Portable Technology

  Take Your Tech Anywhere! 

This week I've spent a lot time thinking about how portable our technology can be. 

I'm incredibly grateful to live in sunny Florida with mostly temperate conditions. This is my daily view as I complete classwork. In this setting, I feel calm and focused, but if I was still teaching full time I would constantly be checking my phone every time it notified me. 

My husband literally carries around two cell phones in his pocket (personal/work phones) and then spends time looking at a laptop. It gives me a headache 😆.

Some studies suggest that when boundaries between work and non work time can affect family/personal satisfaction. In a study where teachers were assessed on their use of technology outside of work hours and proved that it can positively affect work-life conflict and negatively affect personal life perception. (Bauwens, et al 2020).  This seems like an obvious outcome to me, but how many people truly understand this and work hard to fight the effects of tech boundaries being blurred? 

 But do you remember when it wasn't portable? You'd have to sit at a desk and stare at a clunky desktop. Multi-tasking (task switching) only slowed things down so you really could only focus on one operation at a time. Before the true portability of tech happened, I also think it was a time of clearly defined boundaries between work and personal time. 

How far will the portability go? Google sunglasses never took off, but tons of new tech comes out every year that takes it just one step closer to completely blur those boundaries. 

I made myself a rule when we had our son. If I was on my phone, and he approached me, the phone was always put down and our face to face interaction took priority. 

Sometimes he sneaks up behind me and asks me what I'm playing. Busted. I can only imagine when he gets his own phone. Hopefully we can help him understand the same boundaries that we strive for and that portability doesn't equate to the tech being used all day. I saw a great quote that was posted anonymously, "Disconnect to reconnect."

Resources:

Robin Bauwens, Jolien Muylaert, Els Clarysse, Mieke Audenaert, Adelien Decramer, Teachers’ acceptance and use of digital learning environments after hours: Implications for work-life balance and the role of integration preference, Computers in Human Behavior, Volume 112, 2020, 106479, ISSN 0747-5632https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2020.106479.(https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0747563220302314)