How To Manage Stress?

 

Stress can be defined as a body reaction toward any response exposed to the body on the psychological, physical, or mental levels. It is a normal process through which the body is trying to agree with pressure. Controlling stress starts in identifying life’s stressors, and exactly how to have an overlook on your action towards daily stress level. Even if your life is seems stressful, but some steps can be used to release your stress and depression. Stress is released due to routine life imposed on the individual, and can be managed by several manners such as; psychologically, physically, and socially.

      Firstly, pressure can be reduced psychologically by personal effort. So, the person can manage stress by following some daily issues that calm the soul. For example managing diet which means eating healthy food where sugar level will be normal in the body. Also, thinking positively will relax your brain. Medicinal rubbing or making massage, maintain praying and obligate faith relaxes the body psychologically and feeds the soul.

As well as, taking an extended period of recreation especially when it is spent away from home, or in traveling which makes the individuals feel that they are born again (Staley, 2013 ). Sleeping everyday almost 30 minutes decrease from your depression. Furthermore, determining some aims and working to achieve it, taking some minutes of silence daily, and changing lifestyle in a way that suits your psychological life. If work is balanced in a limited way; this will control your anger. Also changing in home decoration helps in avoiding routine that is surrounding you. Moreover, listening to music and pet breeding helps in enjoying free time .Thus, all of this will manage your stress psychologically.

      Secondly, some physical exercises may control stress. Thus, exercising leads to physical comfort of depression. The best stress reliever is exercising. It releases “endorphins” which is a hormone that makes you feel better, and distracts from daily worries. Focusing on emotional sensations while exercising will help in breaking out of the cycle of negative thoughts (Robinson, Smith, M.A., & Segal, 2018). Also it will take the soul to another world where the body will release all the negative signals that helps in stress. Therefore, stress will be released.

Although exercises and sports are part of medication for people that suffers from boredom and overwork; for sure it gives positive results. Many psychiatrists prescribed first for their patients exercising and sports as a medicine to comfort nerves and get rid of stress and depression. In addition, exercising improves the mood, and then you will enjoy physical and psychological comfort since in following exercising daily or weekly, you will have a slim and healthy body, also psychologically you are restful. Although it helps you to get sleep that was interrupted because of tension, fatigue, and anxiety.

Some exercises that can be suggested: running and walking in places that have beautiful views, swimming with friends in tourist resorts, dancing while listening music, rowing, and climbing hills and mountains.Therefore, following these exercises helps in losing weight, having a healthy and compatible body; indeed this will comfort the body and improve self-confidence.

     Thirdly, stress can be hold socially by building social networks. Being in contact face-to-face with friends relieves stress. Moreover, having conversations with a good listener will flatter your trust and strength your bond. By building a network of close friends can improve your elasticity, or the ability to recover from sadness and failure to cope with life’s stressors (Robinson L. , Smith, M.A., & Segal, Stress Management, 2018).

Sometimes close friends become as brothers or sisters, since they give all the attention for your sadness and anxiety.Therefore, each one should have a group of close friends even though if they are your sisters or brothers because nobody can help you as they can do.

“Suzanne Hird” in her article “HOW TO MANAGE STRESS” explains that “…such a manner would lay out the problem in a civil, formal fashion that cannot be ignored. This approach, she says, is most likely to yield an acceptable solution” (Hird S. , 2015).

 Thus, having friends and relationships with others will make you feel that you are not alone, and people you know love you. Because of that they will listen, help, and encourages you. They will always try to make you happy; also they will help you to get out from the atmosphere of sadness.

    In conclusion, stress is a natural state that every human being passes through it because of tension, effort, over thinking and pressure. The most important thing for people that are suffering from stress and depression, they shouldn’t give up because they will suffer later from other psychological problems. Therefore, when some symptoms appear, try to read about what should you do, or ask a psychological doctor that helps you in following some tips daily, and finally stress will be managed.

 

References:

http://web.b.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail/detail?vid=0&sid=6abe392a-995c-4b86-9905-811f4a1dfdb1%40pdc-v-sessmgr01&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#AN=101798310&db=a9h (Hird S. , 2015)

https://counseling.uiowa.edu/self-help/stress-management-strategies/ (Staley K. , 2013)

https://www.helpguide.org/articles/stress/stress-management.htm (Robinson, L., Smith, M., M.A., & Segal, R. ,2018)

What can you do now that we were not able to do a year ago?

We all today different than we were last year. Many things we plan to do it but we weren't able due to different reasons, and somethings happens without even planning for it. Last year, was really a challenging year for me. At this time last year, I was preparing for getting graduated with BS in biology. I was depressed due to COVID-19 pandemic and this was a barrier to learn and improve new skills. Also, I wasn't working neither in teaching nor in any other field so this was another barrier to improve myself. 

However, this year I got graduated and started with Teaching Diploma right away. In addition, I started working in Laboratory, and this helped me to gain new skills in my field and learn practical skills that I didn't learn in my major in the university. Also, working helped me to manage my time between social life, work time and studying and taught me how to work in a team and how to interact with people of different societies and ethics. 

Challenges You Face When Learning/Teaching Online

 Although using online in the educational process is very useful. However, you will face a lot of challenges, either if you are a student or a teacher. 

First challenge you will face is technical and network connection issues. Sometimes, the laptop or the device used suddenly get stopped, or the network connection cut-off ,while doing assignments, attending a live session, doing the exam or even when you are designing lesson plan or activities for your students. 

Second problem you may face is managing your time. Both students and teachers face the problem of getting distracted while working online. So, they start browsing their social media accounts and this takes a lot of their time and energy! Also, they may get distracted if a beloved person comes to your house while you are working and this is one of challenges that I faced as a student. 

Another challenge is staying motivated while teaching or learning online. Teachers may feel not motivated if their students are not attending the class as they should, not participating during the session, or some students are not doing their assignments and quizzes. Here, the teachers' get stressed and feel that everything they are doing is getting wasted. Also, the student may not find the class is interesting or is not motivated to participate during the session. So, the teachers should use what motivate their students to be attracted to online learning. 

In addition, many teachers and students are unfamiliar to use technology in teaching/learning process. This confuse them at the beginning and makes them stressed from using new tools they never used before.

Last, students that are majored in sciences and have Lab classes, may not understanding course expectations. Because they are not applying the procedures they are learning and theoretical knowledge will not help them that much especially in Lab sessions. 

In conclusion, even though we are moving in our lives to use technology and digital devices, but we still face many challenges that may be a barriers in using online in the educational process. 

What Students Should Be Taught When Working Online?

 Students, especially in young age, should be taught that they may face several problems while working online. However, they should be taught how to act to avoid such problems. 

For example, they should know that they should refer to a trusted person when facing any problem in the used apps. Also, they should be taught how to secure their accounts from hackers. In addition, I think students should know that they are not forced to post everything they think about, they should learn to post what is helpful for us and for others, like sharing a video about something they learned in the class or in certain subject. Furthermore, it is important to teach students what are the safe websites that they can use in different ways, in this way you are avoiding them from facing such problems. 

How To Be A Digital Citizen?

 In the age we are living in, Internet become part of our daily lives and related to everything we do like shopping, banking, studying, connecting with people, making research and many other things. 

Although Internet is very important nowadays, but it have another side that may harm peoples' life. Cyber-bullying is one of the major problems users are facing. In turn, our role as educators to teach students how to use such tools probably and how to create safe online spaces. In several ways, teachers can help students how to be a digital citizen. First, encourage your students' critical thinking skills; for example teaching them how to interact with others online, what to post and what to search for and how, and how to make their accounts safe from stealing their accounts. Second, teach students to use secure websites to shop, to learn, to communicate, etc... Third, teach students to respects other users, their personal information and their privacy. Fourth, to protect their privacy by always updating their privacy and security settings. 

In conclusion, not only using technology and internet makes you a digital citizen, but also by knowing how to use it probably and helping others how to manage settings and control their accounts. 

Tools That Can Be Used In Online Assessment

Different assessment tools can be used by teachers to assess students, either formative assessment or summative assessment. One of the most effective and used tool by teachers is Google Forms. It is really helpful in creating different types of questions like multiple choices, short answers, long answers, tables, etc... And you as a teacher can control the settings as you want. For example, you can make choose the assessment to be automatically graded. Also, you can write a feedback on each answer and it appears to the student automatically at the end.

Mentimeter is another effective tool to be used. It is designed with templates that can be used for different goals like creating quizzes and tests, ice-break activities, and live quizzes. 

Poll Everywhere is also a good choice to assess your students. Teachers can find were students are struggling during answering questions by creating cloud questions, opening students' responses, or by controlling multiple-choices options. 

In addition, Wordwall is another tool that can make assessment more fun and enjoyable for students, by creating quizzes in form of games. Several templates are available, like random wheel, random cards, matching pairs, word search, and many others. 

In conclusion, teachers can assess students by using online apps that are free and available for everyone and are simple in creating with making the subject more enjoyable for students. 

Integrating Technology Into Teaching

People may think that using technology in teaching disturb students and disperse their attention. However, using any type of technology in your classroom, converts all boring subjects into much fun and interaction activities. 

Using new tools in your classroom, will break the ice between you and your students, even between your students and the subject itself. In this way you will build a great relationships with your students. Another benefit, is that students are incorporated in different learning styles, thus they are improving their skills during the learning process. In addition, in this era everything is related to technology, and our role as teachers to improve our students skills, teach them what and how to use everything that is helpful in their future and preparing them for future digital demands.

EDUC561

Educational Media and Technology course is one of my favorite and most interested courses I took. The most thing I like it is that we are learning about new educational tools and how to use each one and applying them step by step. One thing I wish it is different, is to make a portfolio with making an activity on each tool we learned about and assigning it to the instructor.