My brain on #ETMOOC
I would include a few other words like: absorbed, amazed, anxious, excited, encouraged, enthusiastic, free, fortunate, happy, inspired, keen, receptive, scared, supported, thrilled, and vulnerable.
There are several words that describe how I feel. What about you?
Why am I blogging? What difference will it make? Should I be overly concerned about sharing my thoughts publicly?
I am blogging because it is part of the course I am taking called ETMOOC, but I had also dabbled in blogging because I want to be able to help High School Students navigate through the tough parts of life and if reaching out through social media will help I am choosing to be in.
I also want to help school counsellors find more ways that can reach and teach their students. A part of what we do as school counsellors is to assist students through psycho educational means.
Yalom (1995) expressed many therapeutic factors when it came to psycho educational groups and I believe a few of these could apply to assisting students through social media.
The most important to me is the instillation of hope. If anything I say or do is able to instill hope in the heart of even one student then it is worth it.
If something I say about school counselling is able to help a school counsellor and as a result a child is helped then blogging is worth it.
What skills do I need to be able to do this? What skills will they need to help them?
I believe my 33 years in education will help me, my training in counselling and psychology should help me, but this is a new way of helping for me, so I have so much to learn.
THINK BEFORE I POST
I want students to do this and so must I. Taking time to reflect on what it is I really want to do and say.
Lesson 1: Write my blog posts in word first. Read them over. Even when posted read them over and edit again and again if necessary.
BE DIGITALLY RESPONSIBLE
Lesson 2: Make sure I am responsible in what I put out on line. Before I posted I asked my daughter if she would be OK with what I wrote and if it was OK to post a picture of her. She was OK with it. So I posted.
Being digitally responsible and demonstrating digital citizenship. As I navigate through all the tweets and connections, I recognize that I will learn so many new things. In doing so I hope to pass some of these learning’s onto our students. They already know I am taking this course.
BE A LEADER
Lesson 3: Model what it is that I would expect students to do as digital citizens. However, like them I am sure I will make some mistakes along the way and isn’t that how we often learn the most important lessons in life by making mistakes.
FAILING DOES NOT MAKE A FAILURE
Lesson 4: Mistakes will happen. I will fail at my attempts to do some things and I will be successful at others. Today, I had many failures in attempting to try a new skill. I felt like giving up, but I did not. I asked for help and gratefully received the help I needed.
DON’T GIVE UP
Lesson 5: Even when the going gets tough, I will ask for help and not be embarrassed that I do not know something. I will not give up even though there will be days or moments when I feel like it.
TRUST THE PROCESS
Lesson 6:This has become my mantra for this course. I will work through my fears and anxieties and know that all will work out in the end.
SELF REFLECTION is HELPFUL
How is that for self- reflection? I have done my ETMOOC homework. I have commented on others blogs. I am posting blogs and learning about new tools and strategies.
I guess when all is said and done I love learning, especially when I am not being graded. I have to tell you there is so much freedom in that. It certainly for me makes me want to learn and keep learning especially when it is something I am interested in.
STAY FOCUSED
Not easy for me with this crazy amount of information. Below I put together a wordle using words from this blog post and they came out in the shape of a foot. I know I need to keep one foot in front of the other and FOCUS.
A word that pops out in the wordle is HELP. Most importantly in all of this I need to reach out.
I need to
Thanks ETMOOC for letting me reflect and get excited about learning new things. I look forward to week 2.
Over the past few years I have dabbled with technology, but I would not say I had a passion for it. With the amount of hours I am spending on my laptop, IPAD and I Phone, paying attention to ETMOOC, I am definitely headed in that direction. It all started with Alec Couros getting me going on twitter.
However, my real passion is School Counselling. I absolutely love what I do and I now feel technology can assist school counsellors like nothing else has. I believe Dr. Erin Mason @ecmason is an inspiration when it comes to this area.
Her dedication to this area is one of the things that has led me to even be interested in something like #ETMOOC. The SCOPE Blog: is taking an in depth look at tech tools for the School Counseling profession and I believe after ETMOOC I can add a few more tools to that kit. SCOPE is School Counselor Online Professional Exchange for those of you in this field.
This process of connecting the two areas that I feel passionate about is where I believe I am headed. That will be my goal. This will be my focus. Melding these two things I am passionate about to make the difference in the lives of students.
I am in the infancy stages of really making this happen and I will be looking to others who are way more experienced than me to assist me on my journey.
I get easily frustrated when technology seems complex. I have many lessons to learn and #ETMOOC is pushing me to reach further. Exciting, yet scary all at the same time.
Reflecting on this experience, I am hopeful I will move me forward in a new direction. Exactly what that new direction will be I am not sure. That’s the scary and exciting part that can bring about some anxiety. Something I am sure students in our self- directed school community experience, but is relatively new to me.
Making my learning more visible, makes me reflect and see more clearly which is virtually impossible seeing as I have kerataconus. However, seeing more clearly happens in the mind and how joyous is that.
I do look forward to new discoveries and connections. What will I learn next? It’s all up to me. That is what ETMOOC is all about.
“We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us” Joseph Campbell
I will wait patiently to see what is in store for me.
Tonight as I sat down to enter my #ETMOOC chat, my daughter was making a great supper. As I began to open up my laptop, get my cell phone ready so that I could to begin to find the hashtag to enter a twitterchat for #etmchat , here’s what my daughter said. “Mom put that away we are eating supper!”
I said, ” I can’t because I am in a class and this is part of what I have to do”. She told me a few more times to put down the technology and I continued on to keep up with the chat. I repeated what I needed to do and finally she accepted it. How many times in the past had I told her to put away her phone etc? It almost made me laugh as I realize now how when my kids are engaged in something they feel is important to them, they don’t want to stop.
On the other side of that, we have been very fortunate as a family to have many dinners together where we are all fully engaged in conversation and not distracted by technology.
So many life lessons to learn as I journey on with my #ETMOOC experience. As my professor used to tell me all the time when I did my Master’s in Counselling,”trust the process”. So I will!
So many things to learn. Isn’t life about learning lessons, no matter how old we are?
So happy to be a part of the inaugural chat. Thanks to my new online colleagues at #ETMOOC.
I hope all school counsellors and teachers do this. As school counsellors we deal with such emotional issues and if we cannnot connect to the heart of a student we will never be able to help them . I know what I do impacts those around me and everyday I attempt to do the best I can by reaching out with heartfelt compassion to those around me. I do not believe I am always successful, but I know it is my goal everyday to do so.
In my attempt to assist students along their journey in life, I reach out attempting to make a difference. This jumping out of my box into the ED tech world is my way of touching the hearts of many students so that they can get the supports they need. Counselling is more than assisting a student in my office. It is reaching out to students on a more global scale. It is being able to use technology to reach and teach them. I will promise to use this process to educate from the heart using technology and all the tools ETMOOC gives me.
This week my daughter found this heart tomatoe in our fridge. I guess it was meant for this blog. So this post is from my heart to yours.
School Counselling With Technology From the Heart.
I am a life long learner and willing to take risks and here I am signing up for #etmooc. The tweet by @courosa from @fryed on What is #ETMOOC and why should you join us is what finally convinced me to… just do it!!!
In one of my @haikudecks I said I would DO MORE in 2013 and here I am. Stepping out of my box and doing more.
A little nervous yes, but at least I am NOT going to be graded, I can just learn!! Yahoo!!! I love learning without being graded. I have had enough of that.
So in the next few months, I look forward to learning just for the sake of learning.
It is Alec Couros who inspired me to become interested in technology as much as I have and I am grateful. So thanks Alec.
Here I am as the title of my god daughter @SarahDevaeau ‘s book says, ” Sink or Swim “. I think I’ll swim!
There are now over 1200 participants registered representing 67 countries – take a look! (Apologies that not all participants seem to show up on the map). Holy!!!!
Here Alec is motivating me again … So my journey begins…
Counsellor Talk : Connecting with those who want to make a difference.