Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Everywhere, somewhere or nowhere?


To be everywhere is to be nowhere - Seneca.

This Christmas holiday I’ve been in the UK with my family.  We’ve been staying with my mother who doesn’t have a computer or internet connection, and therefore have been unplugged for most of the time.  Usually during these 3 weeks I would have read hundreds of blog posts, tweets and online articles, I would have been in contact with dozens of friends, colleagues and other educators everywhere.   Instead I brought one magazine with me (The October edition of Educational Leadership about coaching) and downloaded one book, for our upcoming reading group, onto Kindle Cloud Reader on the iPad (The Shallows by Nicholas Carr) which I could read offline.  I’ve therefore had a lot of opportunity to reflect both on coaching and on what the internet is doing to our minds as I’ve spent the time reading about just these two things. 

I have really appreciated this time where we have all been unplugged and where we have spent our evenings playing games and talking to each other.  It made me appreciate how seldom we do this and just how valuable it is for us as a family.  Often in the evenings at home we are all online on our individual computers and oblivious to what is going on around us – what Nicholas Carr refers to as “a mind consumed with a medium”.  Our minds are everywhere – or nowhere – but they are certainly not together!  It made me realize that I really need to work more on balance in 2012 and that I need to make sure that my family and I spend more time together somewhere without a lot of external distractions.

However we’re back to being connected again and the next few blog posts will be about my thoughts based on what I’ve read over the holidays.

Photo Credit:  Plug Face by Jake Mates AttributionNoncommercialShare Alike 

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