Is this how it ends?

 Is this how it ends?

Wow....Thing 23. Did we do it? Did we get there? I think we maybe did! To the poor person forced to validate and check all my work, and any dear readers, it's been fun, thank you. I'm glad you were here for the journey it would have been lonely otherwise.

But..we aren't done yet, we need to reflect and plan.

Ok, first the relection. The suggestion is to look back at Thing 3 and the assessment. My scores are still very much the same. I was confident before and still am. Relevance and capability are still high too but what has changed is the range of things this entire challenge brought to me. This programme made me update passwords that I hadn't changed in years, find past me in blogs that lay dormant and even made me think about and plan for after my own death. I'm not sure any programme anywhere has had that impact in terms of practicality and so I'm really grateful for that. I make training materials too and it's hard to strike the balance between interactivity, engagement and actual enjoyment and this was a really good mix, so again, thank you SSSC.

Now planning. I will definitely encourage people to take part in this and if this evolves in the future and is reworked in some way, I'd love to do that version too. I'd love to make something like this for my organisation. Further learning needs I have is related to evolving technologies and the implementation and implication of these. We are currently working with Artificial Intelligence and I am looking into so much regarding this and this will be a continuing thing. All the things I've learned will be used everyday in my practice. The polls, the digital legacy information, the awarenesss of cyber security, all of it will feed into the way I train people and support people one on one and hopefully some of it will stay with them too.

I've sent my evaluation survey request and I guess this is goodbye for now? Who knows, maybe there will be more blog related activities in the future and we can get the band back together. 

Until then, take care out there!

TB

Collaboration Station

 Collaboration Station

Time for some collaboration! Thing 20 is about collaborating which is pretty important in social care. We work with so many other services and within our own teams and so we collaborate all the time in one way or another. This is actually better for everyone, because everyone brings their own skills and role and it makes everything much easier for all concerned. I have worked with addiction services, social work, justice team, advocacy, CPN's doctors, support workers and family members for many people and sometimes all of the mentioned for just one person. Every one has different inputs and there can never be too many people to consider. Every person has their own important people so I never assume, I always ask.

The tasks for this badge of course involve collaboration! I asked for access to the shared Google Doc, contributed to it, I set up a poll on Doodle, just with my own team and we made it a simple 'what cakes should we buy for next team meeting' poll. It was really just for fun and to show my team what I had been doing and how they could use Doodle. I know you want to know the results....it was snowballs and caramel shortcake. Do you agree?

(I did try and contribute to the SSSC doodle poll but it has ended so I couldn't.) 

We do a lot of collaboration as a team because we use Google workspace, so we update sheets weekly and different things like that. That's quite dry though. This was a fun way of collaborating and I think we'll use the poll idea for upcoming development topics and just to practice. Maybe next time we'll get some different results .... 🍩🍰🍯

Making life easier?

 Making life easier?

On to Thing 22 which is about improving outcomes for people using technology. Technology Enabled Care is a growing sector and it interests me from a personal and a professional point of view. So much can be made easier for people using technology but there are always exceptions.

The tasks today were to think about familiar technology we use for people and outcomes. Currently we use video chat, phones, internet and email for the people we support. People are comfortable with these things and are learning in some cases to use them for the first time. In terms of positive outcomes, learning to use these for the first time is a huge milestone for some people and for our service. Having an email address and using the internet opens up worlds to individuals who could not do this previously. Access to finances, services and information changes people's perspectives and has been such a positive thing for the individuals we support. 

The second task was to think about less familiar technology which is now actually becoming more common. I am of course interested in all the facets of this too but we only use limited versions of these things just now. One example is wearable technology, I have a smart watch and for the most part I enjoy what it can do. I like the health tracking features and my favourite part is the sleep animal it allocates me and I have improved loads of little areas of my health because of it. For the people we support this could be really helpful in a similar way. They could track their activity, set exercise challenges, monitor their sleep and we could link this to their support plan and work towards some goals. Now these on the surface would be beneficial and improve outcomes for our individuals by encouraging them to go out, exercise, be aware of health and work towards a target.

Of course there are disadvantages to this too. For one, the expense, these things aren't cheap and for everyone to have one would be way over any budget for our services. Secondly, these things also break easily, can be temperamental and aren't actually always that reliable. Thirdly, health apps and technology can actually increase stress and worry people that they have conditions or problems when they don't. Although useful for certain things, a smart watch can't and shouldn't diagnose anyone and needs to be put in context. 

A potential solution would be to source cheap pedometers and set a challenge just for step count and make it fun rather than examining health statistics. I actually have an upcoming health challenge in my next newsletter and I might add this idea for those who would be interested. Just need to get fit enough to join them now!

Til tech do us part

 Til tech do us part

Oh dear, Thing 21 is a bit sombre. It's all about what happens to our digital data when we die. Now that might seem like a dark question but it is actually important to think about. Before completing the tasks suggested, I actually hadn't thought much about this at all. I had considered making videos for my children so they can always see and hear me, but the rest of the digital stuff I hadn't though about at all. Maybe I'm a little bit psychic though, because for Christmas this year I had actually bought every member of my family notebooks with 'PASSWORDS' written across the front. Luckily I had got myself one too so I took the opportunity to use my Christmas present early with these tasks.

I watched the digital legacy video, downloaded the will, visited their site (it's really interesting) and chose to look at three of the guides, I chose 'mobile phone' 'google' and 'online bank account and subscriptions'. All the advice is good and it's a more serious subject but can save a lot of heartache and stress. My father actually passed away last year and we had a family WhatsApp group. After 6 months of inactivity the contact automatically 'leaves the group' which was a shock and although it isn't quite the same as the other things discussed in this challenge, we would have unlocked his phone and maybe posted old photos or something to it, just to make sure he stayed in the group. But...we couldn't we didn't know his passwords and so his emails lay unread and the photos are locked away. 

So based on this challenge and my own experience I will be recommending that everyone looks into this and decides for themselves what to do about their digital legacy. I will discuss it with my team and we currently don't discuss this with anyone we support. I know I never have. It definitely needs to be something I add to my digital inclusion training though. I might need to find a humourous way to introduce it though. And for Christmas this year I have picked the right gifts for everyone in my house to log their legacy requests!

Take me to my (h)Appy Place

 Take me to my (h)Appy Place

Thing 19 brings us back to the  (h)Appy place of Apps! This time useful apps for organising. This is a really useful task if you don't already do it. Digital organisation can be the well decorated journal and diary you always wanted. The suggestions are to use an organising app and some examples are given. I use Notion, which isn't listed as an example, but does the same thing. You can note take, import files and set up reading lists, study schedules, it's awesome. If you struggle with losing post it notes, sheets of paper and your notebook is just way too nice to actually write in - digital organisation is for you. I use mine for studying but also if I have a project that I just need to process and break down into smaller parts. I used it for a coproduction project where I needed to store a lot of things like research, guest lists, results, and planning items.

The next activity was to make a coggle mindmap. Now, coggle is not my favourite, but  I have made a basic one for Christmas Day just to show the kind of things it can be used for 

In this example I've broke down some Christmas Day planning into categories and some brief things to consider. Of course you could pictures, links to spotify playlists and shopping lists, but coggle isn't something I would use for that. It does however offer a good option for people to learn to make digital mindmaps and I will encourage others to try it along with the ones I generally use. For now though, I'll continue my own digital organisers. I should really start a Christmas planning one...

Keep in touch

 Keep in touch

Thing 18 brings us back to social media! This time, we are looking at it organisationally instead of personally. I read the article suggested and examined my organisation's social media presence. 

My organisation has a website, X account, Instagram, YouTube channel, Facebook and LinkedIn. Most are pretty well updated, which is good. It's important to stay relevant and to keep this updated. People need to know what we do and what's going on. But, I do feel the YouTube channel could have more. There's a few videos but it definitely isn't as aesthetically pleasing and doesn't have the same feel of effort and interest the other socials do. I would like to see more in terms of content and also brighter, more enaging thumbnails. Maybe I just feel that way because that's the app I use the most. I would use YouTube over any of the other apps, so I immediately look for this platform and how engaging it is.

I also looked at the SSSC socials and I guess you know which one I went to immediately.... Yep it was YouTube. I looked at the other socials too, but I was always going to find YouTube more engaging. I liked the content and it's how I would engage in the future. My favourite resource was the 'who we are and what we do' playlist, even though it is only two videos. I like the animated style, it's bright and catchy and it's the type of videos that I like.

I think many organisations could do more with social media, but it is a balance. Certain things need to be protected and not everything can be posted and there needs to be fine tuning for public viewing. Identities and stories can be told but not exploited and I am aware of that. 

I'll continue to look out for new postings on my organisations socials and maybe they'll even take my advice.....

Free for all

 Free for all

Thing 17 brings us to the Open Educational Resources (OER). More learning online which is always a bonus. Many organisations have open educational resources and it's a great way to learn from organisations who are skilled in an area I'm not. 

The tasks for Thing 17 were to watch a video on oer and the SSSC, which I have done and then find an OER that is relevant to my role. Two suggestions were to try OASIS and OER commons but honestly I struggled to find anything there that I liked. Some were outdated and a couple I visited weren't anything like what they described themselves to be which sort of answers the consideration question for this task.

Why would people oppose OER or limitation. well, the links don't always work or the actual resource isn't what it appears to be or as relevant as you might think. For example I tried to follow one to a psychology resource and it linked to a one minute reading of a bible passage with no reference to psychology. So technically, you could be learning things which aren't related to the subject and you could be sharing that without knowing better.

However I did want to find a resource for this task, so hopefully it's ok to link to another site. I have used and continue to use the Scottish Drug Forum and their resources, which have always been very helpful. SDF offers training, e-learning and other resources which can be really helpful if you work with individuals who use substances. Things can change quickly in that area and I've always found their resources to be accurate and updated regularly. I've used many of their resources and directed others to the site and I am always open to looking at new OER resources. 

So Thing 17 was an interesting look at what's out there and a reminder to double check that it matches up with what you thought!