Blog - Kate Anthony

CyberSupervision – Updates and Revamps (or what the inside of my head looks like!)

September 17, 2014 by Kate Anthony

One of the things that DeeAnna and I joke about being at the top of our technology development wish list is a USB adapter for our brains. When we plan a course – from one of our smaller special interest modules right up to our 60-hour Specialist Certificates – one of us generally has the entire basic structure and content in our head right from the start.

Of course, then we have to extract that course from our brains and into our training platform, JigsawBox, before we can offer it to our students! And one of the beauties of the platform is that we can edit the course once finished, meaning that the moment a new resource or updated information about any aspect of the content turns up, we can add it or amend the course within seconds – ensuring that our students only get the most up-to-date information available. Any course that involves the use of technology needs to have that functionality – the days of emailing out handouts and lessons are long gone.

I’ve just completed the overhaul of our Online Supervision Specialist Certificate: checking links; replacing out of date articles; adding new videos; designing new written assignments… the list of blended technologies we employ in our courses reflect the Online Therapy Institute ethos of blending technologies to better meet the needs of the clients we serve. Along the way, I’ve restructured the 30 hours to flow better from the introductory definitions, through the ethical considerations, on to the clinical aspects of supervising online, and ending at advanced readings encompassing private practice, internships, one-off supervision models and using avatars in virtual worlds as part of a supervision service.

Sometimes when finishing up a course, I wonder how it got from the inside of my head to the training platform. And then I realise I am generally staring at one sheet of A4 that shows me. Look!

What a mess, huh? And yet every scribble on that one piece of paper (and I only EVER need one piece of paper) links to everything else in my head around that specific topic, from random thoughts to newspaper articles to online jokes to the academic papers that Google Scholar throws at me every morning.

Sometimes the human brain just stuns me. As Einstein said, “Computers are incredibly fast, accurate and stupid; humans are incredibly slow, inaccurate and brilliant; together they are powerful beyond imagination.” Of course, he also said that technology has exceeded our humanity, but that’s a point I disagree with anyway 😉

I love technology. That’s not a secret. I also love my profession. Slamming those two things together in a coherent and ethically delivered way – not only educating others to advance confidently into the CyberCulture we now live and work in but also mentoring the innovators of the future to ensure the helping professions remain current and relevant in society – is my life’s work.

And if all you need is a pen and a sheet of paper like I often do, with no plug socket or wire in sight, remember that you are still using technology. Douglas Adams taught me to think that way about chairs back in 1999. And in my world, you don’t get a better teacher than him.

🙂

Certified Cyber Therapist – new approach, new course!

September 11, 2014 by Kate Anthony

At the Online Therapy Institute, our mission is to get as many trained online practitioners out there as possible, to protect the practitioner, the profession, and of course the potentially vulnerable client at the other end of the process. This is in common with my fellow trainers here in the UK and internationally – we don’t mind which training you choose, as long as you seek training in being an online practitioner!

The classic phrase we all hear from our trainees is “I just didn’t know how much I didn’t know!”

But we also hear how practitioners – who let’s face it have already invested probably a lot of money in their core training – also feel that Continuing Professional Development (CPD) is a never-ending sink hole of expenditure. We empathise with that entirely – as practitioners ourselves, we know that our learning doesn’t end when we graduate with our counselling qualification.

Transferring your offline skills to an online environment isn’t just about knowing how to use electronic forms of communication. For most of us, that is second nature now – and for the future therapists and clients it’s pretty much going to be in their blood from birth, metaphorically speaking. I recently wrote an article on this, outlining how that tipping point hasn’t quite happened yet, but isn’t all that far off.

The point is, whether you want to practice online or not, your clients live in a digital world and deserve to have a therapist that is immersed in that world – understanding Cyberculture is the new first step to being an empathic practitioner (click here for an empathy-based in-joke).

But post-graduate training and CPD costs time and money 🙁

If you are thinking about investing in your ongoing development as a practitioner, and want to be an effective therapist in a fast-changing technology driven client world, you have probably seen our full BACP Endorsed trainings as a Certified Cyber Faci OTI_CertifiedCyberTherapist_Cover_v1 (1)_001 litator (CCF) at the Institute. But what if you are just not sure if the financial outlay is going to give you what you need?

DeeAnna and I have thought about this long and hard, and as a result have introduced a new introductory course called our Certified Cyber Therapist (CCT) course. This cut-down version of our full training still gives you the one-to-one mentoring at every step that we are known for, but at a quarter of the both the cost and time needed. If you are in the United States, you will have come to know the Distance Credentialed Counselor (DCC) certification as the ‘gold standard’- and OTI has been proud to have written the DCC curriculum, training thousands of practitioners. Now we bring you the absolute latest information through our own credential with our CCT course.

What’s more – if you take the introductory 15 hour CCT course – we’ll discount the money from the full CCF or PGCert training when you are ready for it! It’s a win-win! Many of our students pick up additional courses from us as and when time and money allow – and in between they get all the benefits of ongoing resources from us, as well as free subscription to TILT Magazine and now free access to the video library of our awesome colleagues at OnlinEvents!

Read more about the CCT here, and we look forward to mentoring you on your journey to being an effective and ethical online practitioner at whatever training cost suits you!

🙂

Kickstart TILT on the rest of the journey!

June 7, 2014 by Kate Anthony

A few weeks ago, I blogged about how TILT is put together, and how DeeAnna and I complement each other as co-Managing Editors in producing such an accessible and visually pleasing magazine. “Pride and joy” is a phrase we use a lot in relation to it, but another one we use is “labour of love”!

When we first discussed the possibility of creating a publication of benefit to those not only in our field of working online professionally, but also to those approaching the idea of fitting technology into practice, we talked at length about a journal. We even had a name for it, JOT, the Journal of Online Therapy. We approached publishers, wrote proposals, started seeking an Editorial Board and started making lists of potential peer reviewers. In short, we started by going down the academic road to getting information about technology in our work to the field of counselling and therapy.

Why didn’t we continue down that road?

Well, firstly we knew that the work we do, and the work our colleagues worldwide do, need not be straight-jacketed into the phrase “therapy” in its traditional sense. We wanted a publication that spoke to other members of the helping profession – the coaches, the alternative practitioners, the befrienders and peer-supporters (to name but a few). Essentially, we wanted to reach an audience that encompassed every type of change-agent using technology – and I include the client in that group as self-facilitator of their improved mental health.

Secondly, it became clear that journals need to make money to attract publishers. Making money from professional journals involves a large financial commitment by readers, and how could we square that with reaching as many people as possible to educate and entertain them about online work? We needed a platform where we could offer the magazine free to our students, free generally for archived issues, and at minimal cost to everybody else for the current issue.

Finally, we wanted a publication that could keep readers as up-to-date on developments in the field as possible, and this meant that we had to trust our own skills and judgement in what we let get through the editorial process to the page. I contribute articles to journals, I peer-review papers (sometimes three times over), and I work with editors all over the world. I know what a long process that can be first hand (and applaud those who stick with it!).

But here’s the bottom line – TILT costs money to produce to meet those three targets above: wide audience; open access; quick production. Our baby has grown up, and we need help to continue guiding it on the journey to maintaining the reputation it has as a great resource. Our pride and joy is also a labour of love, and we need to reach out to those who appreciate it now for help to keep it going.

As DeeAnna outlines on her blog – “We have started a Kickstarter campaign to help with the production costs of TILT Magazine, anticipating that as our student body continues to grow, we will not require supplemental monetary aid by 2016. In the meantime, we pay for the production and distribution of TILT, including graphic layout and the time to edit and compile.”

By contributing to the Kickstarter campaign, you can help us keep TILT on the virtual stands. Please help our Labour of Love remain our Pride and Joy! It can cost as little as 60p, $1, or 70 Eurocents!

The Language of Trolls

May 22, 2014 by Kate Anthony

In Vienna last week for conference, the vast majority of delegates spoke German rather than English. In a world of Google Translate, I get so used to being able to translate things at a click, I forget that sometimes communication barriers still exist and it can be tricky to get by in another country where your best phrase is “Ruffen Sie ein taxi bitte; Ich bin spät für ein flug”, and that phrase only exists in your head due to a 1990’s comedy sketch.

And one can’t even use that since the Viennese will then helpfully get you a taxi at the start of your presentation…

I talk quickly when presenting – I can’t help it, and usually have a plant at the back of the room to flap their hands around during my talks to indicate when I am rushing. I also forget to breathe, which obviously creates its own issues. My slides often help attendees get what I am saying, but they are usually only headlines of the point I am trying to get across. So once I am warmed to my theme, I have to remember to slow down, breathe, and not rely on my slides. Those who have seen me speak professionally know that my passion for my topic often takes over my ability to coherently impart a theory or demonstrate a point.

So one would think that a German audience, however fluent in my language (very), would struggle to grab the concepts I was discussing. I can barely say Solipsistic Introjection, let alone convey all that means within one slide and my rushed passionate discussion of it. Yet no-one in the room struggled with that at all, or indeed many of the other English phrases I use in my work when discussing the Online Disinhibition Effect (my title was The Virtual Self – Psychological Aspects of Disinhibition).

There was one word, however, for which neither my voice nor my slide helped understanding between the two languages, and that was “trolling”. Here’s a neat Wikipedia entry for it:

“In Internet slang, a troll … is a person who sows discord on the Internet by starting arguments or upsetting people, by posting inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community (such as a forum, chat room, or blog) with the deliberate intent of provoking readers into an emotional response or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion.”

I can’t tell you the equivalent phrase my audience came up with in German, since we’ve established that any attempt of mine to speak it results in my suddenly going to the airport, but I did look it up once I got home.

And here’s a great answer:

“A troll is a mythological monster. The German word for Troll is Troll, so there is no difference.

As for the activity of trolling: This is an artificial word created for this purpose, so there is no direct translation we can use. However, trolling means something like ködern. […] So I would go for that.”

And what result did that very useful forum post get? A great example of internet forum trolling from all over the world, focusing on whether all words are artificial in the end. Might turn my blog comments off for this post…

I love the Internet 😉

« Previous Page