My Digital Free Day

It was Friday night when I saw the tweet: Join the Digital Free Day tomorrow.  I decided to take up the challenge.  How hard could this be? No, seriously. I wanted an answer. How hard would it be to have no internet access for a whole day? Here's my answer:

Product of my Digital Free Day

7am – Early rise. What’s the weather going to be today? Can’t look it up and don’t want to listen the radio so I’ll have to take a guess and just change my clothes if they aren’t right. Hm-m-m. Right off things don’t seem to be under my control as they “usually” are.

What to read with my coffee instead of email and tweets? Nothing. I take the coffee outside and listen to the (real) birds.

Planning my day: Can’t work on the church newsletter that I edit. All the pieces are online.  I could do some writing for my blog I’ve been meaning to do, except the quotes that are integral to the article are online.

Did Indiana U win the game last night? Don’t know. Can’t find out.

8am - Hungry for breakfast now and the phantom thought in the back of my mind is “I can’t eat. I’m on a diet.” Strange. I CAN eat. I’m not on a nutritional diet, only a digital one but the feeling of being denied something lingers. 

There’s some personal research I’ve been meaning to do on a health issue… have to wait.

9am-  I start a written list of things I am going to send or tell people when my Digital Free day is up.

Taking the compost out I notice my spring flowers blooming and think about getting my Ipad and taking a picture to share with family. Nope. Can’t. I could use my digital camera (can I use a digital camera on a digital free day?) but that would involve finding a cable and downloading the picture (tomorrow).

Noon: I need to create some menus for next week, but I can’t go online to check for recipes. Pull out the old recipe box.

Are the Sox on TV today? Don’t know and I don’t have a printed schedule yet.

I need to pay some bills. Woops. Can’t. Well, I could write a check and find a stamp, but I think I’ll just wait till tomorrow and do it in 30 seconds.

I need to check my work schedule online and update the family wall calendar.  The paper – digital chasm yawns.

We are thinking about buying a new kayak rack for the car. OMG! Shopping. I never do store to store shopping. I find exactly what I want online and either order it online or find a local store that carries it.

3pm -Time for a break. How about a round of scrabble with friends and family? Not available. Luckily my current book is paper so I can read.

I need to plan a trip to Indianapolis in July but avoid the weekend of a big race there. Where would I find what that date is without the internet? And I can’t make flight reservations without the internet anyway. 

So what can I do?

• Projects using my own hands (I actually follow through on an idea I had to make an earring holder from a cookie rack-pictured above)
• Yard work, gardening
• Walks, hikes, outdoor activities

This list makes me think that a smart phone is NOT a way for me to go.

8pm – My husband downloads a new app for his Ipad and wants some advice. I tell him I can help him tomorrow and realize that troubleshooting computers is one of the ways we connect.

So what did I learn from this short experiment? 

• Many of the quick reference things that  I use the internet for I could get other ways, if I stocked reference materials in the house the way I used to—schedules, magazines with recipes, newspapers with weather etc. But those ways often involve more “work”, more looking, more finding and more calling.

• I definitely feel less connected with my extended family when I can’t send them an email at the drop of a hat.
  
• My real world is so integrated with the digital that it’s hard to know where one stops and the other begins.  I hardly know when I think of something I want to do whether it will lead to the internet or not.
  
• The good news: My secret fear that I waste hours surfing the net is unrealized. I do turn to the internet for lots of functions, but I don’t just surf.   That said, I make a note to myself:  Stay conscious of exactly what job I am doing and  when done, stop. Close the lid.

This was an experiment worth doing.  Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to check my email.

Things You Shouldn’t Do with an IPad

There are many things you can do with an ipad. There are also many things that you shouldn’t do with an Ipad. 

An IPad is not a full service computer. Trying to make it one will be a frustrating, labor intensive waste of time. It will probably also make it an immobile mobile device.
Here’s a few things you should not do with your IPad.

• Don’t try to fully format a document up to and including footnotes. (Even if you have an app that will do that, getting it out of the IPad will probably destroy part of the formatting.)

• Don’t try to do track changes in a word document. (If you need this much of the functionality of Word, use a laptop or desktop computer.)
  
  
• Don’t lug a keyboard twice the size and weight of the Ipad unless you know you will be
  a) typing a lotb) in a space where you’ll have a table to set up on. (It’s supposed to be mobile device.)

• Don’t expect to find one app that will handle all your writing requirements - ability to take both stylus and typing input, lots of formatting ability, multiple options for importing and exporting documents. Different apps excel at different parts of the writing process. No app does it all.
  
  
• Don’t try to use Numbers to create Excel spreadsheets. Don’t go from one spreadsheet to another. Pick one and stay with it.

The right tool for the right job, I always say. An IPad is not a computer.

Previous rant on the same topic is here.

Motel Cabins

Motel Cabins, a gallery on Flickr.

It was while working for the Census a number of years ago that I began to realize that many of the old motor courts and roadside cabins were in fact residences. Homes. That people actually lived in these re-purposed dwellings. 

I was trying to deliver census forms to places that might be used as living quarters, mostly to people who did not particularly want to be found. I discovered living in my midst were people in this substandard housing.

Were they glad to have this roof over their head or were they ashamed?

I feel profoundly conflicted about these places. Part of me says, “No one should have to live in these places.” But part of me knows that if I were penniless, I’d prefer to live in this kind of place than in a city tenement.

The gallery of images above was chosen from Flickr to illustrate this type of living situation, though I have no information about whether these units have been re-purposed for full time living. Thank you to all the Flickr photographers that allowed me to include their images here.

Experiencing Art and Architecture Close Up

In what has become an ongoing series with me, here is another amazing animation of a building or art work, Frank Lloyd Wright's house Fallingwater.

Fallingwater from Cristóbal Vila on Vimeo.

Thanks again to that amazing blog Open Culture.
http://www.openculture.com/2012/01/fallingwater-one-of-frank-lloyd-wrights-finest-creations-animated.html

You may also be interested in:
Seeing Art Better
and
More Art to Experience

We Are All Connected -- Scientists' Rap

The cosmos is also within us. We are made of star stuff.

MORE Art to Experience

The great art gallery available on the web just keeps growing. While the web imposes some restrictions, it also allows additional features not available to the in-person viewer.

The University of Pittsburgh has published a digital version of its complete elephant portfolio of Audubon's Birds of America.

Prothonotary Warbler

The web version allows you to zoom in so close you cans see brush strokes. You can view metadata like the name of the engraver, and the size of the engraved plate, lest you forget that the birds were all drawn life-size.
You can even order reproductions and note cards.

To see Picasso's Guernica in an entirely new way, watch the YouTube animation Guernica 3D.

You are actually moving through the painting.

Guernica 3D

For more examples of unique ways to view art and architecture see a previous blog entry Seeing Art Better.

The Case for Learning Something Entirely Different

Image by Matthew Ragan

I bumped into a listing of 9 new tools for creating music online recently. I am no musician and don’t teach or create music, but the tools tempted me. What fun it would be to try out some of those tools and see what I could create.  

Why don’t we do more exploring into areas that we don’t know?

As a technology facilitator to faculty I have noticed that most people, teachers and student, (and I include myself here) want to go only where they have gone before, perfect something rather than try something entirely new.  When was the last time you tried something entirely new?

I can hear the arguments in my own head

•        Well, it wouldn’t be any good.
•        It wouldn’t be professional looking
•       It would be too difficult
•      All I would learn is that I can’t do it

But we would be missing something. We would be missing the adventure and the joy of figuring out a puzzle with only our wits, and the combined wisdom of the group to help us.

You might not learn to create a passable piece of music using the new tools, but you might learn:

•   How you attack a problem you haven’t seen before
•  How others do it (and could I do that?)
•  Where the edge of your comfort zone is for not knowing what you’re doing
•  When confronted with something new, what is your preferred way to learn? Ask a friend, find a book, google it?

Image by Matthew Ragan

When was the last time you and your class had a learning adventure? An activity which you didn’t know how it would turn out? That had not been carefully planned and constructed and all the possible hard spots and bumps removed? When did you learn something together?

I think I’ll try some of those tools... or maybe some Morris Dancing.