Reflection

This was a very, very, very long week.

I was so happy about the respite last week. So very thankful. It was just the rest I needed heading into this week. Our church had our MEGA Sports Camp (Vacation Bible School) this week. We do ours at night so that the volunteers don't have to take off work.... which is great. Except that now I'm going to work at 6am, then straight to VBS, getting home at 9:30pm, getting the kids settled, and then trying to get some studying finished.  Whew!

Then there were other things that weren't so great this week. Needless to say, finding time for anything has been hard. So that respite week was perfectly timed.

I'm glad there were only a few readings this week and the normal blog and participation requirements. It was a good balance for me with everything else going on. 

But I am ready to get back in the swing of things. I'm excited about the new project management tools we learned about this week and I plan on trying them out to see how they work for me in the real world this week. We don't have much longer in this course and I'm curious to see just how many more Web 2.0 tools there are out there to discover.

The most important thing I've learned is it's okay to give yourself a break. The competitive side of me wanted to do everything all the time. I learned I had to allow myself time to step back when I needed to and allow myself a mental break or digital detox. It's very easy to get lost in this social media world, especially when you're not used to being in it at all.

Badge Update!

It's so nice to see the fruits of our labor. I've had fun in this class, even though I am thoroughly exhausted. Seeing these badges gives me a sense of pride and reminds me that all of the efforts I've been putting in were for a reason.  It's easy to forget that when you feel like you're just playing on social media on reading fiction novels (that's been my favorite challenge so far). 

I'm going to update the Badges page of the blog, but I thought I'd share a screenshot of the newly released round of badges that were just sent out.

I really want to utilize this motivation technique in the workplace. I'm not quite sure how this would fit in at my current workplace. But I see the merit in other career positions. 

Seeing these has also given me a renewed sense of accomplishment to finish out the semester. Good luck everyone!

Trello Review

I enjoyed exploring the tools this week in the course, Trello especially. I'm always looking for ways to improve my productivity and help keep myself organized. I like Kanban-style to-do lists and lately, I've been using OneNote - but I've not fully utilized it as I could.

While playing around with Trello, I realized that the ability to use the Kanban method with the drag-and-drop ability of the cards and boards is something my brain has been looking for. It makes it feel like the tactile version of using post-it notes, without wasting all of the paper.

The board menu is very nice as it contains a lot of information. That is something that is lacking in a lot of other project management products. Once you make the task or assignment, you can add descriptions and instructions for team members who might be unaware of what that specific task entails.

Trello also has a lot of templates. Scrolling through, I found one for learning a language. It is set up for a person that is working on learning a foreign language to show a to-do list of creating a daily schedule, choosing a language, completing assignments, etc.  I thought this was pretty nifty as I want to get back into my studies of learning Italian. I think I'm going to use this template and help it to drive how to start getting back into that routine.

While I still plan on using OneNote (because it has all of my training notes stored in it), I do plan on trying out Trello this week at work to see if it is something that would be helpful to my processes, or just something that adds another step. That's the great thing about this course. We're being introduced to so many different tools that we can try and if they work, great! If not, we just keep doing what we're doing.

Blog Makeover

 Lucky me that this challenge came up because I was already planning on doing this anyway :)

Seeing everyone else's blogs so well put together, made me want to redo a few things on mine. 

I like the way the posts flow all on one page. So, that was where I started. I went to the templates and picked a whole new setup. I found one where the posts would stay in chronological order and you could read them from the home page. 

I also wanted to be able to add widgets and other features. I kept that in mind when looking at the templates and made sure the one I chose had the ability to utilize columns. I wanted a smoother, more seamless look from the bulky kind of look my blog was giving in the beginning. I also wanted the ability to add on with everything else we are doing in class.

Here are the before photos.

The colors are off-putting and everything just seems clunky. There is not a lot of room to expand on new items from the course.

Here is the after:

I made the colors and font crisper and clearer. I integrated widgets along the side to show how many views on the blog there are. I also added links to other social media accounts, since that's what this course is all about. I also expanded the labels so they are no longer hidden in a drop-down box. Although, clearly I need to be better about tagging my posts. 

Overall, I am very happy with the changes and I plan to continue making tweaks to the blog throughout the course as I become more comfortable with the platform and everything it entails. Let me know what you think!

Respite Week - Hallelujah

 Is anyone else out there starting to feel the burnout?

Okay, maybe burnout is too strong a word. But, I'm definitely starting to slow down a bit. I can definitely tell I've been more focused on doing my own studies, like SkillShare and LinkedIn Learning - playing around with the different tools, as opposed to actual interaction with classmates. 

I think that's one of the norms we discussed several weeks ago. 

We as a class definitely hit the ground running. Personally, this is my last semester in the program and I think I'm just so excited to be nearing the finish line that I didn't pace myself. Now, I'm looking at being unbalanced. People in life asking how I'm spending more time in this one class than I did in two classes last semester. 

I've never been obsessed with social media... but here, I'm constantly getting notifications on my watch and phone and computer. It's surrounding me all of the time. 

It's no wonder these kids are so heavily influenced by it. There's just information being pushed at them all hours of the day. There are no breaks. Here I am, typing out three blog posts on a Sunday night because by the time I've finished the 'participation' portion of my social media work, my brain is toast. 

I've said all that to say, I am definitely learning. 100%. I don't regret this course at all. I have found some great tools that I didn't even know existed and look forward to learning more about them to implement them in future endeavors. 

But to quote the late, great Michael Clarke Duncan (as said by his character in The Green Mile) "I'm tired, Boss". 

So, hallelujah for a respite week. 

This post is more journal-esque than others.... but I felt it needed to be said.

Social Media and Fiction

🛑🛑🛑🛑🛑🛑🛑🛑🛑🛑🛑🛑🛑🛑🛑Spoilers Ahead🛑🛑🛑🛑🛑🛑🛑🛑🛑🛑🛑🛑🛑🛑🛑

For the Goodreads challenge, I read the book Tweet Cute by Emma Lord.  This book is a YA romance novel that is all about social media. Two high school students are involved in their parents' businesses by helping run their Twitter campaigns. These students, develop this deep relationship that turns into much more (as these stories often do). There's also a side plot of another phone-based app that connects these two students anonymously, while they're building a relationship.  The story ends as most of these YA novels often do. The ups and downs turn into a young romance that we see come to fruition.

Honestly, these types of novels aren't my favorite, because they tend to have too much "romance" in them for the age category being written about. I was very happy to see that there was not an abundance of PDA or sexual scenarios, considering the characters in the novel are high school students. 

It seems the author really did her research into the Twitter platform before writing this book. She used a lot of terminology and had the characters discussing different social media strategies. Even though this was a fiction novel, I enjoyed seeing these strategies "implemented" and what the outcomes were. 

This author did a great job with the character development and I'd be really interested to see what other kind of books she writes. If you're interested her information, I've linked it below.

Twitter: @dilemmalord

Goodreads: Emma Lord

Tweet Cute is available on Kindle Unlimited or for purchase on Amazon.