Cutting back… switching off…
I’m now almost half way through my two week Easter break and it’s been a bit of a roller-coaster week. We went to Derbyshire and had a lovely time with our dog, walking in the countryside and exploring what the area had to offer. It was great to take a break from technology (although I did use my iPhone and laptop very occasionally!) and spend lots of time reading, which is something that I love doing but never seem to get around to when I’m at home.
While we were away, we also had a worrying few days when our dog became very ill and we had to take him to the vets. We are very happy to have him home with us now, but we now know that he has a heart condition which will stay with him for the rest of his life.
So, over the past week, a number of factors have caused me to think carefully about my own situation… to sum things up, I spend far too much time staring at screens. I sit at my computer during most of my free time and I stare at my iPhone regularly when I’m out and about… I’ve only been married for 8 months, but I’m amazed that my wife puts up with it! 
One of the main reasons why I spent so much time using computers is my love of creating websites to help teachers (and children). As many readers of this blog will know, I currently run quite a few different sites:
- Teaching Ideas – Shares free ideas, activities and resources for teachers.
- Teaching Videos – A collection of educational videos for classroom use.
- Teaching Photos – A place to find inspiration for your class displays.
- Teachr – A homepage for teachers.
- TeachrSearch – A search tool which helps teachers to find educational resources.
- Ideas to Inspire – Hosts collaborative presentations which give ideas for using various online and offline tools.
- Welcome to the Web – My guide to the Internet for the young and old.
I also run a three blogs (this one, Teaching News and a photo blog) as well as a forum for teachers.
Whilst I love running these websites, they do take up a huge amount of time… for each site, I have to add new content, respond to emails, run back-ups, apply updates, create RSS feeds if appropriate, and more. I’m also a classroom teacher and ICT co-ordinator so those roles take up a fair amount of time too!
As a result, I have decided to make a few changes… in the future, I am planning to remove some of these sites and merge some of the features of the others, so that there are less things to manage overall.
I have also decided to end this blog at MrWarner.com. Whilst I have really enjoyed writing posts here and I truly appreciate the comments and feedback that people have given, it seems silly to be running three blogs. As time goes by, I am planning to go through the previous posts on MrWarner.com and add them to Teaching Ideas, so that they are still online. This will also open them up to a much bigger audience.
Once again, thank you to everyone who has taken the time to read and respond to this blog. I will still be writing similar types of articles to the ones I’ve been putting here, but I’ll post them on Teaching Ideas and Teaching News instead. In that way, I can focus more clearly on building up my free educational resources for teachers, whilst having more of a personal life too.
Goodbye from Mr Warner (.com)