blackout time

Technology Blackout Assignment1

One of the major objectives of this course is to have you examine your relationship to technology and

technology’s association to your body. To help us accomplish this objective, everyone in the course will spend 24

hours giving up access to all communication and entertainment technologies (defined as electronicallymediated).

This means, no cell phone calls, no texting, no email, no Twitter, no Facebook or Snapchat, no

landline calls, no TV, no radio, no MP3 players, no gaming consoles, no Internet, no computer use, or anything

else that lies within the spirit of this exercise.

This means that you need to plan ahead! You might need to get an assignment completed before the day it is due.

You will need to let you friends, family, coworkers, and professors know about your unavailability.

You will need to set in place a way for emergency information to get to you (often calling a roommate, RA or

friend who knows your whereabouts). You will probably need to think about how you will spend your time

because temptation will likely be strong. Face-to-face communication is of course fine. Writing things using pen

and paper is fine. Reading books and physical papers is fine: use your library and copy machine.

We will do this activity now through the end of semester. You may replace any one week of Reflection in the

course with this Technology Blackout Reflection. You may choose any 24 hours during the semester, but I

highly encourage you to to start sooner rather than later (if you are unable to go a full 24 hours you will have to

try again the next day) before the pressures of midterms and assignments in other courses will pile up and make

it more difficult to complete this assignment. I will be participating with you and bring my reflections about my

own experience to class as well. This exercise will require some level of sacrifice, but it is important to

accomplish our objective and will reveal associations that were not present before the exercise.

FIELD NOTES

In order to get an accurate view of your experience you will be jotting quick reflections on paper every three

hours (that you are awake) during the assignment. Reflection worksheets are available from the instructor and

can be downloaded from D2L.

Every three hours pull out the sheet and you will be asked to jot down answers to the following questions:

•  What time is it?

•  Where are you?

•  What are you doing?

•  Who are you with? (don’t use proper names – just describe the people in terms of their

relationship to you – e.g. “study group”, “guys from my frat,” “my boyfriend” etc.)

•  Have you been tempted to use technology in the last 3 hours? What devices/programs and why?

•  Any other details or reflections of interest

MINI-PAPER

The paper should be approximately 4 pages or 1000 words. The paper will have two sections (written before and

after the 24 hours of disconnect). Please weave these sections together with an introduction and summary.

PART I

The first section of the paper will be written PRIOR to your 24 hours of disengagement. In the first section of

the paper I want you to answer the following questions:

•  What are you doing to prepare for disconnecting?

•  What do you think will be the most challenging aspect of disconnecting? The easiest?

•  What technology will be the most difficult to give up and why? What will be the easiest and

why?

•  Are you excited about this assignment? Why or why not?

PART II

The second section of your paper will be written AFTER your period of disconnect. Your answers to these

questions and overall reflections on the experience will comprise the second half of the paper.

•  What technologies ended up being the most difficult and easiest to give up? How was this

different from your expectations? Why?

•  What ended up being the most challenging aspect of disconnect? What ended up being the

easiest How was this different from your expectations?

•  What surprised you most about the experience?

•  Was your disconnection difficult for others in your life? Who? Why? In what ways?

•  Did you enjoy this assignment? Do you think you might ever try something like this again? Why

or why not?

Be certain that your paper honestly addresses what you really missed by being off-line for a day, the reactions of

others, what if anything you gained by being off-line, and any insights or frustrations that participating in the

exercise invoked. Make sure to include concrete details about what you did with your time and whether you will

think differently about your technology use in the future. Do not use first names in the paper (say “my

roommate” rather than “Bob”). You may draw from readings from the course to discuss what was illuminated

(or possibly what you found incorrect!) by participating in this exercise.

GRADING RUBRIC

MINI PAPER POINTS METRIC

1 Well-Written: Proper grammar, spelling and sentence structure

2 Addressing Issues: Does the paper address each of the questions on

this sheet? I expect evidence that you thought about the questions both

before and after the time of disconnect. Your answers can be weaved

into the document and should not be numbered or in bullet form.

2 Quality of Reflection of the Experience: It is important to be selfreflective

and honest in your assessment of the experience. Does the

paper provide evidence that you have thoroughly thought through the

experience and your relationship with technology?

FIELD NOTES

1 Legibility: Can we read your handwriting?

4 Thoroughness and Concrete Details: Concrete details are the

key to good field notes. Do the field notes show an effort to

answer questions at regular 2-3 hour periods? Is it apparent that

the student took the assignment seriously?

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