moocowinthecity Yes, I’m using my phone during this meeting.
https://www.buzzsprout.com/1339411/8423095-yes-i-m-using-my-phone-during-this-meeting.js?container_id=buzzsprout-player-8423095&player=smallTranscript:
Yes, I’m using my phone during this meeting.
A question I’ve found myself asked at more than one meeting (work, committee, community, or otherwise) is “are you really on your phone during this meeting? I figured I’d share why “yes, I’m using my phone during this meeting” and “yes, my students are encouraged to use their phones in my class” has became a regular part of my self-advocacy, self-care, social worker vernacular. I may even make little cards with QR codes to hand out that link to this podcast.
This is an important topic. It’s important for disability rights, it’s important for students, it’s important for workers, and it’s important for the future of Social Work tech:
I can touch type on my phone as quickly if not more quickly than a keyboard, and certainly faster than I can write. Beyond speed, the main (and most important) difference is that I can put digital words to digital paper without the joint or muscle pain that accompanies typing or writing due to my rheumatoid arthritis and myositis. Yes I will, largely, be looking up at the speaker as they present or speak (it’s common courtesy, and it’s important to provide non-verbal feedback as a learner), but the speaker or presenter doesn’t need my unbreaking eye contact and undivided attention for me to understand and retain what they’re saying.
No one would ever be admonished for taking a brief moment in time to look down at their handwritten notes, and so I expect (and, since I set healthy boundaries, require) that the same courtesy is extended to me: whether I’m checking I typed a word correctly, or adding an event someone just shared to my calendar and then returning to the notepad app.
No I don’t write down protected health information (I don’t when writing on paper, either). Simply put, I use the most efficient tool for me to memorialize what you are saying, process it, think about it, remember it, and recall it later. That I have my phone out indicates that I care enough about what you have to say, to take notes on it, and to think about it later.
Solution Focused Practice calls on us to recognize that our clients and patients are the experts on themselves and their own lives. As practitioners, managers, leaders, and teachers we owe others (and ourselves) this same freedom and respect.