A day without technology? I’m 66, and retired (failed!) but couldn’t live a day without technology. The particular technologies which make life work for me include:
- Email – this is the lifeline by which people across the planet talk to me. At home, on my travels, at a desk (anyone’s desk) I get emails all the time, and often respond to them straightaway. Responding to an email is almost always more interesting than what I’m supposed to be doing.
- My website (www.phil-race.co.uk) is how I share things with people I’m working with, and with anyone else who’s interested. I usually put up the slides I’ve used at a workshop on the train on the way home. I put up bits of my books for download (don’t tell the publishers). My site generates emails from people who know me, but also from far corners of the world of teaching and learning.
- My iPods are essential. I’ve always got one with me. I think to music, and need music to live. I often have iPods on ‘shuffle’ and am caused to listen to things I wouldn’t have chosen, so my musical education is improved. I test myself with the music, to see if I can work out the composer, conductor and players – and I’m right ever more often – technology enhancing learning.
- My mobile phone is rarely switched on – I’m usually working. But I’m rarely at my landline either. But with the mobile phone I can talk to people from wherever I am when I need to, and let my wife know which delayed train I’m stuck on.
- My laptops are part of me. I’m rarely more than a metre or two away from one of them. The smallest goes (almost) everywhere with me. The middle-sized one stays in our conservatory in Newcastle, and is ready to accompany me on my travels if anything goes wrong with the little one. The biggest one stays upstairs in Newcastle, in our study, but is also my ‘iPoderie’, where I load up the CDs I buy so that I can listen to them everywhere else.
- My memory sticks are many. There’s one in my wallet, which has everything I may need on the move, just in case. All the others get used to move things from laptop to laptop, and to other machines I work on, and to and from the machines of all the other people I meet.
- And there’s one more technology I couldn’t live without – in the beginning there was the Word. My handwriting’s always been awful, but I learned to type 47 years ago and type fast. I wouldn’t otherwise have written half of the books I’ve done, let alone trillions of emails. I can’t however ‘text’ at all well – my fingers don’t do this. It’s a bit like my (digital) piano at home, where I can play all the right notes, but not yet in the right order.
Life without all of these? Not possible.
