Our Digital Lives

   This summer, Claudia and I will be on vacation in Italy.  As I look back over the evolution of this trip, it's impossible to imagine planning it without an ongoing dependence on technology.

    The trip began to take shape last Thanksgiving.  We were in New Mexico with our college friends, Rick and Jan.  We've known them for 40 years, and have vacationed with them off and on over the years.  Last November, we hatched a plan to go to Italy together.  We talked about several different itineraries, but as we departed for NJ, nothing was set.

    We continued to exchange ideas via email and texts, and eventually a plan took shape.  Two weeks in Italy. The first week divided between Rome and Florence, the second week in the Tuscany countryside. And one more suggestion gave our plan a new twist; Rick and Jan asked if it was OK if their two sons went along.  We've watched the boys grow up and they're out of college now.  We like them both a lot so our reply was a definite yes.  They both live in California.

   So now we have six people going to Italy. They live in three different states across four time zones.  We need some technological assistance to make this work.  I set up a Google document, a spreadsheet, to help us stay organized.  The rows became the days of our travel and the columns information about the daily itinerary.  I shared the doc with everyone and gave them editing privileges as well.  Now we all had a place to put and adjust information at any time, 24/7. 

   A few years back, the four of us rented a cabin in Utah's canyon country so we could hike Zion and Bryce national parks.  We found the cabin through VRBO's web site. VRBO - vacation rentals by owner - lists thousands of properties around the world.  We found the site useful and accurate, and went back to it for our rental searches in Rome, Florence and Tuscany.  When a property looked interesting, we'd double-check the location using a map site like Google maps or Mapquest.  And after agreeing on a rental via emails, we'd book it, once or twice using PayPal as a down payment tool.

   Many sites in the two cities are best visited with pre-reserved tickets.  The Vatican, the Uffizi Gallery and the Accademia can have long entry lines which can be avoided by pre-purchasing tickets.  Again, technology made this relatively easy.  But I found that occasionally, some information on a museum page was missing or not clear when I accessed the English translation page, so I went back to the original Italian language page and copied text into Google translate.  This translator answers my long ignored prayers from high school French class and offers an instant translation of text.

   The two major transportation costs, plane tickets and a car rental, were the objects of considerable online searching.  Neither costs can be considered fixed in that they can fluctuate regularly, steered by a variety of factors normal travelers can't parse.  The result is lots of online searching for the best price.  Travel sites like Orbitz, Travelocity and Kayak can help.  They allow for quick comparisons of multiple offerings.  In the end, you book your flights and rent your car pretty certain that there's a better deal out there somewhere, but you no longer have the time or patience to try and find it.

   Knowing we were going to spend time with some of the world's great art collections, I decided to buy an app for my iPad, Art Authority.  It's a well conceived program that simulates a museum.  Artwork is organized by artist and period, and so, for instance, I can search Italian Renaissance art and view hundreds of pieces with information about the work and artist.  There are links to further information on web sites as well.  If my art viewing was to be done solely through a tablet app, I would consider that a dismal prospect. But as a prep tool, it's perfect.

   I also downloaded an app for my phone.  It was developed by the Uffizi Gallery for visitors.  In this app, I'll have the information we need to tour the Gallery knowledgeably and efficiently.  I'm currently in the process of searching for other such apps that might prove useful.

   With all of the bookings, we were operating in a world of Euros.  Prices fluctuate daily.  A helpful tool was a currency translator.  It's a common widget on current operating systems.  Plug in one currency and indicate your target currency.  As I write this, using a widget found in the Mac dashboard, 1 Euro equals 1.236 US dollars. It'll be different tomorrow.

   Is the digital approach to planning the only alternative? Of course not.  Rick mentioned a book by Ross King, Brunelleschi's Dome, offered an unparalleled telling of the construction of the great cathedral dome in Florence.  Though I could have downloaded it on to an iPad, I chose to buy a paper copy.  I thought others in our group might want to read it, and it's hard to pass around an e-copy of a book. (The advice was sound; the book was terrific.)  And though this sounds obvious, there's really nothing like getting firsthand advice from friends who have been there before.  It can't get less digital than that.

   Still, it's hard not to see how helpful digital tools are when organizing a trip.  And the point is that digital tools are not just travel planning tools, they are the tools of our lives.  This is one important reason why technology should be infused into the curriculum.  If we're living digital lives, at least to some extent, then students should be fully conversant with the use of digital tools.  There's plenty of room for more traditional approaches to classroom learning as well, but to ignore the digital universe is to do a disservice to our students.  An exclusively digital-free learning environment denies students a familiarity with the world they will live in and work in.