Blooming Flowers

I uploaded some videos to YouTube of me teaching some aerial skills as part of my Knowledge Sharing/Tracking Assignment! Obviously if you aren't an aerialist, you probably won't learn much here, but check it out and maybe try to go take an aerial class at a local studio. Seriously, ANYONE can do it!! :)

I'm going to be completely honest.. having not spent any time as a formal classroom teacher, the tools this week were a little bit harder for me to get into and I didn't feel like I had much to add to the conversations about using tools in the classroom. This was definitely one of those weeks where imposter syndrome started to creep in... If you don't know what imposter syndrome is, it's "a psychological pattern in which an individual doubts their skills, talents, or accomplishments and has a persistent internalized fear of being exposed as a 'fraud'", according to Wikipedia . It's not a new feeling, but it can be a challenging one to overcome when it seems like everyone knows what they're talking about and you have little experience in the subject matter! Before this, I was a professional dancer/aerialist doing some freelance graphic design on the side (without any real formal training), and taught aerial classes at a local studio - aka, defin...

 Quote by Publius Syrus Anyone else out there finding yourself trying to do a million things at once right now?! I usually have about 20 tabs open on my laptop and my phone close by and I keep wondering why some tasks are taking so long for me to complete. I went on a little rabbit trail of learning after reading That Will Show Them's Blog  about multitasking (among other things) changing our brains. I came to this article which talks all about how to become a single-tasker and why it will change the game in productivity! I'm really excited to try some of these tips out, particularly about having different tasks in different desktop spaces - instead of in each tab in the same browser window. I could also see turning notifications off or at least setting a specific time to check and go through emails. I know some of this will take some re-training of my brain as right now I automatically open up and respond or delete every email as it comes in. I also love the idea of usi...

Tonight I'm thinking about how I stumbled into this field and I'm curious about your stories as well! I was actually a year into going to back to school to get my prerequisites for PT school and was finishing up a semester of Chemistry and Lifespan Psychology and beginning to wonder if PT was really the way that I wanted to go... I had at least a year more of prerequisites and many observation hours to go before even applying to PT school and it just wasn't sitting right with me. Then one day, my sister in law was talking about how cool her friend's job is - she designs training materials, sometimes gets to record voice overs, sometimes does video editing, works with a lot of different people on different types of projects, one time had to create a mechanical bull (I know now that this isn't something I should necessarily expect, haha), and really really loves everything that she does. As someone who likes to work with others, wear multiple hats, and find solutions ...

 I decided to mess around with the Miro Concept Map tool and created a simple map of my current responsibilities! I'm not sure how often I'll use something like this, but it was fun to lay it out this way. 

The concept of Knowledge Management (KM) is new to me, well.. the term is new, the idea is familiar.  Having spent most of my career thus far as a professional dancer/aerialist and freelance graphic designer, I haven't personally dealt with many KM issues. However, I hear a friend's grumbles on getting information, making sure it's the correct information, and knowing how to apply it (the way their superiors want them to, however conflicting that may be from one to another). Unfortunately there hasn't been an overhaul of "managing" the information or knowledge and creating trainings to be sure everyone knows what is expected of them and how to access things. Keep in mind, they're a CPA and Senior Auditor of a small accounting firm. They know how to perform the audits, but it has taken their own personal drive to ask questions constantly, almost beg for guidelines, and just look it up themselves...sometimes by using resources that larger firms put out. They...

 I was reading through Knowledge and knowledge management in the social media age ( Hemsley, J., & Mason, R. M., 2013),  and realized that I just needed a clear breakdown of what exactly "Knowledge Management" or "KM" is. I found this helpful 5 minute Youtube Video for a broad overview before diving back into the reading! I hope you find it useful as well :) 

 I just finished and submitted my Community Norms Assignment and realized I hadn't written my third blog for this week! I also haven't done my weekly online community feature... I'm sure you can tell where I am going with this, I'm going to share about one of the online communities that I wrote about, the Brandon Sanderson subreddit, or r/BrandonSanderson if you want to be technical. ;)  This community is a super fun and nerdy place to be if you love Brandon Sanderson, aka the best fantasy writer of all time, IMO. What I love about this community is that it spans much further than the bounds of Reddit, it has a completely fan-run Wiki page called The Coppermind, there are several YouTube channels dedicated to Sanderson's work that are shared regularly, and even Sanderson's website includes interactive opportunities to connect with other people in the fandom. Not to mention, Sanderson himself likes to grace the subreddit with his presence, which is super fun!  An...

I am finally making my way through checking out this week's tools and am really enjoying Refind!  If you haven't looked at it yet, it is a website that collects news that is most relevant to you - you are able to select topics that are the most interesting to you, and it gathers news articles for you to look at.  It kind of reminds me of that old website, StumbleUpon.com, where you could enter in topics you are interested in and then click a button to "stumble" upon a relevant article or website that you might enjoy based on your interests.  Anyway as I was going though Refined, I stumbled upon this article , that talks about the Pygmalion Effect and I thought it was an interesting concept that we can bring into the learning field. This quote is especially meaningful- "The Pygmalion effect is best understood as a reminder to be mindful of the potential influence of our expectations."

Hello my friends! I am back in action this week.  Last week was a doozy. Not only did I go into to the week without a plan of action... My husband had a job interview and accepted a position as the Financial Director of a school district, which means we are selling our house and moving! (By July 1st...) It was a whirlwind of nerves leading up to the interview, excitement over the news, interlude of my son's third birthday party and my dad having a little scare with his heart (all is well, just needed to have some tests done!), and then looking at new houses and preparing our house to get it listed ASAP. While I know things won't necessarily slow down now until we get moved, the waiting and uncertainty about whether or not we are going to move won't be stealing my attention anymore.  I am really excited to jump back in and be more present with this week's work and our class's community! :) Just a reminder that we have a Marco Polo chat going that any of you are welco...