Tag Archives: technology

Ditching their devices on digital detox day (haha!)

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During this era of educational dystopia, my kids have started whining endlessly about having to go to actual, physical school. It sets my teeth on edge every time they grimace and say, “Do I have to go to school tomorrow?”

“Yes, you do,” I reply without fail, feeling cross. I blame all the school closures for this. For making them think it doesn’t matter if they miss school. That going to school is negotiable. 

“Can’t we do online school instead?” they wail.

“No,” I snap, my blood pressure rising. It isn’t up for discussion, in my books. How will they get through life if they think it’s okay to just absent themselves or hide away online the moment they have to do something they don’t want to do. 

I try to explain that the past two years are not the new normal, that the cancellations and closures, the rolling out of bed two minutes before online registration, the virtual classrooms, contract tracing, non-stop masking and threat of exams being suspended are NOT acceptable. But it’s been two years now. That’s quite a long time in their lifetimes.

I want them to learn that showing up – in person – is one of the most important things in life. But maybe I’m just being old school. It’s so hard to impart this lesson when Covid has encouraged a no-show, stay-away culture. 

Anyhow, their constant campaign to skip school was stepped up a notch on Friday, the last day before half-term. I heard all about how half the school would be missing due to being close contacts (probably true), and because lots of parents far nicer than us had given their kids the last day off (really?). They also told me it was digital detox day.

I laughed out loud at their dismay! I could imagine the teachers talking it up, telling the students they’d be on a digital detox the next day, trying to make it sound fun. And my boys visibly whitening, horrified at the prospect of not getting their electronic fix.

“Look, it’s only half a day,” I argued back to them. Fridays in the UAE for the public sector and schools are short, half-days now. Honestly my kids are home at precisely 12.05pm, in weekend mode. I’ve had to start going to the office on Fridays as it’s impossible to get a whole day’s work done with them – and their equally demob-happy friends – in the house.   

Happily (for me), they both went to school on Friday, and suffered (their words) through digital detox morning. I refuse to call it a day when it was only four hours.

“How was it?” I asked Son1 that evening.

“Horrible,” he replied and I found myself wondering if they’d actually switched the entire school wifi off (hehehe). I pictured him holding his phone in the recovery position, raised above his head, desperately hoping it would pick up a signal. 

I was tempted to tell my sons for the umpteenth time that I didn’t have internet as a child, and when I first got on the world wide web at home it was a noisy dial-up connection that crawled along painfully slowly while I grew older waiting for pages to load. But they think that was back in the dark ages.  

What the tech happened? If the password inventor thinks his creation is a nightmare, what hope is there for the rest of us!

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I was determined today to video chat with my BF in London, who has been seriously ill and is recuperating at home. Now, I should say upfront that I’m hopeless with all these video-calling apps. Maybe it’s just me, but it takes me so long to get them working that I might as well just jump on a plane and turn up in person.

I had a go with FaceTime – which now seems to be called FaceTap. But no matter how much tap- tap- tapping I did, it wasn’t going to work – I’d forgotten that it’s blocked in the UAE.

So I turned to Whatsapp. There was a brief moment of elation in the UAE a few months ago when the voice and video-calling features on Whatsapp were unblocked. I remember the day well: we did a happy dance at work and, around the UAE, millions of expatriates called friends and family back home on Whatsapp – rendering the network so overloaded that it became unresponsive.

Holding my breath, I tapped my BF’s contact and then the Whatsapp video icon – it half worked! I could see and hear her, the inside of her London apartment filling the screen, blurred at first, and wonky, then coming into clear focus.

“I can only see your photo! I can’t hear you!” said my BF. Her lovely face, out of sync with the sound, assumed a puzzled expression as she peered at her screen.

After a minute or two of me sending ‘I can see you!’ messages, like some kind of breathy, deep-throated dirty caller, I had to give up on Whatsapp too.

So Skype. This was the answer, I decided. I knew it worked in the UAE as I’ve used it before – there was just the small problem of the app apparently vanishing from my devices and not being able to download it again as my Apple password wasn’t working. Here’s how it went:

Enters password

wrong

wrong

wrong

I cycle through all my other passwords, try out the obvious, attempt to recall what was going on in my life at the time I made the password. Make sure I’m typing correctly. I even try meditating.

I mean really? To avoid having your identity stolen, use long passwords that contain digits, punctuation and no recognisable words. Make up a different password for every website –and change all of your passwords every 30 days. HAVE THESE SECURITY PUNDITS EVER LISTENED TO THEMSELVES? Apparently the inventor of passwords has even publicly said his creation is a ‘nightmare’.

Geeks2

The Geeks  *want one*

My mind wanders to a press release I’d received about a new service in the UAE called Geeks. They promise to come and sort out all your technical problems, from setting up a cloud backup to installing a nanny cam (!) If Catherine the Great ever leaves us, I’m so going to hire a Geek to live in her room and never have any technical problems ever again!

The meditating failing, I get annoyed and want to throw my iPad out the window. I’m so sure one of the passwords I’m trying is the right one.

Eventually, I go about resetting my Apple password, using ‘my trusted phone number’, a combination of digits and the last of my will power.

And a message flashes up: ‘New password can’t be old password”

Sets fire to computer.

The technology struggle is real!

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I’ve relaunched the blog! It’s now on a different, self-hosted platform, which means I’m having to learn a few new tricks and do things slightly differently. There’s nothing quite like getting to know a system really well, then throwing it out the window and starting again with something that looks similar but is, in fact, a souped-up, all-singing, all-dancing version that turns my brain to putty.

I like it when the technology I use stays the same. Maybe I’m easily confused, but it irked me recently when my Outlook mail account started sorting my inbox for me into ‘Focused’ messages and ‘Others’. I mean: How does it KNOW which emails I need to read and which ones I can ignore? All that happens is I think I’m caught up, and then I find a whole pile of messages sitting smugly and silently in the ‘Others’ folder. Can I next expect an algorithm humanoid to show up at my office to rearrange the files in my filing cabinet? Needless to say, I’m still trying to figure out how to turn this new Outlook feature off.

I’m also one of those people who see those little icons and pop-up messages on my computer, iPad and iPhone, indicating there is a new software update available, and inwardly groan. The thought of having to download and install whatever it is they’ve come up with now fills me with distrust. I find it disruptive. And then I ignore it, thinking ‘I don’t need it anyway’, ‘My computer’s working just fine’ or ‘This update’s not for me!’

old TV

Turning the telly on was much easier in days gone by

Okay, while I’m at it, it also annoys me that turning on a TV these days requires three remotes with 60 buttons. I quote Bridget Jones: “Suspect designed by 13-year-old technogeeks, competing with each other from sordid bedrooms, leaving everyone else thinking they’re the only person in the world who doesn’t understand what the buttons are for, thus wreaking psychological damage on a massive, global scale.”

And I’m not even going to tell you what happened last week when I attempted to operate our tumble dryer for the first time (in my defence, we rarely use it – the climate ensures clothes become bone-dry super fast when hung outside). Okay, briefly: It was nearly midnight. The dog had peed on the clean duvet that my mother-in-law, arriving very late, was to use. The buttons had only strange hieroglyphic swirls on them. There seemed to be about 40 different drying combinations, none of which actually dried the duvet in time. I felt like a man.

Am I the only person who thinks it’s all getting a bit ridiculous?

Getting water from the fridge has even become a complicated task. There’s a type of fridge – a Kenmore Elite I believe – that offers you temperature options, manual, automatic. You have to choose how many ounces of water you want (who knows how many ounces a glass takes?!?!), what type of ice, and more.

Anyway, rant over. I’m working on my trust issues. In the interest of keeping up with my older son, who has become so fluent in technology it’s downright intimidating, I’ve decided to try to tackle all these technical things head on. I’m going to stop being scared of software updates, turning the TV on, operating the dryer, and hope this makes life run more smoothly.

Welcome to the new-look blog – and forgive me if it takes me a while to figure out what all the damn bells and whistles do.

School reports – what the hell happened?

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It’s lunchtime at work. On the day our magazine goes to press so it’s all hands to the pump meeting our deadline. I munch on my sandwich, and click on an email from school – the interim reports are out.

Well, actually they’re not ‘out’ at all; they’re hidden away on the school’s password-protected portal. I should look, I think to myself, just a quick look while I eat lunch. Two minutes later, I’m ruing the day I set up my account and didn’t commit my username to memory.

Wait, what’s this? The reports are available on an app. All I have to do is download the iParent app, put in a password, and Bob’s your uncle: Son2’s report will appear on my phone.

So, because I’ve really got nothing better to do today, other than meeting all our work deadlines, I attempt to download the app. I say ‘attempt’ – it’s yet another parent fail for me. My phone screen turns as white as a sheet, and I feel the heat rising in my cheeks as this happens three times: Damn app. Why can’t they just give me a paper copy of the report, or is that just really last-century now?

By now, I’ve become determined that this won’t defeat me, and so I trawl my in-box looking for portal log-on details. Woohoo, I find them, and I’m into Fort Knox – I can download the report. That was 25 minutes of my day I won’t get back (and my whole lunch ‘hour’), but never mind – I’m super curious to see how Son2 is doing.

screen-shot-2017-01-20-at-00-36-00

Give us a ‘B’! No chance – those people at the Standards & Testing Agency have lost their minds

Let’s just say, this is the moment I’m reminded how infuriating school reports have become. While this one isn’t a full-length report, with pages of tables, targets and almost impenetrable numbers and letters, it still leaves me utterly baffled. Even after I read the two-page e-mail (longer than the report) explaining the UK’s new marking system.

“Can you make any sense of this?”  I ask DH when I get home. “It needs decoding.”

He reads it, scratching his head. “Hmmm. Well, ‘secure +’ in reading sounds good, doesn’t it? But what’s the number 2?” He shrugs.

“No idea,” I say, and re-read the blurb about attainment being presented in a series of steps within age-related year bands. Wtf? It’s a linguistic minefield: ‘working within’; ‘ideally pupils will make six steps progress’; ‘a standardised assessment’; and on consulting Google, ‘a scaled score based on their raw score’.

DH and I are thinking exactly the same thing: Why can’t they just tell us if he’s an A, B, C or D? We could understand that. And even talk to him about it.

 I peer again at the bar chart, but my eyes are tired. Son2, meanwhile, is lounging on the sofa, getting away with all this completely scot-free as his parents try to puzzle it out.

“Well, I’m taking ‘secure +’ to be good,” says DH.

“But the number 2?” I say.

“What about it?

“Well if that’s the year band, it doesn’t make sense or he’s really behind … he’s year 3.”

Oh how I miss the days of teachers writing a few scrawled, occasionally acerbic lines about their pupils.

A technically challenged Christmas

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Twas Christmas morning, when all though the house, there was the most almighty din.

As the morning mayhem ensued, I braced myself for what I knew was coming next: “Dad, can we set up the Xbox? Now, now, NOW – pleeeeeeease!”

Expecting Son 1 to just look at the box was a far-fetched notion, so we started in earnest. I mean, how hard could it be? Surely easier than flat-packed Ikea furniture. Once the Xbox was done, we could move on to setting up the wii, then head out to eat and relax later while the children played each other (Santa had wisely brought two Xbox consoles to avert WW3).

DH plugs it in, disappearing in a puff of dust as he moves things around behind the TV. The Xbox springs to life, and immediately tells us:

Updates required.

What? It’s brand new. How can it possibly be out of date already? (damn you, Microsoft) So, we wait patiently, watching the bar nudge its way across the screen as the first lot of updates are installed. And then the second lot.

seasonal-celebrations-xbox-christmas-yuletide-father_christmas-grotto-ksmn1526l.jpgLongest wait ever for two small children on Christmas morning.

The machine seems happy now it’s been fed with the latest software, but I suspect couldn’t care less about us getting Christmas dinner. It starts calibrating.

Then it needs to run some tests. On the background noise in our house. Now, remember, we have two boys – both of whom are loud at the best of times, let alone after a visit from Santa.

It soon becomes apparent that we’ve failed the test. “Your house is too noisy,” it states, or words to that effect. And I could hardly argue otherwise.

We’re given a second chance (it’s Christmas, after all). “Shhhh,” I tell the overexcited boys. “Don’t make a sound.” And, miraculously, you could have heard a pin drop in our house.

Finally, it looks like we’re getting somewhere – escape out of the house, to a Christmas brunch, is shining like a light at the end of the tunnel. We shove a disc in and hope for the best.

“The system does not support PAL50,” it flashes back at us. “Go to settings… [And, while you’re at it, forget about getting dressed up – why not go in your PJs, no make-up, messy hair.]”

“OK, OK,” we muster, scrolling through various menus, somehow pressing the right combination of buttons and unleashing a game, which (small mercy) the boys already knew how to play.

A few minutes later, DH and I are lying on the bed upstairs, snatching a few minutes of respite – as the unassembled wii machine winks at us from the corner (Round two, ding ding).

“It was much easier in 1996,” says DH. “When all you had to do was put a cartridge in.”

“I know,” I nod, wearily. “It’s all so kids can have uncommunicative playtime with gamers all round the world, hiding behind avatars. Maybe they can hook up with their cousins,” I add brightly. And then we head out, taking my new Sat Nav with us and plugging it into the car.

It defaults to Arabic – and can we change it? No, of course not. Fifteen minutes of fiddling with it proves fruitless. “You know what DH,” I sigh. “I think we might have to read the instructions.”

Happy days!

Technology infiltrates prayer time

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Have you ever watched a three-year-old play with an iPad? It’s actually quite shocking. The way those chubby fingers fly round the screen, leaving smeery fingerprints as they go, and the way the machine is handed back to you with 2% battery power.

While nobody was looking, something has happened to today’s tots. They’ve become ‘screen-agers’, who intuitively know that an iPad isn’t a toy, it’s a toy chest of apps and games.

Here at Circles, I’m continually nagged, harassed and cajoled until I give in and pass the iPad over to the children. LB can find and play a whole raft of kids’ apps (check iGameMom.com for some great ideas) and his six-year-old brother is just a click away from downloading hundreds more from the Apple Store.

“Books….nah! Mummy’s iPad is much more fun AND it can teach me to read”

And, I’m the first to admit, it’s the most wonderful electronic babysitter – especially during those times when you need to get things done, like make dinner, or drive.

I’d go so far as to suggest that iPads might even have been designed with young children in mind. They’re small and compact, with no power cords to trip on or chew, and they’re instantly on, cutting down on whinge time. What’s more, they’re made to be touched, with no keys to get jammed up with juice or bashed.

I worked out today that by the time my children reach middle school, they’ll have been using an iPad almost every day for eight years.

But just as noteworthy is the way modern technology has crept into every part of our children’s lives. Kids can learn to read and count on iPads, they can colour in virtual colouring books, bake electronic pies and video the ceiling. They can watch cartoons and movies on iPads and play games galore. And that’s not all: modern technology can even infiltrate prayer time.

My good friend and mother of BB’s girlfriend told me yesterday that after saying a prayer for her five-year-old daughter that evening, she was asked: “Mommy, say ‘send’.

So cute, it was worth a whole blog post!