Throughout this module I learned a lot about myself and it gave me the opportunity to explore different topics that are of interest of me. I really enjoyed this module it was very different towards my other modules but it was similar to the Active Citizenship module in terms of community engagement. I think the more you put into the module the more beneficial it is in developing you as a person. In the following paragraphs I will discuss 1/ what I’ve learned about the module and about myself 2/ what I would do differently and 3/ how this module prepares me for my future career.

Reflecting on the following past few months of Practical Media Skills, I have learned a lot about the module itself and about who I am as a person. In terms of how I carried myself throughout the module I know I can defiantly improve certain aspects about myself so I can get more benefit from this opportunity for example, when working in groups I realised I usually let other people take the lead in situations such as organising or choosing certain things to do. I think my confidence effects my ability to take the lead in these situations, I don’t want the pressure of it on me as I would want things to be perfect. It is an area I would defiantly like to improve as it’s an important aspect for my future career to be able to take the lead and make a change in the area of health promotion and I should be able to work independently.

This module gives students a great opportunity to dive into areas of interest and it gives you the opportunity to push yourself. For me, doing the radio ad is one thing that I would not of done if it wasn’t for this module, at first I was cringing hearing my own voice and doing the radio ad but it is a great opportunity to just bite the bullet and just do it. Doing the fundraising stands was so much fun and it highlighted that I can be confident in terms of approaching people to sign up for Marchathon. I haven’t been in that position since I last done a charity stand a few years ago. This was one thing that I know would benefit me in my future career as a health promoter.

We worked with Bothell students on different tasks on Padlet throughout the module, I really enjoyed the ‘Who Am I’ task we got assigned to do. Both our class and the Bothell students got to make a video including pictures best describing us and do a voice-over. I thought it was a brilliant way to make the connection between us and the Bothell students and put together a small video that sums us up as a person. It gave me the opportunity to explore my creative side by using videos. I enjoyed these aspects of this module like this task as it breaks up the semester from academic writing which I find tough!

If I had the opportunity to go back and do this module again having the experience of what it entails the one thing I would focus on is my organisation skills. I would defiantly focus on being more organised in other modules throughout the semester so I can put in equal amounts of effort into each module. Work overload was defiantly a factor that limited me in giving this module my all. Every module throughout the semester seemed to have everything due at the same time, in the future I would be more organised with my assignments so I could really benefit and participate to my best ability in this module.

Practical Media Skills gives me as a Health Promotion student the opportunity to expand my knowledge on using media skills to get the word out there. I think this module defiantly prepares me for my career as a health promoter, the use of media to promote health information is massive today in society and by the time I graduate 100% it is one area that I would need to be able to use efficiently. Creating radio ads and being on the fundraising stands/ organising events will be useful in the future, it gave me an insight into how much organisation and work goes into hosting an event. Now that I have that insight it will benefit me in future planning for hosting events etc as a Health Promoter.

In this blog post I will discuss point ten in the Healthy Campus ‘We will create or re-orient campus services to support equitable access and enhance the health and wellbeing of students and staff’. This was the point in the charter that stood out most to me, I believe that WIT is already making efforts towards this to make WIT a healthy campus. The first thing I think about when I read that point is the work and effort that is put In towards creating opportunities for students and promoting certain aspects of health around the college especially sexual health, the student’s union currently do a spectacular job in promoting sexual health and safe sex on campus by carrying out workshops and campaigns over the college year. Identifying further opportunities to promote and support the health and wellbeing of staff. By creating or re-orienting campus services it will strengthen opportunities for students and staff to do things that promote their own health and wellbeing. Currently the college is doing a good job in providing services that enhance the health and wellbeing of students and staff, in some areas such access to physical activity facilities in the college is a barrier to living a healthy life for students and staff. The main barrier to students joining and maintaining a healthy gym schedule is the location of the gym. Even though there is a bus going out to the gym which is 10 minutes out the road, the busses run on a hourly basis which can be awkward for students and staff that are under a strict timetable and want to get their exercise done in between classes and quickly. Finding motivation to go to the gym and keep it up can be difficult but barriers like location and time would overtime result in memberships being wasted. For students and staff that drive or are living near by the gym it would be more convenient but most students rely on public transport such as the bus.
Implementing better physical activity services in the college may be hard, especially trying to change the bus timetable to more frequent times as the demand would not be high. Re-orientating the location of the college gym would be an extreme cost and locating a new facility closer to the gym would be tough. I think the best option is to create more on campus physical activities such as gym classes, the facilities are there and can be used such as the dance studio and the hall. Finding out when these facilities are being used by other classes would be done by contacting the college and then you would work from there to designate times for the classes. On sunnier days the classes can be carried out on the green area outside the t&l building. Locating trained health professionals can be an issue but I think both students and staff can play a part in facilitating these classes. Exercise and health courses and other sports orientated courses can facilitate these classes which would benefit both the participant and the facilitator ad they are getting the experience in. I think the students union would be interested in creating this for the college as it is a fun way to get everyone physically active and socially connected and it builds a sense of community. Surveying staff and students on the type of physical activity they would like to participate would give a good indication in building a plan towards implementing this facility. Putting availability as an option on the surveys would give a good indication of when people would be available and you could compare that with the facilities that are available during those times, you would look at the most common time people are available and go from there. Simple physical activity classes can be carried out with little or no gym equipment, the college has plenty of small gym equipment that can be used.
I think this would be a brilliant idea to create more physical activity programs in the college to promote the health and wellbeing of students and staff, it is another option rather then moving the gym facility to the cork road campus as there would be too many issues in doing this. I think that I as a student would really enjoy these facilities and it would be a great idea to get the college more socially connected.

Social connectedness is  the experience of feeling close and connected to others. It involves feeling loved, cared for, and valued, and forms the basis of interpersonal relationships.  Being socially connected to people around us can have huge benefits to our mental health and wellbeing improving self-confidence and building and maintaining healthy relationships. Social connectedness is extremely important in the area of Mental Health Promotion and wellbeing. 

As a student I find that being socially connected to my peers is hugely detrimental to my academic motivation, feeling connected with my peers and others in the college is very important to me and helps me stay focused on motivated to do better. Being socially connected eliminates isolation and the feeling of not fitting in. College in my opinion is a very important environment to develop your social skills. The feeling of fitting in and being around people reduces every day stressors that your average college student experiences such as meeting deadlines and doing assignments, it gives you the opportunity to have a laugh and not get so caught up in the stress. 

Social media is strongly linked with social connectedness for college students. Even though social media can be portrayed as a negative thing because of the high levels of cyberbullying and the influence of a negative self image it can also play a supportive role in a students life.Social media is very important to me and I would feel very left out and isolated if I wasn’t constantly on my phone checking up on my friends and social media accounts. A 2018 PEW survey, Teens’ Social Media Habits and Experiences, shares that the majority of teens (81 percent) feel more connected to their friends because of social media and 68 percent feel as if they have people that will support them if they are going through a difficult time. Social media can be an excellent support system for college students as it enables them to feel connected with their peers. 

Allen et al, (2013). Examines current research of how social media use affects social connectedness in terms of an adolescent’s development in the sense of belonging, psychosocial wellbeing and identity development and processes. When adolescents perceive a greater sense of belonging in school, they place more value on the academic material they are learning and visa versa. Social connectedness can contribute to an individual’s sense of psychosocial wellbeing for example the level of anxiety, loneliness and depression. The study reviews the positive and negative aspects of social media use on social connectedness. The positives included, broadening relationships, seek validation from peers regarding their thoughts and experiences. The negatives included the subject of not belonging and social disconnection, cyberbullying and exclusion.  

 
To conclude, I think social media has a big influence in my life and how it can have a positive and negative impact on my life. I mainly focus on the positive impacts of my social media use as it is how I stay connected with both family and friends. The positive aspects of social media use on my social connectedness out way the negatives.  

As part of our module for practical media skills we created a radio add to promote active travel and social connectedness . Katie, Nicola, Clodagh and I began brainstorming ideas of the type of conversations we were going to be having in the car journey as we already knew the active travel we were promoting was car sharing. We wanted the conversation to be full of buzz, funny and flowing so it didn’t sound like we were trying to hard. We started thinking about the typical girly chats we would be having daily which always included talking about a boy and began to write the script from there.

Writing up the script wasn’t hard, we got it done quickly enough and had a laugh doing it too. We wrote up a draft of the script and decided who would say what depending on how much they fitted the character we were trying to portray. We decided that I would be the typical Waterford girl using the usual Waterford slang like ‘girl’ and ‘gowan’ which added humour to the radio ad and I had no problem getting into character!. Clodagh played the girl wearing the fur jacket trying to impress her hot lecturer Shane and she was SO EXTRA! (which wouldn’t be like Clodagh). We had some laugh when Nicola said her lines and displayed her cluelessness about sexting and flirting ‘weird purple vegetable emoji’. Without a doubt in the studio we all had a right laugh saying our lines over and over again but it didn’t take too long to perfect. We were pros!. We weren’t the only ones laughing we had Jenny, Andrew and Gianluca buckled too. At the beginning I thought it was something I would’ve hated and made me cringe but we really enjoyed it and it’s nice to step out of your comfort zone.

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton