Sabrina's Blog

      The Calm app is an app used for sleep and meditation. It is promoted as a way to achieve a happier and healthier lifestyle through meditation. The app has sleep stories, music, and meditation that help calm your brain.      This app is huge on promoting positive mental health. What else can a social worker ask for? This app can be used for social workers themselves to help prevent a burnout. Stress comes with the career of social work. But it doesn't have to be so bad if we have proper tools to help us deal with it. The Calm app is one of the best tools to help deal with stress. Being able to turn off our minds and just breathe is so important and this app helps us do just that. Not only is this app great for social workers, it is great to be able to recommend to our clients. Everybody can use a helpful tool to help us relax and the Calm app is it.  https://youtu.be/nbW2LNU7nH8

     In appreciative inquiry, participants work from a "what if?" perspective, or a strengths perspective. The authors state, "In this approach, inquiry is appreciative, applicable, provocative, and collaborative," (Nussbaum-Beach & Hall 2012). The authors give us a list of assumptions and principles that based on appreciative inquiry. The assumptions are in every group or community, something is working, what people focus on becomes their reality, asking good, generative questions influences people, groups and communities are more comfortable with change when some things that work don't change, language creates reality, and recognizing differences is of value. The principles of appreciative inquiry are what we concentrate on develops into our reality, appreciative inquiry is positive and supportive, change and inquiry are simultaneous, embracing the power of stories changes members' thoughts, and how we behave and think is affected by how we anticipate

                         In chapter 5 of  The Connected Educator,  Nussbaum-Beach and Hall teach us how to build our collaborative culture and lifestyle. They highlight ideas such as putting relationships first, establishing trust, fostering collegiality, creating shared visions, collaboration, and putting other's needs at the forefront. The authors emphasize the fostering, nurturing, and maintaining of positive relationships in our lives. We need to be able to connect with others to learn and grow. You need to be able to put your trust in others in order to build connections. As stated on page 60, "Trust is formed when people do what they say they will do. It is no different in connected online communities," (Hall & Nussbaum-Beach, 2012). Online communities do not vary much from real-life connections. In order to build connection you need to be able to trust one another. Collegiality can be difficult to achieve but communication is key. Being able to communicate open