For 75 minutes tonight, I was cut off from the world.
It was a complete accident–I waited 50 minutes for my cue to perform with the choir, and left my phone and iPod touch in my classroom.
So I thought. I sat in the commons and let the thoughts just roll through my brain. More than once I thought of things I’d be tweeting if I had the means. I thought of how much the school has changed since I was student there over 20 years ago. I thought of how much I love that the choir director picks four-hand accompaniments at least once a year so I can play with my friend and the choir. I thought of how much I miss singing.
And then I wondered when my students last sat and thought for longer than 30 seconds.
I’m in the middle of an educational technology conference, and while I value technology and its impact in the classroom, I worry about the tendency of technology supplanting valuable tasks and skills. This worry of mine becomes more pronounced during tech conferences and workshops.
I want my students to see the value of thinking, of pondering, of unplugging. It’s uncomfortable at first–it was for me tonight–but eventually I settled into a nice stream of consciousness and even composed parts of this post.
Here’s the best part: when I plugged back in, I hadn’t missed anything. The emails hadn’t gone anywhere, neither had the tweets. I caught up and I’m back in the digital world.
But the vacation was a little nice.
