E-mail, Social Media, and Sesame Street – those are my words for the day.
All students had to fill out a media diary for their first module of MCO 425: Digital Media Literacy. According to the assignment: “For this week’s blog entry, you will be creating a 24-hour media diary. Taking an inventory of how we’re using media is a great foundational activity for every media literate individual. It gives us a clearer picture of our current media habits so that we can practice what we’re learning in class in the context of our own habits.”
Since my students shared their media habits with me, I thought it was fair to track my own screen time and share it with the class. My media diary covers Tuesday, May 23, 2023.
4:03 a.m. Waking up too early. So, I play a sleep story on the Calm app on my iPhone.
5:40 a.m. After I wake up, I sit down on my meditation pillow and do some breathing exercises on my Calm App. I also find a meditation session on the app. This week, I’m trying out the Master Class on Mindful Eating. I also get up and do a Daily movement session with the app. I use my Apple Watch Workout app to track my daily movement and yoga sessions.
6:15 a.m. I pick up my iPhone and browse through e-mail messages and check updates on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. I also check Eventbrite to manage a Zoom chat event with Sesame Street Workshop. I basically wanted to see how many people have signed up for this afternoon’s event. I decided to adjust the ticket capacity to accommodate more attendees.
6:27 a.m. I work on my personal and academic writing on 750words.com. I have the site pulled up on my MacBook Pro. This site has helped me develop a daily writing habit. I used it to study for my comprehensive exams and to develop my dissertation prospectus. Now I’m using it to prepare two research paper presentations for the International Communication Association Conference in Toronto.
6:53 a.m. In the kitchen, I watch morning news shows on CBS 5 and 3TV on YouTube TV (on my iPad) while I make my kid’s lunch.
7:10 a.m. I do another check of e-mail, Twitter, and Instagram on my phone. I also check my Slack messages.
7:20 a.m. My family listens to Morning Edition on the NPR app, on my husband’s iPad. My kid wanted to listen to an audio essay that I filed for KJZZ’s The Show yesterday. I wrote about the first Filipino American muppet on Sesame Street. So I pulled up kjzz.org and played the story for him. Then we went back to listening to Morning Edition.
7:55 a.m. I’m back on my phone, and I check e-mail, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram as I wait for my kid to finish putting on his shoes and getting his stuff together for summer camp.
8:04 a.m. While driving my son to summer camp, we listen to Morning Edition on my car radio.
8:30 a.m. At the gym, our GX45 instructor plays her workout playlist for class. She’s using her phone, and I think she has an iTunes playlist. I am also tracking my workout with the Workout app on my Apple Watch.
9:20 a.m. After my workout, I check my e-mail on my phone and Slack messages.
10:30 a.m. Back home. When I finish cleaning up, I start grading assignments on Canvas. I use my Mac Mini. I also use WordPress to create a Classroom Work page. I also check e-mail and Eventbrite. I check in with our event moderator on Facebook Messenger. We agree to sign on our Zoom chat about 15 minutes early, to test connections, audio, and video before our Sesame Street Workshop guests join us. I have my earbuds in, and I’m listening to the Morning Coffee Playlist on my Calm app on my iPhone.
12:02 p.m. Listening to the BTS station on Sirius XM on my husband’s iPad as we eat lunch.
12:42 p.m. Listening to Here and Now on my car radio as I drive to campus for a meeting. They ran a fascinating story about a so-called Spring housing sales slump.
2:10 p.m. I drove back home and finished listening to a Sporkful podcast on Vietnamese food and cookbook author Andrew Ngyuen.
3:45 p.m. I launched my Zoom room from my home office and prepped for an AAJA Arizona chat with Sesame Street Workshop’s Alan Muraoka, who plays the owner of Hooper’s Store, and Kathleen Kim, the performer behind Ji-Young, the first Korean American muppet on the show. We had about 40 people join us for the chat, and AP reporter Terry Tang led the Q&A. It was a wonderful conversation for AAPI Heritage Month.
6:02 p.m. My family and friends went over to our neighborhood pub for dinner and trivia. The sports bar had plenty of television sets on for the Celtics v. Heat game and the Golden Knights v. Stars game.
9:30 p.m. I did one more check of e-mail, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook on my iPhone. I also listened to the Liminal Sleep album by Sigur Rós on the Calm app. Finally, I read a couple of stories in the David Sedaris book, “The Best of Me.”