I fell into using online technology by accident in the mid 90’s because my daughter was born with a condition which, at the time, was rare.
Iwas living in regional NSW and in 1986 my daughter was born with what we later found out was Mosaic Down’s Syndrome (MDS) — which in a nutshell meant some of her cells were normal (46) and some Down’s (47) — mixture, a mosaic. At the time it was rare and even the Doctor’s knew little about it.
I was put in touch with the Down’s Syndrome Association in Sydney and although helpful with some info via snail mail, not helpful for my daughter who although she displayed some signs of “Down’s”, she was also meeting all regular milestones ie sitting up at 6 months, crawling at 9 months and walking at 13 months.
As the world progressed and the internet became affordable to all, in 1997, I put the internet on at home and one of the first things I did was to search (no google in those days) for as much information about MDS, but there was none given how new the net was.
About 6 months later the Down’s Syndrome Association set me an email with a link and I remember how it was worded — not sure if this will be of any help to you, but here is a link that we have come across.
So I clicked on the link (all was safe in those days) and it led me to a site in the States where a young mum (which I was too) had set up a website (rather primitive but functional for the time) where she put her daughter’s MDS story. On it I found many many more people (mostly in the States) with children who were born with the same thing as my daughter.
I immediately wrote my story and sent it off with a pic of my daughter and then I was inundated with responses. I had emails from many people from the States and some from the UK and eventually one from Australia.
Most of those on the site had young babies and toddlers and because my daughter was 11, many had questions about my daughter’s progress, hoping it will give them a glimpse of what they could expect. Turns out that children with MDS range from low to high functioning. My daughter was more in the high functioning bracket, so I really wasn’t much help and I didn’t like to give false hope.
The husband of the family from the UK Bill, was into IT and soon we were using NetMeeting to communicate, not only to them but to a number of families in the States. Bill showed me how to use a web camera so we could video conference — talk and see them over the other side of the world, and I just loved the new technology. I bought the camera and the headphones, and I was ready!
Early Adopter
I became an early adopter of all online technology; I couldn’t get enough of it! Soon I had an email with all the major providers of the time — my internet provider, work, Yahoo, MSN Hotmail (later live). I subscribed to chats like Microsoft comic chat, AOL online, MSN groups, Yahoo chat — remember the Yahoo yodel when you received a message “Yahooooooooooo” come yodelling out of your computer — and ICQ — which I found out is still miraculously still going! I downloaded songs from Napster, registered for SchoolFriends.com.au (which incidental had a chat attached to it as well) before being renamed as Friends Reunited. I started a blog on Blogger and registered for Skype.
I was sending virtual bunches of flowers to friends, crazy memes (before they were called memes) and pictures and we all got a giggle from them and let’s not forget online dating sites! I even signed up to a site called Get a Life because I felt I needed to get a life (but all that came from that site were guys hitting on me).
I just loved it and couldn’t get enough of it (the technology that is, not the guys hitting on me) and so when my educational institution began the foray into online delivery (2000), I was a natural choice to join the many online projects, given that I had been using the technology for the last 3–4 years.
As I adored writing and being creative in my delivery, I began transferring that to the online environment. I revelled in writing the online content, loved creating the webpages and site for online learning, loved working on the instructional design of the website, loved the challenge of being able to transfer how I deliver face to face (f2f) to the online environment and loved proving people that you can do most things in the online environment, even ballroom dancing!
Soon I was using MSN groups for mini web sessions (in those days you could only have 1 to 5 so had to have several sessions with learners. I was using it from home because work had a firewall and thus began working from home — which I just loved! I was a morning person so could get up and put a load of washing on, attend to a few learners, then head in to work. From there I progressed to Skype as it had tools just like the classroom! Yay!
Later when online systems were introduced at work, I stayed home to plan programs, write content and was able to get far more done in a few hours at home than a day in the office! I would have stayed home all day to work but since I was Head of Department, I had to show my presence in the office.
To help the teachers transition to online delivery we developed and ran courses so they could use and feel comfortable with the new technology. These was exciting times as we wrote the units for the course and these were literally going up the day before it was “released” to the learners.
As the teachers come from various teaching areas, we used topics that they could relate to, such as running coffee tutorials, which was basically sending them on a web quest, asking questions and showing them a short video — which I shot using a 72 dpi camera, then struck it together as a short video with a commentary in some early version of movie maker.
As each course ended (we ran quite a few over the next few years), we’d run 70’s party online as our “end of year get together” — like we did in a f2f environment), or Yacht Parties (where I was a virtually drunk and fell off the yacht after heading off with the Captain) and so on. We created virtual spaces where learners could go and visit to connect with other learners (we had a fireplace room, a book room).
We were doing cutting edge stuff — continuing to write courses in our subject area and out of our subject area where we helped with instructional design and putting them up a page before the learning was going to take place, we were writing the online learning rules, policies and procedures (we were a Government department — they loved policies and procedures). We were trialling courses and making changes and recommendations.
We were writing courses with no content and relied on the collaborative strength of learners to come up with the content. We became facilitators rather than teachers as we “led” the learners to the information (think discovery learning, action centred learning, and the current flipped classroom). We were killing it and we were being asked to attend conferences and other institutes to let them know our success. Our learners had 90% completion rates which for online courses was extremely high. Learners loved our quick response and were sending us messages at all times of the day and night.
Then we got our own video conferencing facilities and I was able to pretty much replicate what I do in a f2f session online — think breakout rooms (for small group discussions) brainstorming sessions, uploading of presentations, showing videos, sharing files and links — I was hooked even more and my creativity just went higher.
I had several web profile presences with my own profile for work, MySpace a pre-cursor to Facebook and if you googled me (yes Google was starting to get popular by then) there I was appearing on many sites outlining the benefits of online learning from the many and varied conferences that I attended.
I even won a state minister’s award for excellence in teaching with my work in the online world.
In 2008 I went overseas on a teaching exchange and within three weeks of arriving I had been put on a project for online delivery and they were sending me to Portugal (I was in Northern Ireland), hopping three countries in one day. I even taught back home from Northern Ireland and once the timelines were worked out, it was a piece of cake. Exciting stuff!!
Facebook had arrived on the scene a couple of years prior to me heading OS and I signed up, thinking it would be a great way to keep in touch, however none of my friends had even heard of it and they were not tech savvy, so I didn’t use it much. I ended up emailing them long essays of what I had been up to whilst away (they were at least able to use email — some even managed MSN messenger but it was a challenge for many).
During that time, I spoke constantly with my kids online — through MSN and my daughter remarked that she spoke to me more than her dad and I was 16,000 kms away, whilst her dad was 20 kms away. She said it felt like we were still connected.
In the middle of that year I signed up for LinkedIn as well and over the years had lots of recommendations and of course my profile grew. I was getting contacts from around the world and my head was getting bigger from all this attention.
The fun had stopped
On my return, I was back into online delivery and by this time we had numerous online classes running. Learners were able to contact me via messaging services and soon I was getting instant messages 24/7 (well it felt that way) and copious amounts of emails announcing work to be reviewed. It was starting to become overwhelming to the point that whenever I logged onto my email, I started to hyperventilate at the amount of unread emails.
When we first got email it was just so exciting to get an email a week, now I was getting an email every minute and it was starting to get difficult to keep on top of it. Learners and colleagues were ringing me saying did you receive my email and when I had answered yes, they said why hadn’t I replied? It was only a space of half an hour. Learners would resend their work if I had not replied within a couple of hours — sometimes I couldn’t if I was at meeting, though later I started to respond to them during meetings which meant I wasn’t totally involved with the meetings.
Where once I had embraced online and was always happy to reply to learners’ messages and/or emails as I felt this was the way of online, it was now intruding in my life. Yes, I know I had created this problem myself, but at the time my colleagues and I, hadn’t considered it.
I was multi-tasking with a vengeance, having several computer screens with numerous programs opened and zipping between writing content, marking work, reading emails, answering phones. I was the queen of multi-tasking and people were amazed at the speed I worked all those computer programs. I was even working on something on the computer (writing, reading) whilst having a phone conversation.
Seriously how was I giving my best when I was only half listening, half involved? But I didn’t have time to think about this as there were more emails to respond to. I did evolve strategies to deal with the work, but it was still overwhelming.
Reading online was beginning to impact on my health — my eyes were always tired, my back and neck started to complain and at one stage I was diagnosed with DVT because of all the time I spent sitting at a computer. I had even ballooned in weight to an all-time high.
Marking online took longer and I was stuck in front of a screen — no taking the papers under a tree to mark. Yes, you could take the laptop but at times the glare interfered and besides I needed my other screen to keep track of what I was doing.
To find a learner’s paper quicker necessitated multiple clicks because of the folder it was stored in, year, semester, course, subject, name of learner an I had to go through this process each time a I had a conversation with a learner so I could see what my feedback to them was.
Also, when sending work back to them, if they had deleted my comments, I found I had to find the one I sent to see where the corrections were (another load of clicks to locate it) — it really was becoming time consuming.
Emails and messaging, from my understanding were invented for short quick messengers (hence the name messenger) but has evolved where complete conversations (and misunderstandings) take place and cause issues.
Just recently I was watching an episode of MAFS (ok ok I needed a bit of veg time) where one of the brides was pissed off at her husband because they had organised a “date” to go bowling and at the appointed time he messages her to say he was at the pub with his mates, did she mind if they didn’t go bowling. She replied with a thumbs up. In his view it sounded like he got the go ahead. Apparently, a thumbs for her meant she was pissed off — and so began a few days of sulks, fights and generally unpleasantness where a quick call would have played out a different scenario — for the record I was with the husband on this one.
In 2014, I eventually retired and thought I could leave all that behind, but I was still connected — via Instagram, LinkedIn, any sites I had signed up for, all my utility bills came online, I chatted online through FB messenger, WhatsApp, Duo, Viber (and the list goes on), I subscribed to several news services, and of course Facebook (as this had exploded since when I joined in 2007). I must confess that when Facebook first arrived it was great to keep in contact with family and friends (especially with my relatives overseas), but as time went on, I got tired of seeing other people’s memories and what they had for dinner.
I found I had some 350 friends (I know small compared to others but then I dated a guy who had some 1000 friends and I questioned him about it but I realised for him it was more about feeling important — we parted ways). These friends, who I really didn’t know and whose birthdays kept popping up nearly every day and then felt obliged to wish them a happy birthday to the point that the sentiment meant nothing. In fact, it was always a repeat from the year before. I quietly took away my birthday and of course there were no birthday wishes, so I stopped sending wishes.
Of course, I subscribed to a number of pages and groups they were posting so often and getting to be same same and the ones that I felt were of a higher quality all had websites that I could log on to a computer to visit and read.
I kept getting invited to events — so did I have to reply to say I was going or worse still not and then everyone could see my reply???
I was spending far too much time online reading trivial stuff and where one click led to another and suddenly 3 hours had gone by — especially as Facebook had numerous ads.
At around this time I started taking public transport more as I had moved to the city and I began observing people and their connectiveness. When I last took public transport, it was back in the late 70’s, early 80’s — long before the internet.
I was getting exhausted, overwhelmed and holding on for so long to pee that I nearly had accidents.
I observed (which I’m sure you have too) people watching movies/TV shows online on either their phones or tablets. The sight that was most common though were phones appearing to be glued to people’s palms with cords dangling from their ears looking like long earrings. Sometimes it varied and they used large headphones like we had in the 70’s.
I sat next to many people listening to music on their devices and as they had them up so loud, I was subjected to hearing second-hand music and it was annoying the hell out of me.
Then there were that group of people that felt that everybody needed to hear both parts of their (loud) conversation (you know the ones). Pair that with accents that were guttural, squawking, or just plain high, loud and squeaky high-pitched voices — it was very grating on the nerves. And really did I need to hear all of this?
But the strangest thing I was now observing was this new breed of headless people. Have you seen these people? They are the ones that have been using their devices so often that their necks poke out (called poked neck — yes, it’s a thing) and looking down, that from the back they look like they are headless. I wonder how their backs and necks will be like in several years’ time?
Yes, I know people before the internet read papers on public transport, but you could always have a chat. It seems that once headphones are on, all conversations are off.
The disconnection begins…
So, one day after being online for 25 years, I decided to switch off, just like that. I started unsubscribing from newsletters, specials email from places I had shopped and groups in a bid to reduce my email. I started to do a Marie Kondo (did they spark joy? Nope. Delete.)
I deleted old email accounts and chat programs that I rarely used. I deleted my LinkedIn account (I had retired, why did I still need it? But then if this writing gig takes off, I may need to create another one but let’s see.) I did find that I couldn’t switch off completely because there still is stuff that needs to be done online, but I did review each of them and made conscious decisions of the ones that added value to my life and those that didn’t.
I de-activated Facebook which caused a little alarm with some people wondering where I had gone (not deleted it as I still have a few accounts linked to Facebook log ins but working on that). I even deleted the app off my phone and for the first day or so I kinda missed it. I kept Facebook messenger and WhatsApp for my overseas relatives, and one Instagram account.
Now I schedule online time to read the things that are important — I try and set a time in the morning and evening. I ring people a little more often and we talk — a good old fashion chat. I’ve even taken to writing letters — ok not nib and ink but use the word processor only because I type faster than I write.
So, what happened after making a conscious decision to disconnect from much of the online world that enveloped me? Was it a fear of missing out? But what exactly was I missing out on?
What happened was absolutely nothing. The world didn’t fall apart — well not for me. In fact, life is more connected with real people and real conversations.
Are you brave enough to detox in the same way? Would love to hear your stories too.
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