Blooming Flowers

 It's been a really great semester and start to my grad school journey, thank you all for being such an incredibly supportive community! I definitely feel like I'm going to miss this interactive attitude through the rest of grad school. I hope to continue using these Web 2.0 tools and maybe I will see you all on the web ;)

Hello my friends! I know many of you are or have been teachers. I have not, but I am really excited to start this preschool program with my 3 year old! It's an at home program that was made my one of my favorite IG accounts, @busytoddler . She is awesome and definitely part of my broader baby/kid PLN. Those of you that have kids, are they in/did they do preschool? 

 YALL. This article just blew my mind.  This semester has been a little bit rough in terms of getting everything done that I've wanted to and feeling like I have time for my kids and husband. I've been incredibly distracted and began to think that maybe I was just bad at managing my time. I want to start fresh and really build my schedule to feel confident that I have made time for everything that is important to me! This is something that my husband and I have talked about a million times, and he's a little bit better at naturally setting up his life to plan for the things he really wants to focus on. I've always had a more laissez faire attitude about things just happening if they need to happen. No surprise here - things do not just "get done" without proper planning and I'm tired of running around trying to make it all happen just because it's on my to-do list! Now is the time to make a change.  Since we are moving into our new house in about a we...

We officially closed on our house about a week and a half ago and I've been living down in Galveston at my parent's beach house since then! It would be an awesome vacation, except it's just me, the kids, and our animals most of the time. So while I've tried to make it fun for the kiddos, I'm also just exhausted from solo parenting + school work during the week while my husband is working his new job in our new city! (Kudos to all of you single moms out there!!!)  I am really grateful to be finishing up the semester this week though so next week can be a relaxing and fun beach week! :) I'm sure everyone is ready for a little break. Anyone else have plans for their break between semesters? What classes are y'all planning to take in the fall semester? I am signed up for EME 5608 (Trends and Issues in Instructional Design) and EME 6357 (Evaluation of Training in HPT). It would be lovely to see some familiar names on the discussion boards! 

 Anyone else super excited to use your produsage assignment in real life?! I had SUCH a hard time deciding what I wanted to do for this assignment, but when I finally decided what I wanted to do, it felt like the perfect thing! It is a padlet for aerial teachers to interact with current students where they can share videos, comments, questions, and safety tips with one another. You can check it out here!

Anyone out there watching the Olympics right now?! I haven't had a chance to turn it on yet, but it is interesting that it coincides with our international studies of social media use. I wonder how much the Olympics play a part in social media use while they are going on? So far on social media I have seen a rise in memes and a significant number of articles on the ridiculous rules and regulations on what women are allowed to wear while competing, the blind and deaf woman not being able to have a helper with her in Tokyo because of Covid restrictions (even though it seems like there are other actually unnecessary people that are allowed to be there), and so many more things that feel crazier than usual this year! Maybe we're all just more connected though.. What do you think?

After reading through Digital citizenship education handbook: Being online, well-being online, and rights online,  and considering my own experiences, education, recent current events, and recent conversations, I am left wondering where the US is on addressing digital citizenship. Here are the things floating around in my head this evening... I know that there was recently a Supreme Court case passed about free speech about a cheerleader that used some very explicit language on her Snapchat in regards to her school and cheerleading coach after not making the varsity team and was then suspended and kicked off the JV squad. SCOTUS passed in favor of her ability to speak freely on a social media platform about the school without ramifications.  In a Zoom call earlier today for EME5601, we were talking about whether or not kids had classes in school that were related to privacy and internet safety. Right now the consensus seems to be that there are special assemblies or lectures ...

 So... my parents are small business owners and I was talking to my mom today about this course and she had some questions for me about how they can utilize social media better! I thought this would be a great opportunity to garner some knowledge from y'all or see if you had any input. (I know a few of you run social media accounts) I have also been in charge of a few social media accounts over time, but I know I wasn't using it to its fullest potential and it was only a small part of my actual job as graphic designer.  Anyway... how often should things be posted? Is it important to post different things on different platforms vs the same thing on all platforms at the same time? Are stories on IG and FB important for a business? Anyone know anything about Alignable? It seems like a Linkedin for small businesses.. Any thoughts out there for me to pass along to my parents?! 

Hello my friends! I am all about being a patron to local coffee shops and enjoying their atmosphere for hours on end (when I have time!!) I challenge you all to try to give your business to a local coffee shop in your area this week and spend some time getting your homework done while you're there! Post a picture of your beautiful latte art, tag the coffee shop, and hashtag our class :) 

 I made a blog post a few weeks ago about multitasking and how to be more focused on one task at a time. As I was trying to decide what to blog about tonight I went to Refind  to see what new articles had been curated for my interests since I haven't checked it out in a while. The first to catch my eye was called, "Should we really focus on one thing at a time?"  and I decided to see what it was all about! My main takeaway was that single tasking is still the best for productivity.. MOST of the time, but in the beginning stages and in each creative stage, multitasking and open ended thinking is vital for new ideas to abound. This article also had a great tip for PLNS or self-education - "First, explore different educational channels to see which one would work best for your learning goals; then, commit to one, and stick with it for a while. Don’t fall into the trap of starting a new course every few weeks without completing any." It's a great 4 minute read a...

YALL.  We're almost there! We are only 3 weeks away from the end of this semester AND, my family is less than a week away from closing on our current house and then beginning the moving journey to Huntsville, TX.  I say journey.. because we don't have an official closing date for our house up there.. It was supposed to be July 23, then was pushed back to July 29, now the seller wants it to be in August. Man, it is a mess! Luckily we have somewhere to stay in the meantime, but it's definitely not the ideal situation.  Anyway, the next few weeks are going to be a bit chaotic for me, but I am excited to finish out the semester strong.. regardless of my living situation! Please send me all the extra good vibes you have as I will need some supernatural strength/focus/energy to get there. 

  This graphic was in one of our readings for EME 5601 this week and I really appreciated the break down of "means" and "ends".  This quote from the introduction also stood out to me, "The precise definition of words and concepts are absolutely vital, and even if some words sound familiar, we provide unique definitions for  many. It is more than semantics and being precise is central to your success." As someone who REALLY cares about accuracy and "truth", I was excited about digging into this text and am excited about utilizing this knowledge as I learn how to apply this information for Needs Assessment and Performance Improvement.  Anyone else out there a stickler for word accuracy and precision? Chapter 1 (pp. 1-12) in Kaufman, R., & Guerra-López, I. (2013). Needs assessment for organizational success. American Society for Training & Development.

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...