Diagrams Complete

I took some time off doing my project this weekend for various reasons and I was a bit worried last night that I wouldn’t get it all done for Friday. Technically we have until the following Friday but I’d rather get it all wrapped up before I head home for summer. Knowing I was busy this weekend I planned out my days and what I wanted to have achieved each day:

• Tuesday – Diagrams complete
• Wednesday – Photographs taken an editing
• Thursday – Editing and presentation
• Friday – Presentation on final project

I completed my goal for today and got all my diagrams drawn and cut out. I wondered how best it was to do the parathyroid blood supply and eventually took some inspiration from a Grey’s Anatomy flashcard I had. So it’s almost anatomically correct… Cutting it out was a nightmare but I am so glad I didn’t break it. I think that would have set me up for a bad day. I’ve done it so it can be placed on top of my posterior trachea and thyroid glands so I didn’t have to cut them out again! Here it is. This isn’t the best picture and I think I will have to blu-tack it down tomorrow when I photograph it properly.

I must have spent the best part of an hour on this but I’m glad I did as I think it looks alright and should look better stuck down.

I then moved on through my story board and created the rest of my diagrams with my favourite being the “autoimmune attack of the parathyroid glands”:

I’ve tried to keep my colours consistent so it is obvious in the video what is what and this will be backed up by the voice-over. And also kept the diagrams to minimal detail to make them easily understandable. I think I might have overdone it with the detail on the trachea but hey ho. Here’s some of my other diagrams:

This afternoon I managed to get some of the video sorted with the addition of powerpoint slides. Quite a few of my storyboard frames were mainly words and I thought it would look much better if they were done on PPT and inserted rather than me write them in between each take. This was a fairly easy process with the layout of the slides and making sure things were centered being the most difficult. I got some advice from the very talented Annie Campbell  about adding some colours to the PPT slides. With being busy and conscious of the due date I hadn’t even considered adding colour! It’s great that something so simple now makes it a lot more appealing!

Tomorrow I’m borrowing a TILT video recorder/ digital camera to take the pictures and will start to bring them into the video. I thought the editing would take a lot of time but it was easy this afternoon with the PPT slides so hopefully it will be as easy with pictures!

I’ll post again tomorrow and we can see if I meet my goal again! You can follow my progress on Twitter – I tend to post there as I’m going along! I can be found at @LRBarry

Sleep well team,

Laura

Book Review

Just to remind you all I was to read at least a chapter of “Rethinking Learning in an Age of Digital Fluency” and reflect on it.

So I decided to just start at the beginning of the book and I’ve read chapter 1 and half of chapter 2. Right at the start it said that chapter one was going to lay out all the arguments which would be considered in more detail later in the book, so I was glad to have started here to get a good overview.

I’m going to give a brief reflection on chapter one and then suggest what I felt were the key messages before moving on to relate this to my current project. I will finish by discussing how I think the ideas of this book relate to the future of education, especially medical education.

The book started with explaining the terminology “digitally tethered” which I now know means to be constantly switched on and involved in the digital world. The idea of this is something I think we can all probably relate to: “I feel naked without my phone” is becoming more common. The book discusses whether being digitally tethered is damaging to the learning process and explores what research has actually been done on this. Again I think we can all relate to this knowing how often we are told to put away our phones in classes. I feel the majority of teachers within the medical school do feel technology hinders our learning and sometimes they are right, we are all just sitting on Facebook. But quite often I find myself googling something that’s been said that I didn’t quite understand and it is this instant access to knowledge that I believe can help the learning process.

From the small part of the book I read it seems to me that this book was written to be unbiased and present both sides equally but I would need to continue reading it to see if this was the case. However, it is mentioned several times that there does not seem to be that much research into technology harming education more that the research focuses on what technology is used and how often it is used.

So I’ve chosen a few quotes from the book which I think are the key messages and I’ll mention why I think they relate to my project and the future of medical education.

“Learning is seen as involving the whole person, not just the intellect, so humanistic educators aim to liberate learners and allow them the freedom to learn.” (Savin-Baden, M. Rethinking Learning in an Age of Digital Fluency. 2015).

This is a direct quote from the book and I think it is very much what we are all trying to achieve with our learning resources. Over the past couple of weeks we have discussed how we all learn best and what makes a good and bad teacher. I feel a lot of what we are trying to do fits with the phrase “freedom to learn”. We know lectures aren’t always the best method of teaching so we are creating a new resource to back up the teaching we have received.

 

“It has become clear that one-size-fits all teaching methods are neither effective nor acceptable for today’s diverse students; indeed they never were.” (Savin-Baden, M. Rethinking Learning in an Age of Digital Fluency. 2015).

This quote which I picked out as a key message is very similar to the previous one but I like the fact that it considers if students were ever taught the best way possible. As we are all using different kinds of media for our projects I think this key message is something I had already considered before reading the book.

 

“… bringing with it the suggestion that young people are not only central to the digital age, but key players in its formulation and (re)creation .” (Savin-Baden, M. Rethinking Learning in an Age of Digital Fluency. 2015).

When I read this it actually reminded me of us. Learning how to teach and how to teach in an enthusiastic an effective way through the use of digital media. I think this is probably one of the most powerful ideas within the book because regardless of whether or not technology negatively affects our education, we are still learning lots of skills. I reckon those who use technology within the learning environment and get a negative response from this are probably the people who will create new ways of learning in the future.

 

“… the ratio of ‘textisms’ to total words used was positively associated with word reading, vocabulary and phonological awareness measures and that the children’s textism use predicted word-reading ability .”

I just wanted to include this note about a study that was carried out in 2009. It involved 88 British 10-12 year olds and the aim was to explore the childrens knowledge of ‘textisms’ and how that related to their school literacy. I found this really quite interesting because I personally can no longer stand to see poor grammar or literacy anywhere. I guess I had assumed it must be due to not having the best educational attainment but I think I might go and read more about this study and be less judgmental in future!

So to summarise then I would that from what I’ve read about this book it does raise a lot of interesting points and makes you question things. I would definitely class myself as being digitally tethered and I think this may be the way forward for teaching and learning. Not through the use of social media because I think it’s important to keep your social and educational lives fairy separate, but through the use of online digital learning resources!

Sorry but I’m pretty busy this weekend so don’t expect an update until Monday.

Hope you all have a great Friday and a fab weekend!

Laura

Voiceover Complete

This morning I’ve recorded myself so many times that I think I know the script inside out! I just wasn’t 100% happy with any of the takes because of repeating myself and other mispronunciations. I didn’t expect to have to record myself so many times and I got quite frustrated! After at least 10 attempts, saving some and deleting some straight away, I managed to work the split and cut tools. This meant I could cut out the last part which was only about 20 seconds of the take I was mostly happy with. I was so glad to have worked this out because it meant I didn’t have to go through the whole thing again! I just recorded the last part and added it in. Running the two together you can tell there is a slight difference but I would rather quit while I’m ahead than get all annoyed.

I’m happy that it all is finally coming together and the end is in sight! When I’m finished I’ll post the video here but expect more blog posts before then!

Have a thrilling Thursday,

Laura

Storyboard Complete

Woo! This evening I finished my storyboard for my project and I’m glad that I have done it. I feel if I had gone straight into shooting photos I would have been all over the place with nothing to look back on. A script isn’t enough to look back on because you need to think about how you’re spitting it up. I have most definitely benefited from creating it. Here’s a quick look at my introductory frames:

Storyboard part 1

Today I also managed to pick up the microphone from the TILT department which is super awesome:

The plan now is to get the voice over done tomorrow, edit the storyboard if needed and get most of the images sorted so I can start taking the photographs next Tuesday. I’d like to have them all taken on Tuesday and Wednesday then spend most of Wednesday and Thursday putting the video together. Next Friday I have to give a presentation on the finished product. This Friday is my presentation on my thoughts about the book so I’m getting that done tomorrow.

Hope you’ve all had a great evening,

Laura

 

 

Update

Sorry I haven’t blogged in a wee while. It’s quite difficult to remember to blog when you’re working on something else so I’ll just give you an update of how my project is coming along.

Earlier this week I received my script back from one of the Professors I had sent it to review. They gave me some great constructive criticism and the voice over now flows much smoother. I hope to have it recorded by the end of the week.

I’ve made a start on my storyboard for the video and have done most of the frames. Some of the frames proved to be a challenge and thinking of ways to portray the voice over as a visual image was difficult. I need to spend more time on the storyboard to have it complete but that should be done later today. I’ve gathered some images to use form various sources including Science Illustrations  and some from Flickr. I thought it would be good to portray some of the clinical symptoms by what they relate to. For example, for thirst I have a glass of water and for dehydration I have a picture of cracked dried up earth. I’m going to ask my colleges if they think this is better than just having a list of the symptoms.

I’m meeting with the group later on so I will try post this evening what their thoughts are and will post a sneak preview of my storyboard.

Have a great day!

Laura

Script Writing

Today I’ve finished the first draft of my script for the voice over for my video. Within half an hour of writing it I realised there was no way I could include everything I wanted to within the one video. I thought about it and came up with 2 solutions – one video on PTH or one video on PTH and one on “An Introduction to Hormones”. I thought the best idea would be to make one video on PTH as this is what I really wanted to focus on and then if I have time create a second video on the basics of hormones.  My tutors confirmed this was indeed the best way to proceed so I continued script writing.

I’ve done a lot of script learning in the past for theatre productions but writing a script is completely  different! Having to stick to the same tense was quite difficult and I’m normally quite a colloquial writer (as you’ve probably found out by now!) so submitting my script to lecturers to review was actually a bit scary. What if I’d got the content completely wrong and I’m meant to have learned it last year? I’m sure (almost sure) that’s not the case but I feel this is a small introduction to what it will feel like submitting research articles for peer review in the future.

I’ve chosen to submit my work for review to one our physiology lecturers (also a Professor) and a Professor of Diabetes and Endocrinology mainly because I’ve used my interpretation of their lectures to create the content. Also because they are both very experienced in teaching, know the Dundee curriculum and  I really enjoy their lectures. Hopefully they will both be keen to review my work an give me some constrictive criticism.

I’ve also started having more of a think about what graphics I’m going to use. We were introduced to this fab website Library of Science & Medical Illustrations  so I plan to use quite a few of the graphics from here as I’m not much of a drawer (depsite a B in Higher Art…). My big picture idea is to have the images and arrows on a plain background and move them and take pictures as I need them to create the video. This probably sounds much more complicated than it is. I’ve had a play about with Windows Movie Maker and once I have the pictures it shouldn’t take me to long to pull them into a video.

I like to create lists so I know what I need to do and by when but quite often these are mental lists. Here’s my plan for the next couple of weeks:

• For Wed 25th: Edit script as suggested if reviewed
• For Wed 25th: Continue pulling together graphics and get these printed and backed to card
• Arrange to borrow department camera (in meeting on Friday 20th)
• Have some (most) pictures taken by Fri 29th
• Read more of “Rethinking Learning in an Age of Digital Fluency” – only read the introduction so far!
• Presentation on book due Mon 30th
• Presentation on (hopefully completed) video due Fri 3rd

Hope everyone has got through the midweek hump day!

Laura

 

Presentation & Learning Design Tutorial

Activity 1 

The 5 key principles I think should be considered when developing a presentation:

• Keep the audience in mind – background, ability
• Keep it simple – don’t overload with useless images
• Actually think about the colour scheme – yellow on black is not OK!
• Don’t just read out each slide – don’t have massive lists that you just read out, we can read it ourselves later
• Come prepared and willing to speak – know about your topic so you are not just simply reading the slides

The 5 key principles I think should be considered when avoiding bad presentations:

• Turn up on time and ready to present
• Be enthusiastic about your subject but not condescending
• Engage with your audience but not the whole time
• Keep to the order of your slides – jumping about confuses us
• Offer to take questions at the end or say at the start we can ask questions throughout – sometimes it’s scary to ask questions for fear of being ridiculed

Activity 2 

We have been given 2 presentations to critique so hear goes with the first:

• Didn’t like this presentation at all – I highly doubt it would come across very well in a teaching environment
• The order the slides were in didn’t seem logical at all
• A lot was covered but very little given about each topic therefore not useful
• The slides were easy enough to read but the shadows on the pictures were not required and distracting. Less images would have made it more clear also
• There was quite a lot of spelling errors!
• I felt it was an optimal length
• I can’t summarise the key message of this presentation in one sentence.

Presentation 2 analysis:

• This presentation was much better but not perfect
• Some sentences didn’t start with a capital letter and there was a few more gramatical errors
• The slides were very easy to read
• The images used contributed to the message of each slide
• I think this presentation would come across well in a teaching session (not that informative for medical students but it would be great for the public)
• Although it was 58 slides they did not take long to go through so it was a good length
• Overall thekey message was that your kidneys are very important organs and you should look after them.

Activity 3

I think the idea of creating a start, middle and end is really good as it helps you to think about the flow of the resource.

Activity 4

Having looked at a few of the resources, I’m going to edit my list of key principles for creating a presentation:

• Keep the audience in mind – background, ability
• Keep it simple – don’t overload with useless images, use sans serif fonts, keep text large
• Actually think about the colour scheme – yellow on black is not OK! Create your own designs for the slides rather than using a built in one
• Don’t just read out each slide – don’t have massive lists or bullet points that you just read out, we can read it ourselves later. Think about the main message for each slide and keep it to that, you can elaborate when you speak. Infographics can portray the same idea as bullet points but are much more effective.
• Come prepared and willing to speak – know about your topic so you are not just simply reading the slides

 

Today I got started messing about with Windows Movie Maker and it’s really easy to use!I plan to use card cutouts for most of the diagrams and then load them in to movie maker and add a voice over. I should by this time next week have made a good start at the stills for the video and have some of them embedded into the video. It’s good to have a plan and a time frame.

Laura

 

Curating Online Resources Tutorial

For my final project piece I have chosen to base it on endocrine hormones as this is something I struggle with because of all the different pathways and I think this will help me in creating a resource that is simple to follow and worthwhile. This tutorial suggested we get started by creating a mind map of all the things we could include and use. I tried to use MindMeister but couldn’t work out how to use it within 10 minutes, got frustrated and so resorted to old school paper and pen. Here is my mindmap:

I’m glad to have started having a think about what exactly I want to include in my resource and gathering some sources together. Also having a think about what kinds of media I could use makes me feel a bit more prepared!

The second part of this tutorial asked us to look at several tools for saving websites and links and then to pick one that we will use throughout our projects. I’ve chosen to use Diigo because I like that you can highlight text within documents online without having to download them. What a great space saving feature! Having registered with Diigo, I’ve now gone back to the resources I’ve listed in my mind map and saved them for future, fast easily accessible reading!

I’ve also downloaded Colwiz which is a citation and referencing tool that I think might be useful for this project but perhaps more useful for me next year when I undertake my 4th year project. O I wonder if I’ll blog about that process?

Laura

Learning Theories Tutorial

How do I learn?

I use a variety of resources to support my learning from lecture notes to textbooks and flashcards. I tend to make me own notes based around the lectures we are given and add in more detail when I think something is more important than the other stuff. In medicine there is no way you can learn everything so I find it a fine but hard balance between knowing the breadth of subjects and trying to work out what they want us to know in more detail. Some of our lectures include “Learning Objectives” in their lectures and I personally find these very useful. For creating my notes, I make sure I can answer all the learning objectives and can use them to test myself at the end of the block.

Most of my learning comes from creating notes but sometimes, depending on the topic, I make flow charts or spider diagrams to show how things are connected together. Furthermore, in keeping with my visual learning, for Dermatology, I found myself creating a huge PowerPoint presentation with all the skin rashes and lesions. Adding some animation in PowerPoint means that when I view the slideshow, the image will appear first and then I have to suggest what the condition is before I get the answer.

For clinical learning, I find I most enjoy and benefit from ward based teaching. Since first year I have had so many enthusiastic doctors of all levels teaching me and it has definitely enhanced my clinical practice. I will always remember early in second year I had a ward based teaching session and the Consultant handed me and told me to interpret an ECG. I felt so pressured to answer and intimidated by my peers and the Consultant waiting for me to answer. I thought back to how we were taught to interpret ECGs and started at the beginning with the details of the ECG. I managed to talk through the ECG and got the diagnosis eventually. I won’t forget this event because it tested me in so many ways and my peers congratulated me at the end. Afterwards I felt much more confident about my ability to interpret ECGs and how to handle myself when faced with something I wasn’t too sure about.

 

How does my own learning relate to learning theories?

I totally agree with Socrates philosophy of education which includes the following 5 principles:

1. Knowledge and learning as a worthwhile pursuit
2. Learning as a social activity pursued through dialogue
3. Questions lie at the heart of learning to draw out what they already know, rather than imposing pre-determined views
4. We must realise the extent of our ignorance.
5. Learning must be pursued with a ruthless intellectual honesty

Source: Donald Clark, http://donaldclarkplanb.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=Socrates

I think number 4 particularly relates to medicine and being a doctor. I feel it is imperative that we are able to recognise when we don’t know enough about something to discuss it with a patient or we haven’t practiced a clinical task enough to do it unsupervised. In terms of Socrates questioning approach, I definitely use this! Google is almost too available to us to help with our learning and I personally find it relatively easy to ask a tutor to explain themselves again.

I think Bandura’s “Learning by Observation” is highly integrated into our medical school and how we are taught clinical skills. We have group sessions where a tutor shows us how to do something and then critiques us when we attempt it. This is backed up by our schools YouTube page (Dundee University Clinical Skills) where we can revise the techniques in our own time. I find this page very useful for studying for OSCEs, we can watch the video then practice on our friends and receive feedback from them. I find this is the best way to study for OSCEs – practice, practice, practice!

Reading about Mayer & Clark’s 10 Rules for e-learning has most definitely given me food for thought in relation to my final project! I love their mantra of “less is more”. Quite often I find myself having to change backgrounds, text size and remove awful graphics from our lecture slides. I think some lectures just try to show that they understand how to work PowerPoint and so do everything that is possible on every single page. I find this very off-putting and my absolute pet hate is a blue background with yellow writing! I don’t have any problems with my vision but I find it very hard to focus and I wonder how people with vision difficulties get on! We have one lecturer who is a great lecturer but constantly uses this combination of colours. After 3 years I probably should have asked him to change it because it is such a waste of time! Sorry about the rant…

If you want to read about Mayer & Clark’s rules for e-learning you can find them here

Community of Practice

Within the medical school I think there is a vast number of the “communities of practice” as described by Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger. I think the school as a whole is one community of practice with each year group creating another and within each year having several (we are split into groups for years 1-3). I would say the community of practice I am most involved in is that of my group B2. We work together a lot in class and meet together often to practice clinical skills techniques together. Moreover we have a Google Drive set up where we can all share our notes and learning materials and this year I’ve found this most useful.

This is the link I used to learn about communities of practice

I’ve found this tutorial interesting especially the work by Mayer & Clark which I will be re-reading and considering when creating my online revision aide!

Have a great day!

Laura

Reflection…

In medical school we’re taught that reflection helps us to identify mistakes and learn from them in order to better our practice and I truly believe this. Throughout my years at medical school I’ve had to write numerous “reflective essays” which most of my peers detest. I actually don’t mind them and feel that the more I do the more I realise why reflection is such a crucial aspect of being a doctor.

Tonight I’m just going to reflect a little bit on today’s session to show you what I have learned and hopefully pass some of this knowledge on.

We started by discussing the copyright tutorial we had to do and how this had changed everyone’s ideas on using images found on the web and we were all in agreement that we would be using the advanced search option in future!

A discussion on Twitter and our #FOAMed searches was next on the agenda and it was nice to hear that some of my colleagues had found some really useful sites and Tweeters that they had decided to follow. Our tutor spoke about #twitfrg and #teamheam and I searched them to find a wealth of case presentations and discussions with Doctors and healthcare professionals from all over the world contributing! I’ve followed these pages and reckon I will find them more useful than simply searching #FOAMed but everyone learns differently!

Slymplur was brought up (another site I had never heard of!) to show us their Healthcare Hashtag project. I think the aim is to have a complete list of all the hashtags that are used for different specialties, diseases and conferences so you can always find something to look up! Again this brings me back to #FOAMed which is the number 1 most regular hashtag used in healthcare! (Source: http://www.symplur.com/healthcare-hashtags/)

A week on Friday I was due to attend the East of Scotland Research Ethics Service Annual Conference where the theme was “Consent”. I can no longer attend as my friend (who was driving me) can’t get the day off from his SSC which I’m pretty gutted about.We spoke a lot this morning about gaining consent for digital images and videos and I was hoping to hear what other clinicians thought about it but I will have to wait. The University  College of Medicine, Dentistry and Nursing have their own “bog standard” consent form and this got me wondering if the NHS had their own “bog standard” consent from for digital images and videos. I took to Google and it seems that each healthcare board has their own version. NHS Tayside’s policy can be found here:  http://www.nhstaysidecdn.scot.nhs.uk/NHSTaysideWeb/idcplg?IdcService=GET_SECURE_FILE&dDocName=PROD_166618&Rendition=web&RevisionSelectionMethod=LatestReleased&noSaveAs=1

That is all for tonight’s blog post but I would like to thank my peer Natasha (computer guru) for showing me how to embed my Twitter feed into my blog! I will hopefully be tweeting live from my sessions (if my tutor allows!) and it would be great to hear your thoughts on what we discuss! You can find me on Twitter @LauraRBarry

Have a good night!

Laura