How social is social media?

As I have just come back from my amazing America trip, in which so many people from the #physed community where there, it also gave me time to reflect and think about what I want to take into the new year, but also think about what do I want.  It was so nice to interact with the #physed teachers I had been speaking too for the last year or so on a personal level. Some I had met before, some I had never met and this was the first time of getting to know them.  I would say I am pretty sociable and enjoying interacting with people.

For the last year my blog has all been technology related, and has around 14,000 hits, which even I am surprised at! But has all this technology started to run peoples lives? I am all for using technology in education and believe it is only going to be used more and more in everyday society (if you don’t use it, I think you will be left behind). Listening to the podcast below, especially about education, it is only going to be a more prominent part of the education of the learners  that we see on a daily basis.

““I think of problems as goldmines.”
– Peter Diamandis

Dr. Peter Diamandis (@PeterDiamandis) has been named one of “The World’s 50 Greatest Leaders” by Fortune magazine.

Peter knows how to think and play big, and he can show you how to do the same.

This episode features the top-10 most popular questions you wanted Peter to answer, including:

• How do we disrupt the education system?
• What does the future of healthcare look like?
• When should you start building your billion-dollar business?
• Will technology destroy all the jobs?”

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(http://fourhourworkweek.com/2015/07/17/peter-diamandis-on-the-education-system/)

@mrrobbo sent me a message while at the #PEInstitute15 from across the gym, the notification came up on my screen, I answered straight away, which is what I have done most of this year for all my media.  He told me I answered that far to quickly and that I should turn all my notifications off and only check my apps when I want too.  This got me thinking about how many times I have seen a notification from social media, and had the urge to reply straight away.  Now for the past two or three years I have not been a massive facebooker only posting the odd photo as I get bored reading about other peoples lives, some positive, some negative, and I would be more happy reading twitter and learning what I can do to improve my own practice.  So if I had a new follower/retweet/reply, I would look on my twitter app straight away. Same for voxer, ever group chat I would try and listen to the messages as they came in (this became impossible come November last year when the general chat just went crazy!).  I spoke with the iWatch voxer group that I am a part of about turning my notifications off and @meme3rat said she did as well.  After a quick google search (click here) and reading a few articles (Link 1 , Link 2 ) I decided to try out turning my notifications off. I also watched the two videos below (must watch BTW!)

I am about two weeks into this little experiment, and I can honestly say it is so interesting to actually ‘look up’ and people watch, as well as saving my battery life 😉 . For example, I was having a meal yesterday in a local restaurant and watched a family; dad was on his phone, mum was on her phone, and the kids were on some sort of device. TALK to one another!!!!

It is something for those that know me, people will be surprised at, but I can honestly say I can see the benefits already. Yes I may check my twitter when I want to, and yes I may have 30+ notifications, but I will use my time to interact with those people that are important to me, and the social/unsocial media can wait for me 😀

Try it, you may be surprised on how productive it can make you!

Do you turn all your notifications off? You may agree or disagree, but if you disagree you may want to go and rewatch the videos 😀

Interested to hear other educators thoughts on their own mobile technology and social/unsocial media.[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]