To be everywhere is to be nowhere - Seneca.
This Christmas holiday I’ve been in the UK with my
family. We’ve been staying with my
mother who doesn’t have a computer or internet connection, and therefore have
been unplugged for most of the time.
Usually during these 3 weeks I would have read hundreds of blog posts,
tweets and online articles, I would have been in contact with dozens of friends,
colleagues and other educators everywhere.
Instead I brought one magazine with me (The October edition of
Educational Leadership about coaching) and downloaded one book, for our
upcoming reading group, onto Kindle Cloud Reader on the iPad (The Shallows by
Nicholas Carr) which I could read offline. I’ve therefore had a lot of opportunity to
reflect both on coaching and on what the internet is doing to our minds as I’ve
spent the time reading about just these two things.
I have really appreciated this time where we have all been
unplugged and where we have spent our evenings playing games and talking to
each other. It made me appreciate how
seldom we do this and just how valuable it is for us as a family. Often in the evenings at home we are all online
on our individual computers and oblivious to what is going on around us – what
Nicholas Carr refers to as “a mind consumed with a medium”. Our minds are everywhere – or nowhere – but
they are certainly not together! It made
me realize that I really need to work more on balance in 2012 and that I need
to make sure that my family and I spend more time together somewhere without a
lot of external distractions.
However we’re back to being connected again and the next few
blog posts will be about my thoughts based on what I’ve read over the holidays.
Photo Credit: Plug Face by Jake Mates 
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