Well, this is it, I guess.

Today is graduation day at APSU so I guess I just farted around too long and didn't get those last three reviews done.  I would do it tonight... but it's too late, I'm sure.  I have had a rough semester.  I know, everyone says that, but I mean it.  With one glaring exception, no one event in and of itself made it a terrible semester, and overall, in many ways, I was blessed.  That glaring exception affected me in every way.  Physically, I am recovering from the stress.  Emotionally, I am currently going through an easy-cry stage.  Is it because it's Mother's Day weekend?  Because today's the last day for our seniors?  Because my son is graduating?  Because my cat is old?  Or am I just glad to get the semester over finally?  Could be any or all the above.  Spiritually, I can't even think about how I really feel, and I sure don't want to talk about it.

Mentally, I am not quite as dazed and confused as I was for a month or so, but I'm still trying to get adjusted to the new reality.  Who am I now?  I am still a daughter, but my relationship with my dad is different than the one I had with my mom.  I no longer have that feeling that Mom will say, "Don't do that" or "Don't wear that" or "You don't need to eat that" or "They're looking at you..." like she did most of my life.  I never outgrew that until now, at age... let's just say pushing 50.  Now I have the voice saying, "Do what makes you happy," or "Just be yourself" - also messages she gave me, but for some reason now they make sense - and I think, is this what makes me happy?

Maybe most troubling of all is the new voice I hear... my own, I guess... saying, "Life is short.  You've got to make a difference.  You haven't done what you set out to do.  What are you going to do about THAT?"  The answer is, I still don't know.  I know I don't want to be a tech coach anymore, but I have enjoyed and definitely benefited from working on my MAEd.  I enjoy the design part and the web design part and I'm sure I'll use those skills.  Now I only have one class to go, this summer, and then what will I do with myself?  I guess I'll try to do all those things I've been hearing my own voice suggest.

Review #7

Introducing students to bio-inspiration and biomimetic design: a workshop experience

Citation:  Santulli, C., & Langella, C. (2011). Introducing students to bio-inspiration and biomimetic design: a workshop experience. International Journal Of Technology & Design Education, 21(4), 471-485. doi:10.1007/s10798-010-9132-6

Review: The researchers wanted to determine how best to use a bio-inspired approach to designing products.  They used data collected from second-year students at Seconda Universita' de Napoli.  The theme of the students' work was "Bio-inspired design of sport."  The students had been asked to find examples from nature and apply these examples to the design of sporting equipment.  Some examples of this were helmets designed to protect the head almost like having a second skull, ski boots modeled after penguin feathers, and surf boots with grips and materials like the skin of Remora fishes.  The researchers concluded that the project-based exercise was useful to introduce the students to the myriad possibilities of bio-inspiration.  One issue the researchers found was that the university did not offer as much of a multidisciplinary approach as they had hoped, so the result was that students either did not consider all the functions of a biological model or they tried too hard to create an exact replica of the biological counterpart by using too many complicated design features.

Reflection: If you ask me how I feel about teaching on two consecutive days you'll probably get two different answers.  From time to time I miss my old job as a nuclear medicine technologist.  I miss working in fairly quiet environments, having an easier workspace to keep clean and organized, working with high-tech equipment, meeting and caring for the patients, and (of course) the money.  There are things I like better about teaching, like only having to be exposed to artificial blood and body fluids (and that's only artificial urine), getting to show students really cool things we can do to learn more about the function of the body, and (of course) summers off.  Both careers have ample opportunities for learning.  Both fields have requirements that change from year to year, and both have state-mandated unannounced observations, though education has them a lot more frequently.  However, in nuclear medicine, those inspections were brutal!!!

I said all that to say I'm warming up to teaching, even though I still have rotten days.  This could be because it's May 5th, so school will be out in three weeks and I'll have nine weeks off (give or take a day).  On the other hand, maybe it's just a change of attitude.  I hope it's the latter, though I'm sure the former has something to do with it.

As a health science teacher, and for that matter, as a teacher in the US today, I'm frequently told that my students need more rigorous assignments and more real-life type scenarios to help them.  There's a big push for project-based learning, and with that in mind, and also the fact that I just ordered some STEM medals for our health science students who will soon be the first to graduate in the "Biotechnology" pathway, I tried to find an article to give me ideas for ways I could get my students involved in real-life type project assignments.  This article wasn't exactly what I was looking to find, but, I learned something from it.  I learned a new term, bio-inspiration.  It makes perfect sense, though, and I think my mechanical engineering major son would find this a natural fit.  (Hee hee, I'm actually using it myself!)  It also gave me some ideas for how to create, administer, and assign projects for my classes, specifically, the types of questions that the instructors asked of the students.  

Honestly, I believe that more projects should be done this way in design courses because this is what we expect real design engineers to do.  We, as an entire system, have spent a lot of time teaching students how to take tests and memorize facts but we need to teach these students to use their brains.  Evidently, the universities in Italy have not been teaching their design students using a multidisciplinary approach either.  As a former student myself I totally remember and understand why students think, "Why do I have to read and analyze One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest?  I'm going to be a _______________ (insert non-literature-related occupation here)."  On the other hand, now that I'm a teacher, I can help students visualize yellow fever and smallpox and those dread diseases in the novels they're reading downstairs.  It's still important that our future clothing designers have a little bit of background in science, just as our future nurses need a little bit of knowledge of literature and our future mathematicians need an appreciation for the arts.

April 24 - Review #6 - for real this time!

Yes, I am way late on this one but I haven't been slacking on my reading.  I've read SO much, usually articles I've been led to from Twitter, but maybe not all of it has been scholarly enough, so tonight I went back to Google Scholar to do some REAL reading.

Utilization of Virtual Learning Environments in the Allied Health Professions

Citation: Butina, M., Brooks, D., Dominguez, P., & Mahon, G. (2013). Utilization of virtual learning environments in the allied health professions, Journal of Allied Health, 42 (1), Spring 2013 , pp. 7E-10E(4). Retrieved from http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/asahp/jah/2013/00000042/00000001/art00012

Summary:  This study was performed to explore how the latest developments in instructional technology are being used in allied health education.  Most allied health students are accustomed to the Internet, YouTube videos, PowerPoints, and similar technology.  In health education, the next wave appears to be virtual reality.  This article uses SecondLife as an example of desktop virtual reality and a flight simulator as immersive virtual reality.  In the past decade, more specialties of health professional training are using simulators, such as DentSim and PerioSim for dental students.  Nursing students are using their own virtual reality simulators.  The researchers have compiled a list of pros and cons of using simulations.  For example, two advantages of using simulators are that students can practice skills without hurting patients and students build confidence by practicing their skills.  Two disadvantages are that students do not actually practice motor skills, such as lifting large patients, and that students do not get adequate face-to-face practice if they only use simulators.  The researchers designed a survey with SurveyMonkey and invited members of the Association of Schools of Allied Health Professions by email.  Of the 126 invitations sent, 44 responses were received.  Of these 44 respondents, only 17 stated that they use interactive virtual learning environments.  Only three of the 17 use models that were defined as virtual learning by the researchers.  Interestingly, only four respondents stated that they had no interest at all in using virtual technology in the classroom.  The researchers were disappointed in these findings because they believe that the use of virtual learning environments is an excellent way of teaching students skills prior to their working with real patients.  They also feel that students who have grown up playing video games will do well with virtual training methods.

Reflection:  As for disappointment, I was only really disappointed that the respondents did not provide a great deal of followup information.  There was not a lot of focus on cost effectiveness.  I think cost effectiveness is a huge contributing factor to the low numbers of allied health educators using virtual reality.  From the aspect of a public high school teacher, I know it is a huge factor for me and other teachers in our school.  I think a lot of health science teachers would like - no, love - to use more virtual learning opportunities but we just have so many dollars to spend and that number is nowhere near enough to purchase even one station.  Additionally, as a teacher I feel that students could possibly benefit more from using such technology as interactive, life-like manikins rather than video game-style simulations.  These are used in such esteemed medical education institutions as Johns Hopkins and the nursing school at Lipscomb University.  In my opinion, students not only get better practice on their motor skills and physical care skills, but they get the benefits mentioned by the researchers such as increased confidence and practice without the risk of injury to patients.  Meanwhile, I will continue putting these manikins on my "wish list" every year!

Review (of sorts) #6

I am not finished with this review yet.  It's nearly 1:00 AM and I have to get up and go to work in less than 6 hours.  So... I just read this blog post and though it's a blog post, I really like what it's making me think about.  It's really more of a navel-gazing ramble, so I'll write a real review of something else.  But just for fun, here's the link to the blog.

Design Your Dream Teaching Job

I actually wrote a long rambling... you can read it over on Cheatham County Rock Star's Wife (my personal blog).

Review #5 - March 14

Coughing Mannequins Shed Light On Flu Transmission

Citation:   Lipson, P. (2013). Coughing mannequins shed light on flu transmission. Forbes, 2013 (March 2). Retrieved from http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterlipson/2013/03/02/coughing-manequins-shed-light-on-flu-transmission/.

Review:  This article actually references another article, High Humidity Leads to Loss of Infectious Influenza Virus from Simulated Coughs, from the online journal Plos One.  The referenced article describes the data used in the study itself; the writer of the Forbes article gives the impression that he wishes to inform the public about some interesting findings that the reader can connect to their own lives and those around them.  The article(s) focus on the finding that viruses change throughout the winter (generally, the prime of flu season).  They found that the spread of influenza was related to the humidity of the room.  As the humidity increased, the rate of spread dropped rapidly.  This finding could become acceptable practice within the last few weeks of this year's flu season.

    

Reflection:  I chose this article because I am very interested in mannequins (or manikins, which is the way it is spelled in most health care uses) that are programmable.  It is rare enough to have examples of persons with abnormalities they can hear on a stethoscope and rarer still to find a high school student with a medical condition who is willing to be used as a "demo."  Programmable manikins are ideal for teaching high school students who cannot get to a healthcare facility to job shadow.  Teenagers are often expected to behave like heathens (when 90 percent of them do not) and the hospitals don't want to take chances on them bringing in a lot of germs anyway.  I put the programmable manikin on my "wish list" every year.  So far, I'm still wishing.  I do have a humidistat in my room.  Yes, such a thing exists!  It's like a thermostat, only it adjusts the humidity.  Reading this article also makes me think I'll set the humidity a little higher in my classroom.  That was certainly an unexpected use of classroom technology that this article illuminated for me.

March 11 - Article Review #4

The Doctor’s New Black Bag:Instructional Technology and the Tools of the 21st Century Physician

 

Citation: Mostaghimi, A., Levison, J., Leffert, R., Ham, W., Nathoo, A., Halamka, J., Prout, C., Arky, R., Tosteson, D., & Quattrochi, J. (2006). The doctor’s new black bag: instructional technology and the tools of the 21st century physician. Medical Education Online, 11. Retrieved from http://www.med-ed-online.org/pdf/L0000012.pdf

 

Review: Physicians will have to work and communicate with colleagues from various disciplines. Future physicians can expect even more collaboration than in the past. Currently there is more of a focus on collaboration because of developments in academic medicine and biomedical research. However, this has not transferred over to medical education. The writers of this paper have taken this opportunity as a challenge, to change medical school curricula to include leadership and collaboration skills as well as professional and ethical education. Even the focus on problem-based learning has not led to the forging of interdisciplinary relationships. What does this have to do with technology? New technologies are being used to simulate situations that enable students to develop interdisciplinary thought processes. The researchers developed a user-defined, interactive case-based online network with the hope of improving the teamwork skills of medical students. Cases in this network progress in real-time just as real patients' cases would. This facilitates discussion and links it with content so that students must work together in an interdisciplinary group to "treat" the patient. Students and faculty interact through online modules and instant messaging. Faculty have roles much like actors in a murder mystery. Students must guide the patient's care, coordinating the physicians' activities, requesting consulting physician visits and determining the course of action. This use of instructional technology increased the urgency of learning with real-time case progression, much like real-life patient situations, increased each student's accountability to the team, and establishing relationships between students, faculty. and specialists. This study revealed that using the technology is conducive to equal contribution among participants and led to a patient-centered, interdisciplinary learning environment integrating case discussion with content. The researchers found that integrating this technology early in medical school lays a foundation for interdisciplinary professional collaboration.

 

Reflection: As a health science teacher with a love of technology, I am always looking for ways I can use technology to teach my students. Unlike students of my generation, current high school students have been playing with cell phones, laptops, and Gameboys since they were toddlers. I'm thinking that well-placed technology lessons will engage my students, thereby making teaching, and my life, easier. This article interested me because I have a lot of students who are considering becoming physicians, and I wanted to see how medical schools are using technology. I like the idea of using real-time case progression, because cases don't solve themselves in an hour a la "House M.D." In a medical school environment, this sort of training would work. It would be hard to implement in a high school, but the online case bank would be a good resource for teaching teenagers, even if they come in for an hour a day to see what's changed with their patient since the day before. (That's actually way more time than most patients in the hospital SEE a doctor.) I was really hoping the article would have information about case-simulating manikins - yes, that's the medical spelling of the word - but that's all right, because this article was from 2006 and also, because I found a lot of good articles on medical education and technology on this journal's website.

March 9 - Article Review #3

The Teenage Brain and Technology

Citation:  Feinstein, S. (2011). The teenage brain and technology. LEARNing Landscapes, 5(1), 14-25. Retrieved from http://www.learninglandscapes.ca/images/documents/ll-no9-final-lr.pdf#page=71.

Summary:  This article examines the ways that technology interfaces with the teenage brain, specifically attempting to answer three questions:  what is happening in the teenage brain, how technology is impacting the changes in the teenage brain, and which technology-based instructional technologies are compatible with the teenage brain.  The teenage brain is changing and transitioning as the child becomes an adult.  Teenage brains depend on the amygdala to process emotions and feelings.  Adults process their feelings in their frontal lobes, which are associated with higher order thinking.  Brain cells, or neurons, grow hair-like structures called dendrites as information is learned.  Each neuron has an axon which transmits information between neurons.  When dendrites, neurons, and axons communicate with each other, the resulting electrical connection is called a synaptic connection.  These connections aid in information transmission.  During the teenage years, an over-production of these connections occurs, creating a wonderful opportunity for learning.  As the brain matures, the process of pruning occurs.  Sometimes this is called the "use it or lose it" principle.

Computer-based instruction comes in many forms.  Students and teachers have the Internet, tutorials, games, and social networking, just to name a few.  Studies have shown that students are engaged and motivated by technology, and are drawn to e-learning.  Games and tutorials can be used for reinforcing basic skills.  Higher order thinking can encourage higher order thinking.  However, as with any educational tool, computer-based instruction has its limitations.  Students are developing shorter attention spans.  Gaming addictions can be affected.  Educators should use caution but continue to use such tools as tutorials, games, and graphic organizers to help the students' brains develop and learn.

Reflection:  For some reason I have always been fascinated by the study of the human brain.  I remember thinking as a teenager that it would really be cool to see my own brain, but I knew that would likely never happen.  Since then, it has happened in a way, because I have seen a CT of my head.  While I didn't see it in action, I've seen pictures of it and that was pretty fascinating.  What we see anatomically is only scratching the surface of the human brain.  On a cellular level, we can see learning almost as it happens.  Recent studies have shown that brains can keep learning and developing new neuronal pathways even into old age.  Still, it is important that educators know how students' brains develop, so that they can take advantage of peak learning times such as that of a teenager, when there is an over-abundance of synaptic connections.  This review also shows us that teachers need to use caution and not over-rely on technology, but utilize it for each student's best education.