I love reading Amy’s blog. She is very creative and the way she writes is fun and inspires me, so today I decided to model my post after her blog and add a bit of my own creative flair as you can see above. It is a tribute to my #ETMOOC network.
I decided to try her #hashtag idea and I went on Instagram and took my own pics on my IPAD. The pics for sure have a story and made me a bit homesick. I think you will see why. That is part of my story…
So may tools to use. So many stories to be told. As a school counsellor I need to be ever mindful of what I share, but I believe this voicethread talks about stories without telling anyones story.
I am also going to share the original Haiku Deck as I believe it shows the pics better. See below.
I want to just have the pictures like in Haiku Deck ,but I am still figuring that out.
I would also like to add music to these and would like a way to do that as well.
Below you can see and hear my voicethread. This is a work in progress, so I appreciate all feedback. I am still figuring out exactly how to do that , but for now here it is. Comment away with any suggestions to improve.
This process of learning has and always will be fun for me, but there is something different about this ETMOOC?
How is it like lacrosse for me?
I am passionate about both
At 54, I am still in the game
The game is not about winning for me
It’s about loving what I am doing
It is about making connections
It’s about learning from young people
It’s about feeling I have something to contribute
It’s about facing fears
It’s about feeling excited about what I am doing
It’s about questioning whether I really should be doing this
It’s about recognizing the value of continuing to do this
It’s about modeling for my own children to not quit and finding things in life that continue to bring me joy
It’s about making mistakes and learning to laugh at myself
It’s about trying new things
It’s about letting loose, like in a lip dub or trying an old move like I used to when I was a young lacrosse player and realizing that I can still do it!
Do the comments people make on a blog or in lacrosse really matter? Yes, and no. I have to admit I loved it when the past captain of the Calgary Roughnecks, Tracey Kelusky told me I had “golden hands”. I was thrilled. It was an ego boost, especially for someone my age. I can’t run for beans, but I have golden hands (that was few years ago he said that, but it still brings me some joy.) When Andrew McBride, the present captain would ask me to show the much younger ladies how to shoot or pass, yes inside, I beamed with pride.
Or when someone encourages me by commenting on my post, I also have to admit I like that. However, I also recognize that few people may even read or will comment on my posts or might even say non-encouraging comments at some point, but that does not discourage me. I am doing this for me, nobody else. It is about me being reflective, and what I can learn.
I continue to learn as an adult. A few years ago, I took guitar lessons and my teacher told me “I was his most dedicated student who learned so little.”
This is not something I would recommend any teacher say. Did it devastate me? NO, I can actually laugh at that comment as an adult . However, I still have not learned to play guitar. Will I? Yes. Will I do it in a visible way? NO, not like some of my colleagues in ETMOOC , but I will not give up. I will play guitar some day.
However, learning the guitar is not a passion for me like lacrosse or all of the things I am learning about in ETMOOC. I will learn a lot from many of the things and a little from some things. I can take what I like and leave the rest. It is up to me.
For now, the best thing so far about learning is making the connections to my own life as well as making connections in the virtual world that lead to connections in the real world.
I love learning and I love learning the ETMOOC way.Yes indeed, learning and lacrosse they do go together perfectly! I can’t wait for the next ETMOOC lesson and I can’t wait for lacrosse season to start.
Connecting,the hallmark of a great counsellor. Having and developing a positive relationship and working alliance with students is so important. It is essential that school counsellors have many tools, but especially the ability to connect.
So today as we in-serviced school counsellors on utilizing technology tools to enhance their comprehensive school counselling plan, we connected on many levels.
Being involved in ETMOOC led us to plan differently for this in-service. Usually, when I have presented to school counsellors in the past, it has been a sharing session of tools that would help them.
However, this time was a bit different. We presented a toolbox full of tech tools and then we would help them to learn the one or ones that they chose and were really interested in.
We modeled our in-service after ETMOOC concepts from the various blackboard collaborate sessions as well as all the twitter discussions. In ETMOOC, there are so many tools and ideas, but we get to choose the ones that work for us. We wanted our school counsellors to have a similar experience.
I had in-serviced school counsellors like this in the past, but this time it was just a bit different. Erin @ehordyskiluong and I used and shared a lot of tools to assist our colleagues. We integrated concepts from ETMOOC and it was so much fun.
School Counsellors are getting on board and connecting in ways they had not thought of before. It makes me very happy that more school counsellors in Canada are beginning to develop their PLN. We will be connecting with counsellors from all over the world because of twitter and ETMOOC. Again a big thanks to Alec Couros and Dr. Erin Mason for their connections to assist us in making this happen.
Oh the web we are weaving. We are developing such a positive network and we still have so much more learning to do. I look forward to week three in ETMOOC.
Will I be able to keep up with all this connecting?
Thanks to the great school counsellors who connected with us and are willing to share.
I never underestimate the importance of the administration in any school, but an administrator who is showing digital leadership today is so important. George Couros http://georgecouros.ca/blog/ models this extremely well.
Administration seeing counsellors as part of the leadership team is so important to me and I have been very fortunate to have leaders who absolutely view their school counsellors this way. One of the main ideas I got from that chat was the possibility of the principal and counsellor presenting together, which I really liked. I have presented many times in many ways to both counsellors, teachers and administrators, but never in all my years have I presented with my administrator. We have worked together, collaborated together, thought of ideas together, but never presented together.
After listening to George’s presentation on Becoming a Networked Educational Leader and linking the #scchat and his presentation together another idea has come to me. What a great idea it would be for an administrator and counsellor to do a collaborative blog together. In fact that will be my goal this year before this course is over to do a collaborative blog with one of our administrative team members. I know how open and supportive they are so I look forward to writing a great blog with one of them. As a matter of fact this really inspires me in ways I had not thought of before.
So today I asked our VP if he would be interested in collaborating on a blog with me and he said YES. So stay tuned for our future blog… not sure what topic will be yet, but it doesn’t matter . This will be a first for both of us. To me this is educational leadership at its finest!
Counsellor Talk : Creative Collaborative Connections 