Journal #5: Twitter and Tweeting

Ok.... can we say information overload?!  As a new member of the twitter family,  I just could not believe the AMOUNT of information squished down into one website.  I mean, really, its beyond belief!

Its official! 

What did I find on my twitter adventure?  The question is... what DIDNT I find?  Twitter recommended for me to follow 49 different threads after signing up.  Ok... that isn't going to happen... so I narrowed it down to about 19.  Some of the posts I like, some I don't like so much.

I was able to find many of my colleagues from my medical residency who are involved in academic emergency medicine online (I did a search for emergency medicine), as well as some really cool sites that allow you to follow along for new information, resources, and opportunities for fellowships, scholarships, etc.   But there were over 300 feeds that I could choose from (or more... I just stopped scrolling through at some point).  Although its a great resource, this can become quite a tedious task.

Busy individuals really, really don't have much time for all this.  Its very hard to know/learn what or who to follow, especially for those of us who are a bit older and not so glued to our computers (such as myself).  How to use twitter in general isn't really so intuitive.  I love that twitter gives you the opportunity to "retweet" a post that you find interesting for the sake of sharing with your "followers."  As well as to reply to a neat post that someone else has shared.   I also like the use of the hashtag (#) to locate topics that are all related to each other. For example, in residency I learned about the #FOAMed.   Didnt really know how to use it.... I typed this in to the twitter search engine, and it basically brought up a bunch of posts from people all over that ended their post in #FOAMed.  This doesnt bring up specific information, but it does bring up a lot of cool and related topics one may be interest in, so a great way to expand your knowledge base.  My only real question is.... how is this regulated?  Can anyone tweet anything and attach this hashtag?

As far as using twitter for educational purposes, there are a lot of pluses and minuses to this strategy.

Q1) Can twitter be used as a useful learning tool for the classroom? 
I believe that Twitter does allow students to use their creativity and to express themselves in a non judgmental and safe environment.  I really love the idea of students can post stories, share ideas, engage in discussions with each other.  As well as neat learning tools such as taking on a persona of a historical figure and writing a journal pretending to be that person!  I also love the idea of compiling a collaborative class newspaper on twitter as well.  However I really do feel that using solely this method to teach our students promotes introversion.  Students are not getting a chance to communicate face to face, which is FAR more difficult than expressing your opinions in writing and behind closed doors.  How do I know this?  I am a much better communicator in writing.  Face to face discussion is not easy, however it is a skill that is beyond important to learn as it is required in the working world.  If we teach our students primarily through these technological mediums, how on earth will they ever acquire this skill?

Also, some of the ideas for twitter use were to use a map locator to find each others homes.  Knowing where each other live is a great idea, in an idealistic world…. because of stories like columbine high, it may not be a wise decision to do this.  I DO like the idea that parents can see what is going on in the classroom and follow along with their child’s tweets. This may work better for elementary school, but middle and high school students may not want their parents commenting on their opinions and classwork.

I am concerned that by using twitter to create a running list of ideas, the children who struggle more will look at other’s posts to formulate an idea of what to say/tweet, and may not really ever learn the skills to think critically or imaginatively on their own.  I LOVE idea for using real time tweeting for children who are "blurters" such as for the autistic child in the example powerpoint.  What a neat and indirect way to allow a child to express himself, NOT interrupt the classroom, and learn, base on teachers acknowledgement of his blurts, what is pertinent and what is not.

Q2)  How will I use twitter now that I am officially part of the family?
Again, there is just too much information on twitter for it to be humanly possible to follow along.  However I do plan to use it to keep up to date on what is going on with my colleagues back in chicago, as well as to keep up to date on what is being posted through #FOAMed.  It may even inspire me to start my own twitter feed for medical simulation, and see how many followers I get! :)

Journal #4: My Project Plan

• Site title - MedSIMer.com   (er stands for Emergency room AND a person doing simulation, a SIMer! :) 

• Developer - Julie S. Sayegh 

• Rational or focus - The purpose of this web site is to provide simulated educational resources for medical professionals and those interested in medical simulation.  The goal would be to provide information about simulation, how it is being used currently in the medical field, a forum for those teaching in simulation and medical education and how to get involved, and to provide a link to online simulated patient cases that can aid as adjuvant learning tools for medical residents and community providers. 

• Main features outline - There will be a home page with the following sub categories: 
• SIM Cases
• In the News
• SIM Education 
• SIM Forums
• How to Get Involved 

• Content -   I want my content to be both informative and educational, having both simulated cases and new/info/forums being the highlight.  I am sure after more thought that the Forums and In the news sections may be combined, or content switched around a bit to make them more separate entities, but these details, I think, can be worked out later. 
• 
  
• Home page
• SIM Forums: the forums tab will be a place where people can ask questions about academic medicine, simulation, and share personal experiences.   I would also like to have a "share images" link where people can post fun photos of simulation cases, and represent the program they come from (i.e.: UCLA vs UC Irvine, etc). I also hope that there would be a sharing of ideas on cases that were developed/simulation devices developed that work well as learning tools).  I am also considering blog feeds here, a friend of mine writes a simulation blog for Academic Life in Emergency Medicine (ALiEM). 
• In the news:  This tab would have links and articles about simulation in the news, both old and new (such as went Bellevue hospital in New York launched their amazing SIM lab several years ago).  Articles on how simulation centers get involved in the community (for example, UC Irvine hosts students from Spain during an international medical education trip... means for publicity?  I think so!)  A tab to share "what are you doing in simulation?"
• SIM Cases: Online simulated games/cases that can be done for adjuvant learning.  There will be a case of the week... maybe even two, that get created and put up for learning. Can be used by residencies and medical schools as weekly assignments.  Students will get emailed their results that can be turned in to their professors.  (not sure how to go about doing all of this, but I am really looking forward to making this work!) There will be cases for ER, pediatrics, general surgery, OB/gyne, etc.) This page will link to forums for questions/answers/opinions. 
• Simulation Education:  Articles for how simulation is currently being used in medical educations, there are already some great resources showing the efficacy of simulation as a learning tool, and how/why it is a good learning tool.  Articles on appropriate debriefing techniques, how to get better at debriefing, and other articles for education purposes. 
• How to get involved: Links to simulation societies (Society for Simulation in Healthcare) and simulation conferences ( International Meeting on Simulation in Healthcare (IMSH)) and how to get involved in these entities.  I also want to provide a resource for Resident Phsyicians on how to go about applying for Fellowship in Simulation (link to the society for academic emergency medicine (SAEM) Fellowship Directory) and links to SIMwars (which is an annual simulation challenge put on at the SAEM annual meeting).  

• Target audience - Physicians, Medical Residents, Medical Students, Health care providers (RNs, EMS), anyone interested in simulation as a learning tool 

• Design considerations -  I would like to have a simple off white background with a central image of a cool human simulator graphic (may develop this myself, vs use a photograph) in the middle of the page.  There will be L side bar for navigating through sections, and definitely want a button to be able to return to the home screen.  I prefer not to use any blinking animation as this can be distracting for the user.  
• As the audience is all health care providers, a lot of the online and simulation technology is new to older physicians so I definitely want to make the site user friendly. 
•  
• Limiting factors - Limiting factors would be my lack of knowledge in how to create the simulated games and web designing/graphic designing.  Making the website appealing to physicians so that it is actually easily usable and beneficial to their learning.  And also learning to compile resources/articles that can be useful to the website... not too knowledgeable about copyright laws and how to gain access/permissions to links on the web, such as for the SAEM and SSH societies.  

Site Map: I am hoping to stick with a simple, easily navigated site to make it super user friendly. Most people in medicine (such as myself) are not too web/tech savvy, so it HAS to be easy to navigate! 

Wire Frame:  Again, something easily navigable and easy to use.  Old docs need to learn new tricks! 

Journal #3: Social Media in Schools

Kessler, Sarah. "The Case For Social Media in Schools." Mashable.com. 29 Sept. 2010.  Retrieved Oct 21, 2014. 

This article discusses several ways that teachers have tried to incorporate social media and blog sites to their classrooms in order to engage the student learner.  As our society advances and social media becomes so prevalent, it only makes sense that the way we teach and reach out to students reflect the changing culture as well.  I found it incredibly interesting that these media tools have shown to help increase student grades, attendance at school, and encouraged student participation.  This intact, could be a great way to encourage students to come to class and have fun with their learning, and to keep them up to date with media developments.  

As an aunt of 5 nieces and nephews already, I can vouch for the fact that these kids spend 80% of their time with their heads buried in their personal electronic devices, playing games, sharing Instagram photos with their friends, reading on-line books.... so why not allow them to use this medium to learn and collaborate with their classmates.   The article points out that in the business world, we are required to work as a team.  Most school homework projects are not team based, so this is a phenomenal way to get kids used to working together in teams and prepare for life in the real world.  

Q1)  How can social media help children advance in school? 

Social media is a fun and interactive, team based approach for students to learn, so long as it is done so in a safe, monitored environment.  With advancing media and technology, most children are already engulfed with social media, so by bringing it into the class room, it allows the students to utilize a familiar resource to help them learn.  It also give access to those students who do not have access to social media a way to keep up with their peers.  It encourages collaboration, team work, and a means for students to express their voice and opinions to their colleagues, a skill usually learned in higher education.  

Q2)  To what extent can social media become a negative aspect of schools?

Using social media devices and programs to track student success and interaction with each other is a great way to develop an idea for their progress in school.  However, using the features of some of the devices, such as gps location, and texting, to hold the student accountable for absenteeism is not realistic and can give the student a false impression for what happens in the real world.   A great point is brought up in the article regarding whether or not things should be monitored on these social media sites, and I agree that they should be.  However, I believe the primary responsibility for this should lie with the children's parents, as well as with the school.  The article made mention about texting all students on their phones, and commenting on their location using GPS devices to track their absences from school. Although I believe its a great resource for learning, I do not agree that children who ditch school should be tracked down and texted, as this does not give any accountability to the child.  In the real world, if you don't show up for work, no one texts you and says "I see you are at the beach today...."  

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Journal #2: Digg Reader Dreaming and RSS Streaming

Digg Reader is a really great resource for those who have several different interests, and like to keep up to date or learn new and interesting facts about a particular subject.  I am very new to the concept of blogging/streaming, and so by joining several different groups on the RSS stream, I have come to realize just how informative they can be!  During my medical residency, I learned of a blog called Academic Life in Emergency Medicine ALiEM (as well as MANY others).  Being as busy as I was (and unfortunately still am), I never got the chance to check the site out, and seemed very put off by the abundance of blogs/streams that were available.  After going through several posts in ALiEM, I started to recognize several of my colleagues and attending physicians that I worked with back in Chicago.  They are posting blogs about medical topics such as child abuse injury patterns (by Dr. Rahul Patwari, an attending physician at Rush Medical College in Chicago that I worked with first hand!), and different lecturing styles in medical school.  Man... this is right up my alley!

I also decided to join a "just for fun feed,"  called I love F***ing science.  This is a feed that I often see on my Facebook newsfeed from an old colleague of mine I went to medical school with.  I really love some of the information he shares, and came across this group while searching under the science topic.  One of the most interesting feeds I saw was about a gentleman who was visually impaired, and can now see after 33 years with his new bionic eye!  Very, very cool!

Lastly, I decided to join a group that can help enhance my knowledge in using media as an educational source.  Again, I am very new to multimedia, and can get all the help I can get, and joined a group called Technology in Education.  This feed provides links to free graphics, online design tools, and links to articles about blogging and media in education.

I really think RSS streams are a great medium for learning and keeping "in the know" with certain topics, however, for the incredibly busy, such as myself... it is rather time consuming and one can get bogged down by the plethora of information that is available.   I do, however, plan to spend around 10-15min daily just glancing through to see what new ideas and topics I can learn about!  I hope to at some point join an investing affinity group to see where I can wisely put my money and how to best manage the massive amount of loans I have managed to accrue at this point...

Q1:  What is an RSS feed?  
RSS stands for "Really Simple Syndication," and is a great way to easily distribute a list of topics, headlines, updates, and specific content to a large number of people.  RSS feeds are used by computer programs that organize the topics, headlines and updates for easy reading.

Q2:  How can RSS feeds be used as a creative learning tool?
RSS feeds can be used as creative learning tools because they can be specifically chosen by the learner who has a particular interest, and can provide a condensed group of information that may be harder to find when using a basic search engine such as google. 

For example, if one is interested in educational technology, searching this in google will bring up definitions, paid advertisements, websites, articles, etc that one may not really be interested in seeing.  One can spend a lot of time looking around for what they are actually interested in.  In contrast, searching on an RSS feed allows you to see specific things that hundreds of others who are also interested in the same topic post.  It narrows the spectrum of that specific topic down, and provides a lot of resources or interesting facts that one would not find on a google search.  Its like an interest group, which we use all the time in school, to conglomerate a bunch of people with similar interests who can share their experiences.  

* NOTE:  If looking for background information and subject matter, however, google may be a better option, as the RSS feed does not seem to provide any background knowledge. 

Journal #1: Chapters 1-3: How the web works, and big concepts to know

Robbins.  (2012, August).  Learning Web Design, 4^th Edition.  Retrieved from http://0-proquest.safaribooksonline.com.opac.library.csupomona.edu/book/web-design-and-development/9781449337513

Summary:  The first three chapters of this text emphasize the basic knowledge one should have regarding what the web is, and what the web does.   In particular, chapter one discusses the importance of the User Interface, making your website easily accessible and enjoyable for the user.  It also discusses some technicalities of web and graphics design, and several language tools that help to create your web site such as HTML, CSS and JavaScript, and how these separate entities ultimately come together to create an even more appealing webpage.  

Chapter 2 discusses the basic components of web pages.  Specifically, how a specific URL helps to retrieve information from the web server, the basic components of a URL (the protocol, name of site, and absolute path) and how the anatomy of a web page (the HTML, CSS and JavaScript files) can affect the display of your website.  It also discusses how a web browser parses an HTML file, or in other words, how it reads the HTML text to recreate a webpage. 

The final chapter in this section discusses further the important elements of HTML, CSS and JavaScript in basic web design, and how the web site you create must be able to be processed quickly and efficiently over a wide range of different devices such as laptops, desktops, and portable and mobile devices.  It is important that when designing your web page, one keep in mind the concept of progressive enhancement, meaning to start with the most rudimentary browsers, and then lay upon them several, more advanced styling and design methods, so that even those with the most basic of devices can benefit from your webpage.   It also discusses the importance of accessibility for those with visual, hearing and mobility constraints, so that they too can benefit from the web with similar capacity to those without disabilities. 

Q 1:  What three elements can be used to create a web page that is efficient, interactive and appealing to a user? 

The basic language for a web page is HTML, which displays headings and paragraphs on your page.  In order to add color, bold or emphasized text, and to rearrange the position of your text on the web page, CSS documents, or cascading styling sheets, can be added to enhance the visual appeal of your page.  To take things even further, JavaScript can be used to add dynamic elements to your page, such as real time interaction that jumps from page to page when the audience clicks on different links on your web page.  

Q2:  How does the speed of a website affect the audience using it, and what are some strategies that can be used to improve the speed performance of your website? 

The speed of a website it a pretty big deal. According to Robbins, several studies have been conducted showing that if it takes longer than 2seconds for a page to load, a webpage can dramatically lose a great number of audience members, and can ensure they will not return again to your webpage.   Several strategies such as keeping file sizes small, and limiting the number of requests sent to the server can help increase the speed with which your web page loads.   This can be achieved by keeping HTML, CSS and JavaScript to a minimum, and adding scripts so that they load in parallel with other page assets and don't block rendering. 

About Me

My name is Julie Sayegh, I was born and raised in Pasadena, CA.  I am the youngest of 5 girls, and the first in my family to become a medical doctor.  I grew up as a product of the Pasadena Unified School district, I attending Edison (grades k-2) and Noyes Elementary (grades 3-5), Washington Middle School, and Pasadena High School for my training.   After high school, I continued my education at UCLA, where I obtained a bachelors degree in physiological sciences, and a minor in education studies.  After college, I moved to Chicago, Illinois for medical school at Rush Medical College.  I remained in Chicago for my residency training in Emergency Medicine as well at Cook County Hospital, and recently returned to Southern California to complete fellowship training in medical simulation at UC Irvine Medical Center.  Prior to my medical training I used to teach for the Pasadena Unified School District, and was involved in many tutoring/mentoring and teaching opportunities in undergrad through the UCLA career based outreach program and UCLA bruin Corps.  I fell in love with teaching, and knew that it was something I always wanted to incorporate into my career.   I chose to do a fellowship program in medical simulation because it is a very effective and hands-on approach to teaching, where patient cases can be created using a life-sized human simulator for medical students and residents to learn in a fun, safe environment.    

I am fairly new to technology.  I have found my way around powerpoint, excel, and web navigation, however my knowledge of things like iOS and HTML if fairly minimal.  I enjoy using the computer for online shopping, social media, and web searching for research, and am always delighted when I figure out I can do something online rather than the "old fashioned way" such as paying my bills and depositing a check online! However I do not consider myself a computer genius by any means, and am really looking forward to becoming more familiar and comfortable going beyond basic web searching. 

I have chosen to complete a maters in Multimedia education because I would like to use the skills I gain from this course to create on-line educational tools that can help teach medical students and residents about topics in emergency medicine.  I ultimately would like to design a simulation based course that will help emergency medicine residents prepare for their oral board exams, and to enhance their learning in a new and exciting way.