The One Little Word Found Me

Join in the celebration this week!

Today, I wanted to celebrate by writing about how my One Little Word found me.  I started off the new year wondering about my word...

others found theirs
shared them
and yet, I wondered more...

I

thought-



pondered-




explored-



still no ideas...


I gave it up.  to.  God.

I prayed that I would find my word and just got going with things I needed to accomplish.  One of the first things on my professional 2018 to do list was achieving Google Level 1 Certification.  I did it!  You can read more about that here.


Then I realized-(trumpet blast)!

I felt like I had laser focus on achieving this goal.  And then it hit me, "focus" played a role in achieving the goal.  And that's how "Focus" found me.

Hello Focus!  My One Little Word for 2018.  I've had OLWs in the past (like, Listen, Balance and Believe).  These were all helpful.  I hope that Focus will serve me well for 2018.


Here's more about my One Little Word that's firmly planted in my brain:

Focus

• visual thesaurus

from https://www.visualthesaurus.com
where you can plug in a word and see how it connects

• defined

via google omnibox

• word clouded

created using WordArt.com

I pray that this word can help guide me like a compass and be my true north for 2018.  I am grateful for it finding me.  I will use it to:

• grow my relationships, nurturing them just like the flowers I see in my garden, adding what I believe to be the right ingredients to flourish

• inspire me professionally as a leader, teacher, and learner

• help my path of positivity and help me avoid distractions

I know I have room to grow in the process of staying focused and I believe in my heart I can make this happen.

What have you chosen for your OLW this year?

Focus and Let the Celebrating Begin

Celebrate with Ruth this week!

This week I am celebrating learning, focusing and meeting goals.   I'm celebrating accomplishment.  I'm celebrating being Google Certified Level 1!

My journey began awhile back.  I considered going for the Google Trainer Certification but then had to scale back because personal life took priority over professional life.  So last summer, I restarted with going for Level 1 since I joined up with a district team of teachers who were part of the Keys to Successful Technology Integration.  At that time, I worked on completing the first 8 units...personal life took priority again as I was dealing with my dad's hospitalization, my mom's dementia and then my dad passing away.

Finally over break, I revisited the Google Training Center.  I love the first quote you see on that page:

"Learning Never Stops"

It's really true for me-learning never stops.  I worked on completing the last five units for Level 1 Certification and then signed up to take the exam.  It truly took almost the whole three hours to complete and consisted of two parts.  One part contains the twenty multiple choice questions-not just a,b, c, d-like but hard multiple correct selections as well as drag and drop sorts.  The other part is eleven multi-step scenarios where actual use of Google's tools are put in place.

As I readied to submit my exam for grading, I sucked in a huge breath and hit submit.  I prayed to God at that moment that all of the hard work and energy I put into completing the task would pay off.

tick-tock
tick-tock
tick-tock

Seconds and then minutes passed as I waited for the email to announce whether I'd passed.

Ding!

You've got mail...

I opened the email and SURPRISE!

The notice that I passed!  YAY!

Now, on to Level 2.

Some advice for others who decide to go for it...

Studying helped.
Going through the quizzes at the end of each unit helped.
Reading the scenarios and working them out on my own helped.
Using Google Tools regularly helps (our district is a Google Apps for Education district).

Celebrate with me!  So happy to have met this goal.  I think this experience helped me find my One Little Word for the year...Focus.  However, that is another post for here in the cafe.