This is just the first of what I expect will be a series of posts exploring the subject of hyperconnectivity and what constitutes healthy levels of usage of technology, and what the implications of this are for professional development and cultural change brought on by the emergence of social media.
Background
One of the many interesting conversations that emerged in the last week surrounding the topic of Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games (MMORPGs) such as World of Warcraft was that of overuse. Several people mentioned this as one of the core issues related to use of WoW, with some even going so far as banning it in their house outright.
Initially my comments were to the effect of “moderation in all things is key,” and that it was always important to keep a holistic eye towards ensuring all aspects of your life received ample attention. Yet within a short time I realised that, while my indulgence WoW was not in danger of spiralling out of control, my ongoing obsession with social media and educational technology in general might be.
A personal reflection
A number of years ago the trends in my professional life merged with the passions and interests I held in my personal life with regards to emerging technology – such as blogs, media sharing tools, and even more so with the sociology underlying their use and the networks and cultures that have emerged around them – and since then the amount of time I’d spent attached to the internet has exploded exponentially. I’m online virtually all day at work, constantly monitoring my mobile phone en route to and from home, and then online most of the evening after the kids are asleep.
With the exception of the very cherished times I spend with my family during dinner, bath time and playtime before bed, and on weekends, and the relatively brief instances when I’m asleep (usually 4 to 5 hours a night) the rest of the time I’m plugged in, switched on, and hyper-connected to technology.
Tallying the numbers
Certainly I’ve benefited enormously from the opportunities that social media and my personal and professional learning networks have afforded me – not the least including reflection, discussion, interaction, debate, sharing, and experiencing – however at the same time it’s staggering to consciously consider the time investment that this ultimately entails. When I combine mobile technological use during my commute, with time online at work, and then entertainment use in the evenings, I’m looking at around 15 to 17 hours online every day during the week, and perhaps 3 or 4 hours a day on weekends.
That’s a frightening statistic. Not only is it too high, I think it’s unhealthy.
Implications for Professional Development and Culture Change
So looking past the implications that statistic has for me personally, the next thought that occurs to me is the implication for professional development and the prospect for any real change that might emerge in the wake of the social media revolution. If 15 to 17 hours a day spent online experimenting and experiencing is an average time commitment needed for the average academic to come to terms with social media, and understand the potential it has for learning and teaching – and God help us if it is – then the movement is doomed.
In “Insidious Pegadogy: How course management systems impact teaching,” Lisa Lane recently wrote that:
“Many instructors teaching online today are not “Web heads”; most are not initial adopters or faculty innovators who created their own courses years before course management systems existed. Today’s online faculty don’t teach online because they spend their lives blogging, reading feeds, and Twittering, and one day think, “hey, I could also teach online!” Most were drafted, either because they felt their market value would slip if they didn’t teach online, or because their department or dean told them they must.”
A fact of reality for many educators is there is simply not enough flexibility and space allotted for open exploration of emerging technologies during working hours. Particularly in the wake of the current financial crunch, staff are increasingly expected to do more and more with less and less. So opportunities for both formal professional development, an informal networked learning are harder and harder to come by.
Many, such as myself, have taken to doing this in the evenings and on weekends, driven by both curiosity and a belief that better ways of working and being are out there on the horizon, it’s just a matter of finding them – and often times “finding them” requires lots and lots of exploration, experimentation, and discussion with peers.
Likewise, in certain spheres of education the existence of filters that prevent staff and students from accessing technologies from on campus networks discourages the luke-warm user, while driving the empassioned user under-ground into personal hours. So in some regards the emergence of hyperconnectivity arises from working conditions and obstacles to access as much as personal research obsessions.
Parting Thoughts
And yet 15 to 17 hours a day is simply not sustainable. Not for me; not for anybody. So if we as a educational system are ever to break out of the habit of using the LMS just because it’s convenient, or going with the default settings of a technology – and thus accepting its inherent pedagogy – because we don’t know any better, then we need to have opportunities and space to learn and explore during the work day, when it’s relevant to our work; not in lieu of sleep or in lieu of family time.
…more on this topic as I continue to reflect on it.
Very interesting post. I’m looking forward to the future posts on this topic. Both my husband and I spend a lot of time online. I’m a technology consultant; he’s a computer scientist. We also spend time online reading blogs, watching videos, etc. for fun. I also play WoW. I’ve started to really monitor my time online because while I think that I have valuable connections online and I learn a lot and get a lot out of it, I want to be careful that I’m not neglecting other aspects of my life.
I’ve been writing in the mornings and when I do, I close the browser and Twitter and turn on some music. I try to spend time outside, exercising or working in the yard every day. I generally try to spend most of my afternoon offline, not returning online until 4, where I give myself an hour or two before dinner to play or read or whatever. And I’m also limiting my time in the evenings, reading books or hanging out with the family.
A bigger challenge for us, I think, is getting us all to be mindful of our time in front of the screen. My husband, who is usually doing work even in the evenings, is particularly difficult to pry away from the computer. Sigh.
@Laura Blankenship: Thanks for your thoughts here Laura, it’s helping me delve deeper into the train of thought. One thing that occurred to me this morning, which I want to expand on in a post, is the idea that technology is not homogeneous.
That is, there are inherent differences in each tool that facilitate different things – so it’s perhaps unfair to paint the entire topic of engaging through technology with the same broad brush, but be a bit more specific about each case.
For example, my little one is sick at the moment and feeling very yucky, so this morning we put on The Wiggles and had a cuddle on the couch together. In this case the technology played a central role in establishing a shared focal point, but it didn’t detract from our interaction since our time together was an integral component as well. So really, the TV here added to the experience instead of taking away from it.
What I want to explore in my next post, I think, is a rough categorisation of technologies based on a combination of their affordances, along with whether they are connecting or isolating mediums. This is not to say that “isolating” technologies are “bad” per se, but perhaps should instead inform the amount of time you allocate to their use.
This train of thought is still emerging as I type though more to come LOL
I started reading this shortly after you posted it, and then got sucked into other things, offline and online, so am finishing it at 10pm on a Friday night. The kids are in bed, my wife is away at a conference, so this time really is mine to spend how I will. But I just got done reading student blogs, which is both work and pleasure. I’m not sure what reading your blog is, Mike, although it is always pleasurable. Is personal development a work activity, a leisure pursuit, its own category? I think as you develop your typology of affordances, you might want to marry it to a typology of activities.
@Ed Webb: That’s a very interesting question. The true location of this blog relative to the various spheres of my life has always been an interesting topic – especially when personal interest and professional practice essentially merged into one.
I guess I tend to see it first and foremost as a learning tool, without qualification of where the learning takes place, or what form it takes. That’s the way I see learning in general anyway really – I look at it in its broadest sense.
But in doing that I think it makes it difficult to pigeon hole, since personal development and learning becomes closely intertwined with professional development, and examples such as the learning experiences I share with my kids blurs with the topics that I’m researching elsewhere.
Of course I also see this blog as a way to model practice with other educators, particularly those who are less familiar with social media environments – not just in terms of what they are and how they work, but how their use might look from the learner’s perspective. So there is that distinct professional thread to it as well.
Then again I don’t think this blog is particularly unique in that respect – quite the contrary I would imagine. The more and more learners take to the open web to establish their own spaces, where they make the rules and dictate what is covered, when, and in what context – the more the lines between classroom and outside world, public and private, personal and professional are all going to become blurred and less easily distinguished or categorised. But that’s the way life is really: complex, rich, diverse and closely integrated and connected.
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