You look really familiar...

Since the beginning of Amstel Life in 2009, I've kept pretty mum on the details of my love life. For privacy reasons, I rarely blog about specific people, situations and circumstances involving my love life - until now.  On this very rare occasion, now that I'm engaged (typing those words still brings a smile to my face), I want to introduce this very special person to my readers, share how we met and finally became engaged, and explain how he fits into our open adoption journey.



I met Aaron in March of 2009.  I was living the single life and was out on the town enjoying a few cold ones with my best friend Angela Bell (or as Deanna says, "Angi-bell" because she has beautiful red hair like Ariel) at a local sports cafe in Raleigh (sports cafe just sounds so much classier than sports bar).  I was a month and a half shy of graduating from NC State, and my life couldn't have been crazier.  I was juggling two internships, leading two student organizations on campus, had just begun a part-time job visiting medical practices in the area, and was desperately trying to get all of my school work completed before the end of the semester. Okay, so back to the "sports cafe." Angela and I were there to watch Carolina Hurricanes hockey game, and in order to get a table faster we decided to combine groups with some people we didn't know. Angela and I quickly became friends with the people we randomly got seated with. I was glancing around the room when suddenly, I noticed a very attractive stranger, a few tables away, looking straight at me. Well, actually, he was doing more than looking. He was kind of staring. We met eyes a few times, and I quickly became self conscious. Did I have something on my face? I asked Angela and she gave me a funny look because I clearly didn't. I decided to head to the restroom to double check myself in the mirror anyway. As I was coming out of the bathroom, I spotted the same guy who had been staring at me. He was in the hallway right outside of the bathroom...walking towards me!  This is my favorite part; he walked right up to me and used the old "You look really familiar...do I know you from somewhere?" line. I laughed, and we immediately hit it off.  Aaron was witty, smart, athletic, attractive and outdoorsy. He asked if I had a boyfriend, and I told him that I did not. Apparently he thought that one of the guys sitting at my table was a boyfriend, so he had decided to approach me privately instead of walking up to my table, introducing himself to me, and risk starting a bar - I mean sports cafe - fight. This explains why he believed a bathroom ambush was the best course of action. I thought that was very noble of him.



Although he was a few years older than me, it turns out we actually had a lot in common. He was athletic (he was a sprinter on the track team at Georgia Tech when he was in college), had three younger sisters, and was a Christian. I was smitten. After a while, I realized that I should probably let my friend Angela know that I was fine and hadn't been abducted.  So naturally, I sent her a quick text that may or may not have said something something along the lines of: "Met someone in the bathroom. Hot. 30." And Angela knew that I was fine.



Aaron and I talked for a while longer, and he asked for my phone number. A few days later, he called and asked me on a date. I told him I was too busy to even think about dating, but if he could wait a month until I graduated from college then I would gladly take him up on that offer.  Well, he waited. It was the evening before I graduated from NC State, and Aaron and his friends met up with me and some of my friends. We hit it off again, and later that same week we finally went on our first date. Three years later, he asked my dad for permission to marry me. Keith gave his approval.



One of the many things I love about Aaron is that even though he's rough around the edges and is one of the manliest guys I know, he is one of the most loyal and kind hearted people I know.  I have felt so comfortable and at ease around him since the minute I met him. It really feels like I have known him my whole life. A few weeks before we went on our first date, we became Facebook friends and he happened upon my blog. He sent me a little message to let me know that he thought the decision I made was admirable and he thought even more highly of me because of it. How rare for a guy to call my decision "admirable!" It was such a relief to know that Aaron wasn't going to be one of the many guys who ran in the opposite direction after learning about my past - and the four-year-old fruit of my loins.



Another reason I think Aaron and I bonded so quickly is because we have both experienced loss in our lives at about the same time. My loss was the result of me getting pregnant in high school and ultimately choosing open adoption, but Aaron's loss wasn't his choice. Unfortunately, his mother passed away from cancer in 2007 – before I had a chance to meet her. From what I’ve heard, she was an amazing, vibrant, Godly woman who deeply touched every person she knew. Fortunately, I've had the opportunity to watch a video of Myra speaking to their entire church on Mother's Day, and his three sisters, Jenny, Hannah and Anne, each have beautiful characteristics and personalities that give me glimpses of what she must have been like.



Over the past few years, Aaron has spent lots of time with me during visits with Don, De and Deanna. Recently, we took a trip down to South Carolina to visit our wedding venue for the first time, and we took that opportunity to spend some quality time with Don, De and Deanna (who recently turned 7!). We asked Deanna to be a flower girl in our wedding, and she then asked us if we could just get married "tomorrow" so she didn't have to wait until next year. We all laughed. So naturally, we decided to take her with us to our wedding cake tasting appointment. Turns out she is a pretty good decision maker. :) It's awesome to see Aaron and Deanna getting along so well, and of course Don and De love Aaron too.



It's so clear to me now that this is how things are supposed to be. If you had told me five or six years ago that I would be as happy as I am today, I would have never believed it. Never. I still remember the tears and the sadness and the depression and the guilt. I never thought in a million years that I would be able to overcome those things.  But here I am today, a very real testament to the fact that with a little faith, anything is possible.  It's amazing what God has done - and continues to do - in my life.  Proverbs 3:5 says, "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding."  I'm so thankful that even when I didn't understand why I had to go thought what I went through, God did.  He used my lapses in judgement and turned them into tremendous blessings. After all of the heartbreak and discouragement and loss, it's encouraging to know that all along, God had a greater purpose and a better plan for my life. I'm still learning to trust Him everyday and walk by faith and not by sight, but I'm so thankful to have this amazing guy by my side to help me navigate through this crazy journey.

Photos compliments of Erin Dietrich Photography :)

Surprise!

A few months ago I made the executive decision to finally hire {a professional blog designer} to give Amstel Life the look I'd always envisioned.  In previous months, I had played around with my template settings and for one reason or another, I just couldn't find the perfect combination of color, font, and layout to really make my blog a true reflection of myself and my story.  I knew I needed to find a blog design specialist who could give Amstel Life the visual boost needed to really stand out.



So I took my search to - what else - the Internet!  I began my search for a custom blog designer on Google.  I did lots of research and previewed a ton of portfolios.  By mere happenstance, I came across a website called Key Lime Digital Designs by the lovely Kendra John.  I absolutely loved her portfolio and her design style was exactly what I was looking for. I submitted an inquiry form and she responded almost immediately.  I felt so comfortable from the moment I read her first email.  Kendra worked tirelessly over the past few weeks, giving me mock-ups and more mock-ups and changes and more changes and edits and more edits until I finally figured out exactly what I wanted.  To say that I was a bit indecisive at times would be an understatement. :)  Thankfully, Kendra stuck around.  I'm so happy to finally have a blog design that really stands out and that reflects my personality perfectly.



Thank you times a million, Kendra!



xoxo

Online Teacher Development Works Best - 15 Reasons Why

I've started this article with quite a bold statement, but it's a conclusion that I have been coming too over the course of quite a few years now. I should really put this into context though, as most of the teacher training I do deals with pedagogical training for the use of technology and is most often delivered during intensive face to face sessions, usually with groups of teachers working in a computer lab. Though, having said that, I do still believe that many of the reasons I have listed below do also apply to other kinds of more 'mainstream' teacher development too, especially intensive courses.

So, here are my 15 reasons why I think developing your teaching online can be more effective.

Learn while you teach - This gives you the opportunity to try things out with your own classes working in your own environment with your own students. Often when we take a face to face intensive course we leave our familiar teaching environment and come back with lots of new ideas only to find that in our everyday reality many of them don’t work or create unforeseen problems that we don’t know how to deal with. Studying while we teach can give us the time to try out new ideas in our own work place, discover the obstacles and try to adapt them to our own context.

Non competitive - Face to face courses can often become quite competitive and tend to favour people who are more confident and extrovert and who like to shine. This can often lead to the quieter more reflective types being overshadowed and not having the opportunity to contribute what may well be valuable comment or ask the questions for which they need answers. The text based and asynchronous nature of online training makes it much easier for everyone to have their say and can lead to a much richer and more collaborative learning experience.

Work at your own computer - This sounds like a very strange advantage, but training with technology on your own computer can be a huge advantage. Contrary to popular belief, computers do tend to be unique. The way one computer is set up and how it responds and the kinds of problems you encounter can be very different from one computer to another. Nothing is ore frustrating than going on a course with a computer that is set up to make things easy for you and then returning to your own computer and finding that there are a whole different set of problems that you don’t know how to solve. Training to use technology with your students needs to include training to trouble shoot the problems that you may have with your computer and learning how to overcome these and set your own computer up to run effectively in your own working environment.

Experiential learning - The best way to learn about technology and online learning is to experience it for yourself. Being part of an online course gives you first hand experience of being an online learner and helps you to understand some of the challenges and obstacles your students will face when they use technology to study online.

Develop digital literacies - Even if you aren’t doing an online course which is technology specific, you should still be able to pick up a few new techniques and develop some of your digital literacies by studying online. Again, a good online course will have some element of digital literacy and study skills development built in. This should go some way towards helping you understand how your students are learning in the real world and the kinds of study skills they need to develop.

Digital networking literacies - This really falls within digital literacies, but it is worth highlighting as I feel that developing your digital networking skills has real significance for your continuing development. If you can learn how to build supportive relationships with the other trainees on your course so that you can retain these contacts as a network after you finish the course then you can put these networking skills to good use within the various open online communities and networks that exist within various social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. Having an online learning network and knowing how best to work within that network can help to ensure that you can guide your own continuing development after the course you are training on has finished.

Build international contacts - Online training often provides a much more international learning environment than the classroom and so this can help to broaden the learning experience as there is a much wider range of experience to share. Finding out about how things are done in different countries and very different contexts to your own can be very refreshing and enlightening and can really enhance the learning experience and the network building potential of the course.

Differentiated learning - As a trainer when you encounter a group of teachers face to face, it takes time and effort to see them as individuals with individual needs and interests. As an online trainer this experience is reversed, you are constantly dealing and communicating with each member of the group as an individual and this enables you to more rapidly assess their needs as individuals and adapt the learning to suit them.

One to one time - Following on from the previous point, almost all tutor - student time in online courses is one to one rather than whole group, so again it is easier to ensure that as a trainee you get the attention you need from your tutor.

Personality types - For shyer less confident students online leaning can work to their advantage because contributing in text can be much less threatening than doing it orally. You also have more time to consider your contributions to the group and can edit and re-edit them to be sure that you express yourself clearly.

Longer period of study - Learning something well really takes time. Online training can often take place over a much longer period of time than most face to face courses can. This keeps you supported and engaged in the learning process for a greater period and so allows more time for development.

Your learning journey - Because the interactions within an online course are digital, they are recorded and captured so you have the opportunity to go back and retrace and review your entire learning journey. This greatly increases the chances of a deeper learning experience and greater retention of what you have learned.

Time for reflection - Online training allows more time for reflection and good online learning structures in this reflection, so that you not only reflect on your learning process but have time to discuss and share your reflections and share in the reflections of other teachers

Flexibility - You can study at times that are convenient for you and for time periods that suit your learning concentration span. A lot of classroom training time often turns into dead time, because the length of lessons are dictated by administrative convenience rather than pedagogical advantage and trainers and trainees are often left pushing their way through materials long after their optimum concentration period has been exceeded. When you study online you can have a break whenever and however often you feel like. This gives you time to ponder what you have learned or move on to new materials at your own pace and use your time more efficiently.

Lower cost - The costs, not only of courses but also of travel, accommodation and time off work are often vastly reduced when you take an online course rather than a face to face course.

So those are my 15 reasons. Feel free to add any of your own in the comments section.

Related links:

• Learning technology news portal
• Web Tools for Learners
• Author of the Month

Best

Nik Peachey

National Council for Adoption: the blog

Thank you all for the wonderful congratulatory comments.  Aaron and I are so excited to start planning our wedding.  I'll reveal the full story about how we met and how I realized that he was "the one" in one of my next blog posts.



Something I forgot to mention on my blog is that my story was published on the National Council for Adoption Blog on July 17th.  Here's a link to the story: Open Adoption: A Birthmother's Story |  Maintaining Openness in Adoption and Finding a Good Fit for All Involved.



Can't wait to share more!



Ames

I have a very important announcement to make...

 





I said yes!

Truth be told...

I've written a ton of awesome blog posts lately - in my head.  Truth be told, for one reason or another, none of these posts {that have seriously been written in my head} have made it from my brain to the keyboard.  I don't know if it's procrastination or feeling too vulnerable to share what's in my heart. This blog has been a great way to share my experiences as a birthmother, but I have to admit there are times that I envy those anonymous bloggers who are free to write about whatever the heck they want without the fear of offending someone they know personally. It's much easier to be honest when you don't have to worry about offending someone you care about.  Anyone else ever feel like this?



Also, it seems like every time I even think about posting an update, I find something else to do that's "more important."  I'll blog just as soon as I fold all of this laundry that's piled on my bed... and Clorox wipe up the kitchen... and then check out the newsfeed to make sure nothing important has escaped my eyes within the last 15 minutes.  Ha.



I was sitting in church last Sunday morning, on the very last page of our sermon notes, I saw something that caught my attention. Ecclesiastes 11:4 says "If you wait for perfect conditions, you will never get anything done."  In context, this verse is referring to a farmer who is waiting for perfect conditions to plant seeds. It made me realize that if I continue to wait for perfect conditions to write a blog post - it's probably never going to happen.



There are plenty of things to write about.  First, some updates from the past year.  I was able to attend the Birthmom Buds Annual Retreat this year in Charlotte, and it was fabulous.  Here's a nice little group pic.  We had birthmothers from all across the country, and it was so so so so so great to finally meet some of these women.  I already knew a few of them through blogging, and it was particularly special to have been assigned to sit next to sweet, little Leah from o-momma writes. {http://omommawrites.com/}, whom I've had the pleasure of meeting in Raleigh a  few years ago. If you haven't had a chance to read her blog yet, hit that up!

In other news, I had the opportunity to participate in my first mission trip in March.  I went to Barbados with a small group from Fellowship of Christian Athletes.  We went down to "Bim" as the locals say, to encourage an existing sports ministry there.  It was an unforgettable experience, and it was amazing to see how God is working through sports ministry in that part of the world, and humbling to be a small part of that. We really bonded with our new Bajan friends. I think of our new friends often, and of course, I'd go back in a heartbeat.  I'll share more about my journey to Barbados, how I got involved, and what we specifically did there, but in the meantime, here are a few of my pictures:

Aaaaaaaaaany whoooo.  Oh, and I recently bought a house.  A townhouse to be specific, but a big deal nonetheless!  Here's a picture of my humble abode.  She's a real gem, and these past few weeks have been filled with painting, decorating, and moving. By the way, this is the 3rd time my boyfriend has graciously helped me to move everything that I own into a new place in the past three years - that's love. He's definitely a keeper.  

Never in a coon's age could I have imagined I'd be a homeowner at 25, but here I am, planting my roots even further in a city that I {absolutely} adore. I'll save the exciting story of how I happened upon home-ownership for another post. 

Finally, my last update is something that deserves acknowledgement because it is a part this open adoption story.  Deanna's birthfather is getting married.  I'm very happy for him, and I'm thankful that his fiance is a wonderful person who also loves Deanna very much. Since our relationship ended many years ago, a huge fear of mine was that he would end up marrying someone who didn't love Deanna as much as we do.  I am so thankful that I don't have to worry about that anymore.  As De, Don and I have always said, the more people to love on Deanna the better. 

Something I've come to realize in the {nearly} 7 years since Deanna's adoption, is that God does have an amazing plan for my life. Although I must admit that I couldn't always see that plan. One of the many awesome things about God is that He will make the plans He has for us clear in His perfect timing.  His plans are to prosper us, and to give us hope and a future. Isn't that amazing? In the meantime though, there are times where we have to walk by faith and not by sight. There have been many times in the years following Deanna's adoption that I've felt completely uncertain of what God had in store for my life, and I tried really hard to make things happen in my own timing.  But I'm so thankful that God has put me exactly where I was supposed to be at each point in my life. Ever faithful, He has opened the right doors and closed the wrong ones.     

One of my favorite verses is Isaiah 55:8-9.  “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than you thoughts. 

Thanks for hanging in there while I took my mini-hiatus.  Looking forward to getting back to writing again. 

Love, 

Amstel

⁹ 

How I use social media for my professional development

This has been a common theme to many of the presentations, workshops, webinars and seminars that I have been asked to do over the last few years, but however many times I try to present on this subject I never really feel that I get the message across as clearly and persuasively as I would like.

The issue of how we use social media for our own development as teachers and as digitally skilled individuals, is one that I believe is of vital importance though, not just because it can enable us to keep developing as teachers through the content, ideas, resources and above all people it gives us access to, but also because the way use digital media for our own development should guide and influence the way we use it with our students and build their digital literacies and communication skills.

So here it is. This my own attempt to outline my digital media learning experience, or at least part of it.

I’ll split this into 3 sections which I’ll call

• Information in - This is how and where I find information
• Information processing - This is how I process, engage with and capture information
• Information out - This is how I share what I’ve learned or discovered

Information in

One of my favourite and most useful sources of information is Diigo. What I particularly like about Diigo is the groups. As you can see here I’m a member of quite a few groups.

• My Diigo Groups

The thing that I really like about the groups is that each group is set to send me a daily digest of any links shared within that group, so looking through these email digests is usually one of the first things I do at the beginning of each working day. These groups have really provided a very rich source of professional development for me and most of the interesting articles I read originate from here.

I also have a range of RSS readers for my different devices and these keep me up to date on the blogs and journals I follow. I’ve been using Netvibes for quite some for this, but on my mobile devices I also use Flipboard for more general information and Zite for more professional things. This video shows how Zite works.


Both these are very easy to browse when I have a moment spare and have great integration with both Twitter and Facebook.

• My Netvibes Feeds

Apart from those I also use Tweet Deck to follow specific topics on Twitter. I have it set up so that I can monitor the most useful hashtag related streams when ever I have some down time.

Information processing

It’s really easy to spend a lot of time sorting through information and links to articles, only to discover a few weeks later that you can neither remember or find anything you looked at, so i use a whole range of tools to make sure I capture and attempt to digest all this information.
I’ve had a Delicious account for years now and I configured it so that anything I posted to Twitter also automatically went into that account. However after a while i found that I wasn’t really going back there and when I din’t find it a very useful place to search through, though this has changed a bit since the introduction of Stacks (collections of bookmarks that have a more visual user interface)

• My Delicious Account

For a while I used a great visual bookmarking tool called SimplyBox, but unfortunately that disappeared, so I was left to resort through all my link there and find better solutions (never a bed thing). My solution has been to spread things out a little.

I’ve been collecting a lot of infographics recently and I find the Pinterest is the ideal tool for these. It’s easy to collect and save them using the browser bookmarklet and they display well when I want to search through and find the ones I need.

• My infographic Collection 

I’ve also found that Pinterest is great for collecting YouTube videos and this has been a great way to access the videos when I need them.

Though sadly, although Pinterest grabs YouTube videos well it struggles with other web based video embeds, so I might have to look for something better for that.

• My video collection

For a long time I had all my links to useful web tools and resources stored in boxes on SimplyBox and it has taken a while for me to find a replacement for this. I have tried publishing my favourite tools for learners using a Scoop.it site.

• My Tools for Learners

 Although this is a nice way to share the tools it isn’t so handy when I come back to find them again. The answer to my problem came a few weeks ago when I discovered Meaki.

This looks similar to Pinterest, but it grabs a visual of the entire web page instead of just one image from it and the way the stored links can be accessed is much more user friendly for me, so I’ve been busy shifting links from my old boxes into this new site. So here are some examples (more to come soon)

• Tools for exploiting video
• Tools for developing vocabulary
• Tools for developing writing skillsTools for developing reading skills
• Tools for developing digital narrative
• Tools for creating infographics

This process of curation (sifting and organising links to useful content) may seem a little time consuming, but it doesn’t have to be. Once the initial sites are set up, you can just use  any short bursts of 5 or 10 minutes either at the start or end of the day or between lesson or other tasks. Let’s face it many of us find time for facebook in those short moments so why not something more productive?

Of course the most important part of processing all this information and making use of it is to put it into practice in my teaching, training and very importantly my writing. Trying to synergise all this information, make sense of it and formulate it into a rational strategy for moving my development forward is something I couldn’t do without blogging. The act of writing something down and organising it into a rational readable text on a blog to be published for others in your profession to see can really help you to focus on and confront your own ideas and beliefs and many postings that I have started to write have ended up in the rubbish purely because the act of putting those ideas into text convinced me that was where they belonged.

So having been through this process or collection, analysis, curation and reformulation the final step is to start to share those ideas.

Information out

Sharing is a really important part of the process. It’s important because if you create  something of value that can help you develop it can probably help others develop too. It’s also important because you can get some feedback from other teachers, perhaps even a little encouragement and appreciation and start to grow your network.

My main tools for sharing are firstly Scoop.it, as I mentioned earlier, which is where I store links to any interesting articles I find, and also a few that I write. Scoop.it is a particularly useful tool because it synchronises with other services such as

• My Facebook page
• My Twitter account 
• My Linkedin Account 
• My Tumblr blog

The Tumblr site, is something I’ve only started using quite recently, and only really to back up all those articles, so that if Scoop.it disappears or decides to start charging large amounts of money I haven’t completely lost everything.

• My Learning Technology Scoop.it

As I said Scoop.it posts straight through to Twitter, which I mentioned earlier is also a great source of information in. I tend not to engage with people very much through Twitter though. For me it’s a great way to share links to content and find links to content, but it’s not a great platform for communication, so I also have a Facebook page which I find much more suitable for that.

Conclusion
So that’s it. My social network for professional development. It does take time to build up something like this, but it can grow organically just by registering on a few sites and then putting in 5 or 10 mins whenever you have time. In the long run, that’s far more time economical than going to a conference and certainly much cheaper, and best of all the network you develop is one that is absolutely specific to your own needs, so what could be better.

I’ll finish with a word of advice. This process can become quite addictive, especially for the social attention it can bring to you,  as you start to accumulate hundreds or even thousands of followers, but don’t let feeding this network take over as the purpose of the process. Always try to retain your integrity and focus on quality. Have high standards - If you don’t find anything useful or interesting to share or write about, then have a day off, never share something unless you have genuinely learned something from it and feel it has value.

I hope this is useful.

Related links:

• Developing your digital study skills
• Temporary Bookmarking
• 10 Teacher Development Task for Web 2.0 Tools
• Creating a personal homepage
• Social Networks and the Web 2.0 Revolution
• Create your own social network 7 steps
• A Tick List of 21st Century Digital Skills for Teachers 

Best

Nik Peachey