Sorry, no solution here, just frustration with the “powers” that dictate these curricula.

You also mentioned that “people… equate the computer with bad things.” and so why wouldn’t they want a balance, a break. I think this idea is undervalued in our conversations and I think it is something worth exploring further. Thanks for that.

Firstly, it is so refreshing to see someone from your level of leadership take the time to participate in these conversations and in these spaces. I can only appreciate how busy you must be, but your involvement shows us (members of online communities) that you value the conversations and the spaces in which they take place. Furthermore, your involvement will help others understand the value of thinking deeply on the future of technology at our schools. So thank you. Thank you very much. I look forward to future chats here on Jeff’s blog, my blog, perhaps student blogs and face-to-face at events in the future.

Secondly, those of us in the Ed-tech business so often find ourselves defending our ideas and our values, that we forget sometimes to think straight and to the point. I loved your idea that maybe balance is always the best way forward. What of the world of blind passion and determination. Thanks for giving me something to think about and fuel for my next discussion with others.

Many people (adults and children) don’t have balance in their lives when it comes to something they’re passionate about, and it’s not always technology. I know students who play on three club football teams and play year-round because they are passionate about and love the game of football. As long as their involvement isn’t interfering with their ability to do their schoolwork or have time with friends and family, very few people would argue that those students need to have more balance in their lives. I have also never heard someone suggest that once a week, they should have a “football free” day so that football doesn’t consume their lives.

For me, balance isn’t about a particular amount of time; it’s about whether something consumes your time to the point where other parts of your life are negatively affected. That means that for each person, how much is “too much” (of anything: tech, sports, eating, studying) will be different.

True balance is the ability to make a choice.

Jabiz has nailed it with that statement. To me, balance is a very personal issue but one that also inherently includes judgment. We project our own views of what balance should look like on to other people. We conclude that he is suffering from imbalance because he’s frantically typing on his phone – or that she spends far too much time at the gym. We only judge this because we thing of what we would rather be or what we could be doing instead.

In the end balance seems inextricably linked to the issue of time…and by your time, I mean your values. “I can’t do this because I don’t have enough time.” “If there were only 28 hours in every day.” “If it weren’t for this job I’d have so much more time.” Actually, no you wouldn’t. I spent 6 years away from full-time work in a school. When people hear that they fantasize about all they could be doing instead of this. During these years I still didn’t have enough time to get done the things I had planned. I wanted to voluntour the world and to read more and to do more yoga. I felt that would give me balance.

Only afterwards did I truly realize that it wasn’t that I did not have enough time to get things done; it was that I did not value what did not get done as much as what I did. I had true balance as Jabiz defines it–I was able to choose what I did. In these unencumbered situations you choose what you value, what you like, and what energizes you. Apparently I didn’t value those things that I had once imagined doing if I had more balance in my life. Now when people tell me they don’t have enough time for something I understand what they mean but are not saying.

To the issue of tech balance…someone said to me this week that they were glad they did not have to spend all day in front of a computer monitor. I kept quiet because that would not make me happy. Many of the people that you all have mentioned equate the computer with bad things, work, frustration at it, and isolation. You can find balance within technology as well. For example, it empowers me, as a social introvert, to connect and to interact with each of you — something that I can find slightly uncomfortable in social situations, small talk and interaction.

In the end it’s not the simple fact of being digital versus being analog. Rather, it’s what you value, what you choose and the activities that energize you that give a person balance.

Great insights into the duality that we all struggle with when it comes to “balance”. I have to say that I have a particularly bias view when I hear people advocate without qualification for “a more balanced approach” or attempting to achieve greater balance in their lives. I would assert the following reasoning to arrive at a very different conclusion. If our aim is to achieve something truly great, something big, something that requires an audacious spirit and total commitment, then how can we at the same time be striving for balance? I cannot imagine that the great composers, inventors, or thinkers throughout history were role models for balance. I cannot imagine Edison dropping things at the lab because it was “quitt’en time” or Mother Teresa calling a time out because she needed to find some work-life balance. I would argue that people achieve great things by being temporarily unbalanced and entirely engaged in their passion.

Balance then becomes a conscious awareness of healthy options and is managed based on priority, immediacy and considered thought. Why would this not also apply to the balance dilemma with technology? An educated awareness of healthy use shaped by conscious decisions to step away from equilibrium, in either direction, to achieve your goals in the short term. For me it is free will at its best but tempered by disciplined awareness of a personal ideal state.

I’m with you in your thinking and following Jabiz’s hinting … I’m forwarding this post with my thumbs up to “the people who so often make choices for everyone” in the hopes that they will, “… join us in these spaces and have the conversation on these terms.”