I have been going on and on about the usefulness and setbacks of technology in education and everyday life, but never really touched upon how technology helped me set an incredibly enormous life goal of mine: finish a marathon.

When I was in Italy, at the United World College, one of the requirements for the IB diploma was to complete the CAS (Creativity, Action, Service) part. As fun as it sounds, the vast number of things we could do to complete it almost made it difficult to choose what to do. Once I settled creativity and service, the best (according to me) part was left – and so many sports to choose from. I did volleyball, basketball, field hockey, orienteering but the best part came in the cold Alpine winter. We could do skiing! If that was not enough, we could choose between nordic (cross country) and downhill. I’ve skied downhill since I was 5, but I’ve never tried cross country in my life, so I took up a challenge. After weekends of running and skating on skis on tracks specifically chosen for cross country skiers, our supervisor gave us a chance of a lifetime (I say this because otherwise I might have never got the chance to do the marathon I will write about) – I was going to do a 32km (~20 miles) marathon on the Alps! Among hundreds of professional and recreational nordic skiers, here I was, only skied two weeks before jumping on this course, in the back, where the ‘Just for Fun’ skiers stood still waiting for the shot to start the marathon.

Now, the technology part. Although I have done a lot of sports, and still do, my physical condition and stamina could not help me go 1 mile, let alone ski 20 miles. I lost breath if I ran for a 600 feet, and here I was, sweating about how am I actually going to finish this course.

I put my iPod in the arm pocket of my ski jacket, my iPhone in the other pocket, put my earphones on, closed my eyes, and exhaled slowly. Here we go.
The other skiers quickly out-skied me, since my speed was nothing exciting either, and I was slowly on my way, people clapping and cheering me on, even though they do not even know who I am, giving me some hope that I might actually get through this. Coldplay songs ring in my ears, then Adele suddenly gets the shuffle turn, and then some random mixes of Eminem, Linkin Park, Lana, Oliver Dragojevic, Drake, Swedish House Mafia kept me going. The most random playlist I could create pointed my focus on the melodies, and my legs and feet went on automatic as I was slowly breezing past the falling snow and some other skiers, if I was lucky. I had gone 10 miles without noticing, and felt even more excited, pumped and sped up, as much as I could. After a while, no matter how fast I was going, I had skiers way past me, and some way behind me. The track was huge, in the mountain woods, and although I could see the tracks, I decided to check how much I actually have left. My iPhone pointed out that I was going on the right direction, only 17 miles to go, and a huge smile spread across my face as I suddenly regained energy to speed up a bit more.

I was going much slower than the experienced skiers did. An hour went by, and the first people have surely crossed the line by now, and here I was, dragging my body with what strength I had in my arms and my legs, and could not wait for the downhill parts, where I could gain speed without even trying. I was happy I didn’t fall during my adventure through the white snow spread on the ground. My iPod keeps surprising me with my favorite songs (disregarding the fact that I created the playlist), and guessing what Shuffle prepared next for me was my go-to game just so I don’t blank out and realize how far behind I actually am.

I stop for a cup of tea on the stands, have a brief chat with the people standing nearby, and get cheered on as I continue on.

’10 more miles to go’ displayed itself proudly on the screen on my smartphone, I put a huge grin on my face again, and continue my merry way. After a certain while, I couldn’t really feel my hands and feet, or my entire body for that matter, but the music, the map on the phone, and the people around kept me going. I skied, and was grateful my body was not holding me back, like it usually does in even less physically challenging conditions.

Funnily enough, the ‘Eye of the Tiger’ gave me an energy and mind boost, and ‘Yellow’ calmed my thoughts as I found myself actually singing out loud, waving at people, and completely forgetting about what I am actually doing (Automatic-mode again).
After almost 3 hours of non-stop skiing, I didn’t even need to check my iPhone to see how much I have left – I could see the finish line through the snow storm that had started 10 minutes prior to that moment. I decided to stop the music, and finally put my focus on the marathon. Ironically, I was almost falling before I reached the line, the exhaustion had just hit me. Like it wasn’t bad enough that the finish line was staying open just for me and a couple of people behind me. People already claimed first, second and third places, hours ago, and here I was, hauling myself like a snail.

I cross the finish line, and it doesn’t even feel as exciting as I hoped it would be. Maybe it was because the timer was blinking at 3:15 hours, or the fact that the person behind the finish line was impatiently waiting to hand me a badge so as to honor  me finishing this incredulous marathon. I grab the silver badge, and as slowly as I skied before, I took of my skis and sat down, glancing at the 20% battery on my iPod, and the turned off iPhone whose battery I exhausted 10 minutes prior to the finish. And then it hits me. I am overwhelmed with joy, pride and amazement at what my body and my brain did today. I didn’t care that it took me 3 hours and 15 minutes to finish a marathon which took the first placed skier only 45 minutes – I accomplished something today, but it wasn’t just me.

If it weren’t for the iPod and iPhone (not pointing out a brand here, any mp3 and smartphone would do), my focus would have been on myself, and exhaustion would have hit before I even reached to finish half the course. I took my free gifts and coupons, and joined the group for some good Austrian beer (which was obviously completely legal) and laughs.

As we packed our skis to go back to the college, after a 3 day marathon-prep and marathon-skiing trip, I fall asleep exhausted, and finish the 10% of battery that was left on the iPod. My marathon bib was then displayed in my dorm room proudly until the rest of the year.

And I overcame what I thought was my limiting factor, with the simple blessings of technology that I had with me that day. Apart from the bib and the badge, the only other thing that proves as a reminder of how much I could actually do is this photo (with not-so-ridiculously photogenic me crossing the finish line):

And now it got me thinking how I give credit to technology helping me cross that line, and rightfully so. I did something, through the easy access of entertainment products that are discredited everyday about how their entertainment values override their usefulness.

The teaching project seems to have passed, just as quickly as it became an opportunity.

We went to MUMS with a good plan to carry out our task of teaching the kids something new. Coming back in a classroom where middle school kids are carrying on their daily activities and listening to their teachers brought up some memories and created new thoughts. First off, it was weird for me to come into a classroom where kids were surrounded not only by colorful walls, but a relaxing atmosphere, sofas and seats for relaxation, an organized classroom focused on  group work and Smart Boards and Netbooks for enriching the teaching and learning environment.

I jokingly said to Ethan after our presentation “Imagine a classroom in communist times, and there you have my middle school memories”. There was no emphasis on working and collaborating on works together, the only group projects we would get was to draw some stuff and hang them on the walls, knowing that they would be gone the next day. Back then, we couldn’t even imagine being able to use technology in school in or out of the classroom. The coolest and closest thing a kid could have was a CD player, and even that had nothing to do with school work or using technology with schools.
I remember my teacher making us do peer review twice! Well, giving me peer review twice. Kids with the highest scores got to grade the tests of the other kids. That is not peer review at all, but it was closest we had. Now thinking how these kids get to just go online, open a Google Doc, and peer review has never been easier. No matter how much I have used Google Docs, it was different trying to teach it to kids at an age where I could only wish I knew something like that, or thinking about whether I, or any of my peers would have understood it, so although what I said was brief, it felt weird choosing words to describe something and think back on when I was in Middle School for it to help them understand, and for me to teach it.

Thirty minutes also did not seem as enough time to actually go through more in-depth explanation or to answer questions, but these kids seemed to not even need more time. They hopped right into what they had to do, and that was the end of it. It almost made me feel like us telling them what we did might have been trivial for them. And these observations do not include my immense fear of actually teaching something to young kids, teaching people something in general frightens me a bit, and although it is such a meaningful and wonderful job to have, I could never do it.

But I tried, and even if the fear did not go away, it certainly seemed over-exaggerated in my head, previous to this experience.

One of the concluding thoughts I had regarding this teaching project was how using technology has increased immensely, maybe it is a cultural difference I am feeling here, because I know that even today, middle school kids in Macedonia do not use technology in their learning, so there we go again with cultural surprises (it was not a cultural shock, not even close, but it was still surreal to be part of something I once saw in movies and hoped it would be part of my everyday experiences).

The laid-back atmosphere, the confidence these kids have with technology and its use, and the almost informal teacher-student relationship was definitely something new, and I am well aware that that might have just been my observation, but I felt it is very helpful and something that should definitely be implemented back in my school. One of the things it does is decreasing the fear students feel towards their superiors (i.e. teachers), yet it still maintains the respect they should feel, and realize that the person standing in front of them is their second family, teaching them in the best possible way to go out into the world with much more confidence than what I was taught when I was their age.

In my previous post, I discussed a current educational situation in Macedonia involving technology. As I wrote, that didn’t turn out to be as successful as people in charge thought it would be. But none of the potential participants ever thought it might be successful, so skepticism was born before the idea was even implemented, and that might have been the deciding point regarding this teaching failure.

I was certainly not used to technology in the educational centers, paper and pen worked best there, but nowadays, especially here at College, technology is vital to our learning advances. Try to do your homework or class/exam preparation without your computer – if nothing it is a big challenge.

And then we had the teaching class. I never imagined needing to teach kids, so I never really bothered the thought of knowing how to. I am aware how to present it to them, but even as a young student, and a small kid in middle school not so long ago, I still don’t have a good enough idea that might interest the ‘younglings’ with what I have to say. So there we have it – two challenges that I have to combine and both teach and learn something from. Technology is starting to become a necessity in education, and being technologically literate is not an advantage anymore – it’s a demand. The way I learned about technology use and implementing it towards my education was through self-teaching methods. I was interested in the time when kids my age did not need to know stuff about computers. When it became so, knowing elementary stuff about technology did not suffice, so I went ahead to the advanced part. Luckily, that is not quite necessary today, but the more ways that people know how to use technology to their full advantage – the easier the process of learning, not just about technology, but with it, becomes.

So what do I teach? Well, combined with English as a subject, technological language and usage sounds important, proper Internet appearance, abbreviations and shortcuts that help sound good and software that helps towards better writing. And now all we have to do is, explain all this to middle school kids in the best way we can. What way that is… We’ll know soon.

When I was in elementary school around the age of 13, Macedonia’s government implemented a new law to push up its falling ratings in Education (+Technology).

Computer science was a subject we all had to go through (after the mandatory ‘Technical Education’ where we built stuff including small houses, cars, electrical boards and the likes) where we had to learn more about working with Microsoft Office products, using MS Paint (trivial, as was the class), and if we drew a tree perfectly, or managed to draw lines with different thickness, we had the rest of the class to play small online flash games. We loved getting to work with the computers, in a non-casual way, because at the time, rarely anyone had a computer on their desk, or would rarely see one. After two years of this type of class-slacking, the government decides it’s time for a forward leap into the world of IT and education, so implements the policy of “One Computer per Child” in any classroom. 

Now, even at that age, my skepticism was growing high by the day – they managed to choose the cheapest option of bringing (luckily) functional computers in every classroom in every school country-wide, and was praised by several news publishing media how after being the underdog for quite some time after Yugoslavia, Macedonia was lowering its odds in something significant.

Did it back-fire? Not really, the literacy rates didn’t drop down, the grades were kept constant or went up depending on the school’s acceptance criteria, but did the computers do that? Well…

The main thing that did happen with those computers is damage. Lots of it. People were stealing the mice (although they didn’t really need it, it was just a pure act of elementary school vandalism and rebellion against who knows what), cracking the computer screens by accidentally passing by it and dropping it on the floor, getting keyboard keys switched, throwing them at each other and other typical Macedonian-schools stuff.

We rarely turned on our computers. When we did, it was time for online flash pool, or tetris, as they were the only flash games that somehow did go past the proxy of the school. They used Ubuntu as their Operating System which was frankly a great idea for educational purposes, installed a couple of Physics Lab, Math Lab and the such, applications, and most importantly – they taught the students how to bypass the system and use complex codes in the given command prompt on Ubuntu which, if I recall correctly was called ‘The Terminal’, just to mess with the screens of other kids’ computers and leave inappropriate messages for the teacher to see through a different link (the Master PC had a surveillance program, so the teacher could see what we were doing at any time, but of course, we quickly learnt how to avoid that and continue our merry way in an anonymous fashion).

Teachers refused to work with computers. Mostly because we had elderly teachers that knew their subjects, but refused to mix it up with learning about how to use what was given to them to utilize time.

A typical high school classroom in Macedonia. See all the books in front of the computers? Yeah…

So the government spent millions per annuum to just keep up the image of a developed country – ‘look at us, we have computers for EVERYONE!… they are not using it in any practical sense, but we have them anyways.’

We still have the computers, broken ones get replaced every time, if they are reported, but who would know since no one has pressed the power button in years, we didn’t write papers on them, we didn’t take notes, no presentations, no applications used, but we did have a collection of random funny photos on them, and some downloadable flash game, so hurray for us, we had procrastination installed in the classroom, in front of us, at all times, for the sake of education (and the country’s image). What?

So that did backfire in a small sense for our government, but somehow education went up (and it was neither a causal or co-relational effect of the computers – it was the baby boom – more applicants to college, more competitiveness and the Medical School at the University of Ss. Cyrillus and Methodius  can now boast an acceptance rate as low as Harvard’s (don’t take my full word on this one) with applicants’ scores from the national baccalaureate ranging from 97 as the last accepted person in medical school in the private quota, and 100 as the first in the national quota (100 is the maximum score, and it works on a curve, meaning they didn’t just score all the points at the final exams, but did better than a 100% !!! of the country’s graduating class, whereas the poor soul who got in last did better than 97% of the whole graduating class. Shame on his family, shame on his cow).

Anyway, the country can still say they were the first in the world (apparently) to do the policy of One Computer:One Child, it didn’t have any effects whatsoever, it’s still going on, and recently Uruguay decided to join, and my friend from Uruguay and anyone discussing this in my IB Econ class was thrilled and said it helped Uruguay’s economy. No it didn’t. It’s a waste of money, and I’m sorry they didn’t use Macedonia as a case study to avoid the unnecessary burning away of the money they could’ve spent on wellfare.

Then again, I wish that at least for them – it brings some positive results back.

It is 06 pm – 02/10 Friday afternoon. Chose the perfect time to go on, this time, a lack of digital adventures. It wasn’t planned ahead, much like most of my digital use it was impromptu and subconscious, but I decided to stick with it, and finish this 24h Lent period :).

07 pm – After walking around campus, chatting with friends and other people, I cannot even feel that something is missing. As exaggerated as I made it sound, it didn’t feel like it before either. I left my smartphone in Macedonia on purpose (okay, not quite, I didn’t have the time to decode it and use it on US turf ), took my less impressing Sony Ericsson w890i and left it in my drawer since my second week. It was just a convenient alarm so I didn’t really feel any necessity to say goodbye to it for another 24 hours as I had been fine with it for a longer period. Also I don’t have a phone number (yet) so again, cellphone goodbye was the easiest part of all.

09 pm – More walking around campus, finding people, socializing, and let’s be clear, it was not a causal effect of my Digital Fasting. It might have been correlated, but then again, the only piece of technology I might be using at that time usually is my laptop, to catch up on some Modern Family or How I Met Your Mother. Irrelevant. I left my cellphone in my drawer, my laptop was conveniently low on battery, put it in my drawer and went on my merry way.

12 pm – 03/10 Saturday morning. I wake up (quite late, as per usual on weekends), grab some brunch, walk around, come back and grab my books. Nothing unusual for a Saturday, except that I was missing the constant beat in my ears coming from Spotify – for some reason I concentrate much better when I am listening to music while I am doing school work. Continued doing my homework, and did some readings, constantly getting more than annoyed by simple sounds such as people sniffing, lights ticking, doors opening and closing, people chatting, and I am more than aware everyone does that, even me, more than often (…but I have slight misophonia – hatred of certain sounds, which in itself does not help me concentrate, and that is one of the main reasons I do listen to music when I study) and that was probably the worst part of my media fast. I didn’t get to read the new articles on The Economist, or the Macedonian headlines, or see my facebook profile for a day, which again, as my mother would put it, it was not the end of the world (…”was it?”).

5 pm that same afternoon – Again, I go outside, find people, make plans for the night, get some food, and grab a cup of coffee. I was relaxing and chatting outside of Proctor for what seemed as a nice couple of hours. It was. Before I knew it, it was 7:30pm (excuse my possible inaccuracy it might have been 7:36pm), and I went to my room and checked my email, and my facebook. A couple of notifications from school events, a couple of messages from family and friends, and my media fast was broken 25h 30(36)mins after it began. I am alive, and so far, haven’t noticed a particular change in any activity I have been doing.

That was me, unplugged. Not a recovering addict of internet and media, but a social, occasional user, who if it weren’t for the drawbacks of being far away from home, would not even feel the need to be constantly online and in touch.

I am a  big movie fan. Scratch that, I am a really passionate movie fan. I’d like to say I’ve seen them all, but at least I can say I’ve seen most of which define the movie scene from past to present times. I even made a ‘philosophical movie discussion’ for the Philosophy journal I was part of in high school, something they never did before for (very) obvious reasons. TV Shows, clips, movies, TV films, blockbusters, low-budget (low-commercial) I (almost) liked them all.

But I’ve only been to the cinema three times in my life… At first it was because  there was no cinema where I lived in Macedonia (I know, right?), and then it was because we got used to easy access to everything online. I used to rent videos at the time video stores were present, and then I went online.

Just to think that the issue of ‘What movie are we watching?’ is not a thing you might plan a week ahead, unless you have a friend/SO date at the cinema, is baffling in itself – but all those online catalogs of movies you can watch with just a click instantly planted itself in our culture and renting movies might be called ancient history now. Netflix, Hulu, even illegal broadcasting and sharing of movie and TV show files, everything is right in front of us, and we take advantage of it as much  as we can AND we keep up with all of our shows, our favorite director’s latest pieces, documentaries, with one single click (to be honest, it might take more until you reach the desired media, but you get my point).

My inspiration is low and I have countless of things to say about this topic, but I just wanted to point out my everlasting fascination with how the internet developed every media, in every view, making us present for anyone at all times, and the simple fact that we can do anything we want without moving an inch (unless you need to take your laptop from your desk or plug it in or something similar, so I wouldn’t be taken literally)  and do your shopping, ranging from clothes to groceries and necessities, to doing your homework, reading a book, watching a movie, keeping up with your favorite TV show, and hey, while we are at it, update your schedule, contact your parents, set your alarm, and you have gone through your ‘chores’ all from your bed (again, disregarding the physical movements regarding cleaning, getting ready and similar).

We are living in a digital world, and it’s growing and moving faster then we are used to, but we go with it, and we use it as much as we can without the sense that we are part of something that has changed the world and the way society works in its core.

Sorry for my messy rambling.

If it wasn’t for the weekly broadcasts of the Premier League, and me catching a glimpse at its glory (remember that unbeaten-run season Arsenal FC 2003-04?), the products of a great marketing campaign (seriously, football/soccer is viral in Europe, fans live by their teams, people always choose a side, and finals are always emotional) has reached to me in my young years, and I had no idea how to respond to that other than in the same way everyone else did – Join the rave.

And I joined all-right. Chelsea was pretty big on my list of important things, scarily occupying number 1 some times (game times, relax random observers) – I honestly shed a few tears in 2008 at the Moscow final – That Terry slip was painful to go through, but I got a gift in 2011 that made me the happiest person alive.

That right there is signed by the team who went on to win the first Champions League title in the team’s history, and I had it in my hands. Surreal.

I visited the place below the football picture, just this summer, and was able to share most of my time there via Viber, Skype, Instagram and Facebook, and it seemed like more people need to know about it all. But a lot of them did. How did I choose Chelsea FC to begin with? I saw it on TV. I was excited when Shevchenko signed at the time with the team, I was able to read about it the day it happened online. Mourinho’s comeback was a hit on every social network, and all transfer rumours have seen the light of day immediately as they were spoken. I saw them the same time they went out, all through a buzz-feed, SMS texts and all the extras that just keep you up-to-date.

At present times I don’t even need to be such an avid follower to know stuff about my team. I don’t have to even be in the same time-zone as London, I’ll be getting news, and I will know how the games are going. But then we see the loyal part of fan slowly diminish into a trivial added word. Who can be called a loyal fan nowadays anyway? Everybody can follow Chelsea as much as I do thanks to today’s media, so how am I as a fan distinguishable by any other fan out there?

(Psst – it’s the love towards the club and full support, rather than keeping in touch)

Access to everything ever said, written, drawn, done that has been recorded can now virtually be accessed everywhere, from almost every corner on Earth on any digital device we own… And we take it less than lightly most of the time. In the new era of communications, file accessing is the main thing that makes the fast-paced life we live even faster, information is open and competition is fierce, and knowledge can be attained in the most convenient form, in the midst of an argument, a debate, a casual chat with any of our friends just by typing in words connected to what we need to know.

People can manipulate with this information in all sorts of fields by just clicking a few buttons, learn when and how to do certain things, from small scale event planning to future business planing (e.g. Facebook events for the former, and something as simple, but huge, as Google*)

This open access to everything that forms us can be seen by everyone, and although it sounds and is scary, it avoids the past nuisance of meeting people, finding places, forming a community of a shared interest or hobby which can reach millions of like-minded people in just a matter of weeks.

I am impressed with the way we can use the Internet and our digital devices, yet at the same time still quite saddened by most of its colloquial and unimportant use. Then again, if everyone is to use everything they own at its maximum capacity, havoc will ensue throughout an entire group, population, nation and worldwide (e.g. WikiLeaks, NSA surveillance leaks, etc.) so people tend to stick with the safe use of most of it, enjoying the easy leisure it provides, since for most of us, it spares much time to use one device for numerous purposes (e.g. Applications for phones, tablets, computers that can deliver any information needed on the palms of our hands from ebooks to movies to social connections); And we love it.

I wrote this post just to skim through some ideas I have of accessibility of information to the way we approach it, and just conclude with the fact that while some people might be chatting their friend from Hong Kong or Australia on the other side of the planet at almost any given time, other people are using and learning SQL, HTML, C++ and many of the rest of programming languages to understand how they can access everything they can, and make it easier and available for all of the rest, who just stick to the surface of its use.

*By using Google for business purposes, I mean the business-oriented applications they have made available, but also the easy-use search engine to find listings, business websites, exchange rates, and anything related to reach a specific business tool or web in a matter of seconds.

It started off from my once a week allowance to go online and download pictures for my Desktop PC quite a few years ago, to not being as able to go through the day without checking several electronic devices in order for a normal-functioning day. I have replaced many devices in one meta-device that offers the plethora of devices I might need to use individually in only a black 5” cover with a multi-touch screen.

Waking up with the alarm clock on my phone going off.
Checking my emails on either the said phone or laptop eagerly sitting next to it.
Refreshing facebook, twitter, reddit and such over and over again, on any device that supports them on its platform.
Reading several newspapers on one device? Check.
Watching movies, pausing, and checking your RSS feed in the meantime, again, on the silly little iPhone? Done.

Digital media, since its exponential growth in the social world, has been a vital part in the daily life on the average media user. It has, as such, grown into mine.