Everybody Should Play with Technology and New Media

Image by Kurt Christensen via Flickr

I spend a lot of my time looking into and trying out new media, technology, and software. I used to think this was just a personal inclination; now I think that regularly experimenting with the tools of the digital age is core to literacy today. In fact, I'll take it a step further. I will go so far as to say that anyone in education (at any level) or anyone devoted to intellectual pursuits (in any sector) owe it to themselves and all they work with to be actively trying out the new tools.

I didn't say that everyone should be adopting every gadget or media trend that comes along. Not at all. It isn't that you have to blog, tweet, text message, or be all hooked up in social media networks. But you darn well ought to know what hundreds of millions of people are doing with them and be checking these out--preferably actively. Why? Well, using those new technologies and media tends to answer that question. Their utility and value are somewhat self apparent, or we would not be witnessing the viral adoption of facebook, microblogging, etc. But there are plenty of die-hards out there who now make a point of resisting (and often mocking) new media.

We've all got to be trying out these new tools, finding what works, evaluating their utility for different purposes, giving feedback, and looking for the next iteration. It's part of the participatory culture of the Internet, and its how we get smarter about surviving and thriving in the new networked context, both individually and collectively.

I'm going to try to document better my own experiments. Perhaps others could learn from my mistakes or help me more intelligently participate in our evolving digital environment. My focus is especially on the uses of technology and media in higher education and among scholars, though it is not restricted to that.

I may occasionally spend too much time on my iPhone, or online, but of course figuring out how to integrate technology and media into one's life without letting it get out of hand is part of the experiment, and we shouldn't be too hard on ourselves.

This attitude about being willing to play with technology has endeared me to my tech-addicted children. I also find that it is easier to get them to reason toward better uses of media if I've showed interest in my son's effort to get a three-cornered hat in Puzzle Pirates online.

I'm also enough of a traditionalist to claim that we ought, at times, to refrain from our uses of media. Some of us need to "play" with abstaining from gadgets and screens, rediscovering the pleasures of pen scratching paper, or reading a physical book, or experiencing the natural world without electronic mediation. But that's a subject of another post. 

So, how do you play with tech and media? Where have you felt good about such experiments? How have you learned from others how to use it more wisely? Where do you see it measurably improving your life? How have you learned from mistakes?