Saturday 20 February 2016

Juggling Too Much Technology




I have been thinking that with the way my health is going I should invest in a new laptop. Possibly considering one that if high on memory, easy to use and light and manoeuvrable!
This isn’t because I am one of those people who chase the latest technology that is out there, far from it! I am thinking that it would benefit me between the many roles that I have.

I am a trained teacher and it’s a strong part of me that comes through as a parent which is fantastic considering that we Home Educate.
What many of you probably don’t know is what I do when I am not Home Schooling the boys!

On a couple of evenings a week I run a Quiz night at local Pubs. I have always enjoyed a quiz and even more so a Pub Quiz so to be a Quizmaster is great fun. Along with the fun I do have to do a bit of work to organise it.
Then throughout the week I teach the Piano and the Guitar to a range of pupils in ability and age. This, just like the Home Education, is an enjoyment that plays on my strengths and passion as a teacher.

As you can imagine I am a busy guy that is juggling a lot of different roles and as you can probably also see that I haven’t mentioned the time that I spend on blogging and up keeping social media for my sanity and for the blog!
I am JUST keeping on top of all of this but it’s a must for to pay the bills and to afford the different necessities for the Boys and their education.

One of the biggest problems I have is that amongst all these different jobs either at home or at the Pub I end up trying to run it all from several different devices!
In Home School we have time for the Boys to use my laptop for some I.C.T work. I also manage to download videos, clips, interactive programmes from them to learn from. This then uses either my phone, which we stream via a Chromecast to the T.V, or my laptop again.

When I am running the Pub Quiz I usually keep the downloaded music on my laptop as that’s where I tend to write and then play the music from. (With the edition of taking speakers with me to feed through from the laptop)
When teaching the Piano and the Guitar, once again, I end up using my phone. There are some great apps that support metronomes, tuning and chord sequences.

Now jump to blogging and social media and you can see that between my T.V, Laptop and Phone that I am constantly juggling these devices with every job that I go to!
With this in mind:
  • I have to charge my phone almost 3 times a day
  • Charge my laptop a couple of times a day
  • Use most of the memory and storage to facilitate all these different roles!
This ends up being me (Well the part with the bag full of devices!):


So now that I have explained all of that I hope that it would make more sense for me to upgrade to something new. I have been looking primarily at Dell as they are usually quite good at combining the idea of work and personal usage all in one (As the Gif above shows).

The problem also arises that I am not a technology chaser; people will often show me their latest gadget and I have no idea about them. In reality I am a renaissance man being shown a mobile phone!

Case in point: I didn’t know what a Selfie Stick was until only a few months ago!!

So a question for you all:
How do you juggle working at home, or going from work to home and juggle all your technology?

Do you have multiple devices or are you efficient and have one master device?
(This was a collaborative post. My opinions are my own and I am under no obligations to give a positive review. Please see my full disclosure at the bottom of my blog)

6 comments:

Alan said...

That's an issue I have Martyn. Except mine is trying to juggle blogging between hospital and therapy appointments.

It was part of the reason I chose a windows phone for my last phone. The seamless integration between it and a windows 10 laptop. (When my stepson allows me to borrow his) There are no apps at all. With the exception of Microsoft Office.

Ideally I'd love a phone that has a decent camera, good memory and all the apps a Blogger needs.

Hope you find one that does the job for you.

Martyn Kitney said...

That is so frustrating! I know how much trouble you're having with your phone issues. Such a shame as you need to have a device that suits all your needs.

I think this is common though and there's always more than one device as none fully do what we would like.

I do like the idea of a laptop that has the slide of screen. It would make a difference for me

Siena Says said...

I still haven't found the solution. I rely on my iphone a lot, but often struggle because of my middle aged eyesight and I'm getting a real strain in my thumb.

I suppose I need to use a tablet, but I like the keyboard on a laptop better for work.

Martyn Kitney said...

This is exactly my problem! Phone just doesn't cut it and I prefer a keyboard. I think the slide off screen laptop/tablet would be better.

Plutonium Sox said...

Oh, I totally get this. Well, I have my desktop that I am working on now, which has my foot pedal for when I'm audiotyping. We have two laptops, one of which is currently broken. We have an iPad for the children and Instagram is all done on my phone...

Kate said...

I rely on my phone a lot for during the day (Samsung) but I'm limited with what I can do. I work from home too and its Ok for answering emails but not a lot else. Unfortunately as soon as I try to get the tablet out to work from, the kids wants to claim it as theirs to watch Youtube! Come evening, its the laptop which is a godsend.