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Friday, August 3, 2012

Connected and Unconnected

This summer, admittedly, I am more "connected" than ever before.  I've reflected more (online), written more (online), and shared more (online) than EVER before.  At times it is downright scary and at other times, it is downright addicting!  It is also VERY time consuming and I will have to significantly cutback on my blog reading, Twitter reading, online sharing, personal writing, professional sharing, as well as my Words With Friends and Scrabble playing if I am going to have time to teach kids and teachers! 

This article, retrieved from a Twitter link, made me stop and think about my own connectedness and about the ever increasing number of ways we try to stay "connected" to a circle of personal as well as professional "friends" :
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/national-survey-reveals-consumers-are-overwhelmed-by-social-media-2012-08-01  I'm not sure that the service they are hawking is THE solution to a growing trend. However, at home and at school, we need to have ways we can connect on multiple media efficiently. 

We also need to have times when we are UNCONNECTED from technology in order to CONNECT with those we love.  Perhaps we could start a movement to encourage shutting off phones during meals at home and at restaurants unless people are awaiting very important calls / messages (doctors on call). Perhaps we could encourage everyone to talk to kids (rather than to the phones) when they are grocery shopping?  Perhaps we could encourage everyone to turn off their phones during read aloud time? 

2 comments:

KT @ OneOrganicMama said...

Have you seen this? It is traveling around the mommy world... Loading on the guilt :)

http://www.handsfreemama.com/2012/05/07/how-to-miss-a-childhood/

drferreriblogspot.com said...

WOW - I am not usually on the "mommy world" blog list these days; however, this post is pretty much where I was headed in a far more direct way. Stay tuned for one of my next posts which is an "ethnographic study" of a 10 minutes at a grocery store.