I did something really strange in the week – I made a phone call.

I was talking about the Women Talking About Learning podcast and we weren’t on Zoom, Teams or video conferencing but on a phone.

It wasn’t a WhatsApp or Slack call – it was a proper call with numbers and everything.

It wasn’t a text based exchange with SMS, email, or messaging app – it was audio.

It wasn’t through social media via Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram – it was directly on personal devices, and not via the cloud.

Why did it feel so shocking? Probably because I can’t remember the last work call I made like this. The tech moves on, the channels widen and we forget the simple way of pressing a few buttons and being able to connect with someone immediately. We sorted what we needed to within 9 minutes and we were done. No follow ups, not documents to be sent, no shared screens, no you’re on mute, no emojis, no waiting for connections, no drops in Wi-Fi, no review pages after asking us to rate the quality of the connection.

Elegantly simple and shockingly easy. Maybe we need to reflect back on our learning design the same way?