bPortfolio

This week the class looked at WTS 2.2: Operate Systems: Understand technology systems and use hardware and networks to support learning. The focus was on emerging hardware and software; in addition, we were supposed to become familiar with media sharing websites (photos & videos).

The Innovative Educator blogged about the value of using cell phones to enhance education; encouraging teachers once again to embrace technology rather than ban it. The author makes a great point, “We need to begin engaging in “know where” (to find it) rather than “know what” (the answer is) teaching.” Meaning it is more important to teach students how to access any information rather than memorize it. Ideally they’ll do something with the information that is more meaningful and authentic than placing answers in a test booklet. This philosophy lends itself well to nursing education, especially in the realm of pharmacology. I have never understood why nursing students are expected to memorize drug information, when as nurses they will be expected to look up this vital information. Do we really want to train students to “trust their memories” with something as life and death as drug information? I believe it is vitally important for students to learn how to quickly find the latest, most trusted evidence upon which to base practice decisions. A smart cell phone could help students immensely.

Another “emerging technology” that has found a niche in nursing education is Second Life (SL). The National League for Nursing looked at three pioneering projects using SL around the country and its impact on nursing education (Skiba, 2009). For example, Tacoma Community College (right here in Washington State) has an immersive virtual world that uses avatar robots as simulated patients and an interface that interacts with hospital equipment, medicine, vitals, patient charts, and much more while recording student or team decision-making. It has a presentation version for group viewing and a teaching version for synchronous instruction. Check out John Miller’s Youtube video examples from Tacoma CC.

Higher education is using SL to recruit and retain students, to teach classes, and as supplementary learning experiences. SL is all about experiential learning, being immersed in a virtual environment. It adds another dimension to simulations and allows for role playing, collaboration, real-time interactions between students and faculty, and experimentation. SL can provide alternative environments to create real-life scenarios for nursing students, which is extremely valuable because actual time at clinical sites is severely limited.

The Youtube video above is a great example of a media sharing site. Other video sharing sites courtesy of Dr. Barrett at Teachers for the 21^st Century include:

• http://www.youtube.com (10 minute maximum video length — a very public space… OK for your students, but you might not like to post there)
• http://teachertube.com or http://schooltube.com (two video hosting sites especially for schools)
• http://video.google.com (a little less public, well integrated with other Google tools, only available through GoogleApps for Education)
• http://blip.tv/
• http://ourmedia.org (a community of individuals dedicated to spreading grassroots creativity: videos, podcasts and other works of personal media)
• http://www.motionbox.com (750MB free storage, unlimited video uploads for $29.95 per year)
• http://www.fliggo.com/ (25 minutes maximum video limit under Basic account, upgrades available for fee)

Some good sites for free use photo sharing include flickr, Creative Commons,  Wikimedia, and Google-images. Google-images has an advanced feature that will allow you to search for images “labeled for reuse” so you won’t run into any copyright issues.

Reference

Skiba, D. J. (2009). Emerging technologies center nursing education 2.0: A second look at second life. Nursing Education Perspectives, 30(2), 129-131. Retrieved from http://nln.allenpress.com/nlnonline/?request=get-document&issn=1536-5026&volume=030&issue=02&page=0129