classroom, I always have a pang of regret that I took a different path in 2001.

That unconventional path has provided me with a variety of opportunities to work with educators across the country. But, I don’t necessarily think of that as teaching. I was engaging in professional development, which to my mind has a different quality than teaching. I have continued to teach, however, working with students in a formal setting where we have time to develop relationships, explore curriculum and create knowledge together.

This fall, I am teaching two courses, one for Old Dominion University and one for University of Richmond. Both are graduate courses related to instructional technology for a mostly K-12 educators. The two courses represent the ends of the spectrum in terms of how teaching and learning is done in higher education.

The Old Dominion course is designed for career switchers, people with degrees in other fields who wish to become teachers. It is always a wonderfully diverse mix of individuals as they come, in some cases, from all over the world. The course is completely online and asynchronous. But, we still create community using tools like Flip and Padlet to share and explore. I don’t have a lot of leeway with the content as the course is taught by multiple professors, but I am able to bring my own personality and practices to teaching online. But, it is a still a very different relationship than my face to face course.

At University of Richmond, I have taught School Technology each fall to students in the graduate education program for many years and it is most definitely MY course. Pre-COVID it was fully face to face with perhaps one virtual meeting to give them a flavor for learning online. I revisit the content and curriculum each year as well as the way I deliver the course. We have been almost completely online for the past years. This year, I am experimenting with a hybrid format that allows for us to connect as a whole group and then give students time for their own exploration and work.

Basically, I have front loaded the content into September. We work together on campus until fall break. Last year, I began using a textbook: the small but impactful volume, Closing the Gap: Digital Equity Strategies for the K-12 Classroom. I am continuing with that this year as the authors cover the big picture with the lens of equity that helps connect various topics in a useful way. They also provide a framework for students to consider their own problems of practice that lead to their final, individual projects, which they work on in November.

In between, October is given over to the students to explore on their own. I created a Choose Your Own Adventure activity that focuses on four different areas of ed tech that I don’t have time to cover in any depth. They learn a little about each one and then choose one to explore in more depth, with the goal considering how they might roll it out in their schools. A secondary objective is for them to think about how they use technology to research, reflect and report. What tools do they for curation? Collaboration? Communication?

We meet tonight for the first time and I am a little nervous, as always.