Yesterday afternoon while sat at home I suddenly started to experience internet issues, with my routers connection being intermittently lost. I immediately carried out the usual checks to see if I could identify the issue however nothing on the internal network at home seemed to be amiss. As such it was time to call my network provider to ask them to look into the situation.
Ok, so my first thought was: “time to google their helpline phone number.”
Not a great start given internet wasn’t working plus my home is very much a 4G/Mobile communications black spot. And so it was I had to rummage through old paperwork in the hope of finding the sky customer service helpline number. Thankfully I keep my paperwork so it didn’t take too long to find a number and get in contact with the helpline.
Having been told it would be up to 72 working hours before an engineer would be able to look into the issue I was very impressed when a call came through from an engineer only 4 or 5 hours after my initial call. He promptly arrived and looked into the issue, pronouncing shortly after 5pm that he would need to investigate further and that this would be done the following morning.
And so I found myself, and family, sat without internet over the evening. I repeatedly found myself in the early parts of the evening, accessing the router to check its status in the hope that internet would have been restored as if by magic. Upon realising the futility of this I put my devices aside but still found myself periodically reaching for them to check my twitter, email, etc. again in the hope that the internet issue had got bored and resolved itself. As it was it hadn’t. In hindsight I cannot see what reason I had for believing my connection might have re-established itself without outside intervention.
The above goes to show how important, going on essential internet is. I had an issue and the first place I wanted to look for a solution or a contact who might be able to assist was the internet. Despite clear awareness of the fact the internet wasn’t working I repeatedly, due to habit and learned behaviour, kept reaching for my devices to access the internet.
Have you ever taken time to stop and look at your usage and reliance on technology? Is this something we need to discuss with our students including the need to “disconnect”?
Technology and Learning