National Educational Technology Plan Second Life Public Forum Final Report

The National Educational Technology Plan event was held on November 5th from 9-11pm Eastern Time, with approximately 200 attendees across the 4 main sims, 2 overflow sims, and the livestreamed webcast. The audience included participants from across the USA as well as an international audience, with some event volunteers coming from Canada, England, Australia. One of the most active participants was an American educator working in Israel who stayed up until sunrise local time to be part of the event.

The final report is posted here:
http://www.slideshare.net/umhealthscienceslibraries/national-educational-technology-plan-netp-2009-second-life-public-forum-final-report

The livestream is archived on the web here: http://tinyurl.com/netp09/

The Flickr group is here: http://flickr.com/group/netp09/

The chatlog is here:
https://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0ATBUwgZWTTZ6ZGM0ZmYyYnFfMTkzY2duZDZxZHA&hl=en

There is another video of highlights by Draxtor Despres still in development.

The event succeeded in achieving both of our two primary goals:
– for the Second Life educational community to provide useful and relevant input for the Obama edtech team; and
– to highlight the potential of Second Life for education as well as for “rapid prototyping” of this type of large scale social event.

Along with the positive feedback from the event attendees, the event resulted in new professors adopting Second Life for teaching and great feedback from the the Obama team representative. Feedback from various members of the Obama team included:
* “That was great!,”
* “What a wonderful experience,”
* “The ideas I heard during the event are already influencing my thinking!,”
* “A terrific contribution to the input process.”
Last but not least, the final report from the Second Life event has been requested for use on the public website for the NETP project:

National Educational Technology Plan: https://edtechfuture.org/

Event sponsors and support came from the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE), Metanomics, New Media Consortium (NMC), Virtual Ability (VAI), Cedar Island and the Justice League Unlimited (JLU). The contributions of the many volunteers and participants are what went beyond making this event possible to making it SHINE! Bravo, bravo to you all!

If anyone wasn’t able to get a copy of the souvenir tshirts from the event (I <3 EdTech), I'd wager we could probably make those available somewhere. If anyone makes the tshirts in real life, I want one.

Kay Connelly on Mobile Health Applications for Special Audiences

Today I was torn between attending a mobile health presentation and a mobile libraries brainstorming session. I chose the mobile health one, and was privileged to hear Kay Connelly lead off the Bartels Health Informatics Speaker Series with a presentation on the long drawn out research process involved in designing an effective mobile device application for a chronically ill low-literacy population.

SI launches Bartels Health Informatics Speaker Series: http://blog.si.umich.edu/2009/10/29/si-launches-bartels-health-informatics-speaker-series/

A couple of us were live-tweeting the event, and had folks watching the hashtag stream from the UK, Massachusetts, and North Carolina. Here is the Twitter stream, courtesy of my new fave Twitter tool, What the Hashtag.

#mobhlth
wthashtag.com/mobhlth
Transcript from November 16, 2009

11:11 am pfanderson: WARNING: Live tweeting from Kay Connelly presentation on mobile health application for chronically ill low-literacy population #mobhlth
11:15 am litebulb11: Kay Connelly-mobile health apps for chronically ill low literacy populations #mobhlth
11:17 am pfanderson: hemodialysis patients is population, highly restricted diet. Kidneys clean toxins fr body. 80% can’t adhere #mobhlth
11:18 am pfanderson: Patients told to make a paper diary of what they eat/drink, but can’t read/write. Ahem. #mobhlth
11:19 am SeerGenius: RT @pfanderson: Patients told to make a paper diary of what they eat/drink, but can’t read/write. Ahem. #mobhlth

11:20 am pfanderson: Application based on resrch fr informatics in diabetes, forthcoming bk. Dietary Intake Monitoring Application. Icons for foods #mobhlth
11:21 am litebulb11: Bar code scanner and icons on mobile device to help monitor dietary intake #mobhlth
11:22 am pfanderson: Neat – using barcode scanner in mobile device for some foods. #mobhlth Iterative design – patient feedback, redesign.
11:23 am pfanderson: First question: can target population use PDAs, can they press buttons, play games. Coordination & “pincer” strength, error rate #mobhlth
11:24 am pfanderson: 2nd question: visual acuity. On mobile devices, what size of icons is most viewable / pt prefs. #mobhlth Large icons preferred by elderly

11:26 am pfanderson: Question 3: could patients use a voice recorder? No problem. Yay!!! Elderly needed two hands for this task. #mobhlth
11:28 am pfanderson: Question 4: SDIO Barcode scanners vs bluetooth device pen scanner. Surprise finding: women cdnt use pen because of nails #mobhlth
11:30 am pfanderson: Patients had never realized that most prepackaged foods have barcodes. Had trouble finding barcodes on foods. #mobhlth
11:30 am pfanderson: They made a “game” BarcodeEd to help folks practice finding and scanning barcode foods. #mobhlth
11:32 am pfanderson: Patients were incredibly protective of their PDAs, lived in unsafe environments, high theft. #mobhlth

11:33 am pfanderson: Scanning, even w/o feedback, changed behavior. 60% foods not in open source database. Pts ate more than they thought (LOL) #mobhlth
11:34 am litebulb11: Low literate populations had difficulty reading actual food item brand names, had to describe ‘cereal with leprechaun and rainbow’ #mobhlth
11:34 am pfanderson: Interesting. Pts cdnt voice ID foods eaten because they cdnt rd labels. Voice input was stream of consciousness, unstructured #mobhlth Oops
11:36 am pfanderson: Participants preferred voice input, but performed better with scanning and they didn’t like using it. #mobhlth Turns out they wanted phone
11:37 am amcunningham: interested in health inequalities/ health literacy? follow #mobhlth today

11:37 am pfanderson: She mentioned a website that IDs foods & dietary input from uploaded pics. I want to know what it was!! #mobhlth
11:40 am pfanderson: Patients sorting food cards noticed what they can/can’t eat, ignored side dishes. Awareness was key in training 4 app. #mobhlth
11:41 am pfanderson: For organization of food input, patients preferred a combination of input types – Time of Day & Food Group #mobhlth
11:41 am MarkOneinFour: @amcunningham do you know the context of #mobhlth?
11:43 am pfanderson: Patients liked to show off medical knowledge they’d picked up, and would use jargon they didn’t actually understand #mobhlth

11:43 am litebulb11: Patients proud of obtained medical knowledge, affects design of interface/icons try not appear ‘dumbed down’ #mobhlth
11:44 am pfanderson: Important to make interface sophisticated, not childish, but with tricky balance between what pts liked / what they understood #mobhlth
11:44 am pfanderson: @MarkOneinFour #mobhlth is presentation by Kay Connelly on mobile hlth app for chronic ill low literacy patients at UMichigan
11:47 am pfanderson: Patients could use any nontext widget, as long as they were large enough for vision / dexterity #mobhlth
11:48 am litebulb11: Project abstract and biography of presenter for mobile health app from previous presentation: http://tiny.cc/T93oe #mobhlth

11:48 am pfanderson: Patients favorite part of tool was HOME button (used as an escape/help). NOTE: TV remotes lack this functionality #mobhlth
11:49 am pfanderson: Patients tended to use it either out of home or in home, but not both. Plan: one device for each loc #mobhlth
11:50 am litebulb11: Pride affects choice, patients often preferred interface they used incorrectly #mobhlth
11:50 am pfanderson: Advantage of #mobhlth device is to not attract attention, avoid stigma. But, this population loved showing off. They had cool toy, status
11:51 am litebulb11: Technology is a status symbol, patients showing pda off to neighbors by scanning everything ie paper towels. #mobhlth

11:51 am pfanderson: Patients would show off device by scanning non-edible items, meant muddy data to clean. #mobhlth Pts lie to caregivers to look good.
11:52 am pfanderson: Patients confided in tech geeks because they felt they would not be judged for poor food choices #mobhlth Pts want privacy, not nagging
11:53 am pfanderson: Patients *will* cheat on diet because disease is so miserable. They don’t want to be made to feel bad for cheating. #mobhlth
11:54 am pfanderson: Made it harder to use voice record, accessible only after navigation to food type failed to locate actual food. #mobhlth
11:55 am pfanderson: Organize common foods as easiest to find (ice). #mobhlth

11:57 am pfanderson: Self management and monitoring was empowering. 6 wk trial. Will results persist? Don’t know yet. Pts want to keep device. #mobhlth
11:59 am pfanderson: Future directions: add portion sizes for nonliquids (size comparisons); acceptance by higher-literacy pts? Does design change #mobhlth
11:59 am pfanderson: Can you design for lowest common denominator and find acceptance by others? #mobhlth
12:00 pm pfanderson: OK, she’s taking questions. Anything you want me to ask? #mobhlth
12:01 pm pfanderson: Aha – had star so they could add list of favorite foods. #mobhlth

12:02 pm pfanderson: Suggestion from audience. Use photos not for ID and feedback in realtime, but for validation. #mobhlth Compared data to 24hr recall
12:04 pm pfanderson: Navigation structure – patients were confuse by anything other than linear design #mobhlth Audience: cd use with children?
12:05 pm pfanderson: Brainstorming – taking these design guidelines to create authoring tool for low literacy mobile device apps. COOL!!! #mobhlth
12:07 pm pfanderson: Audience: is it harder to get info to low literacy, low SES, rural, chronic ill or combo populations? Answer: we don’t know yet. #mobhlth
12:09 pm pfanderson: Talking about assumptions of working w/ low SES population, blaming patient for illness. #mobhlth DONE, talk over.

12:17 pm inetnurse: RT @amcunningham: interested in health inequalities/ health literacy? follow #mobhlth today
12:40 pm SeerGenius: @pfanderson thanks for tweeting #mobhlth ! Lovin’ it like Mickey Deez… oops, #notgoodfood.

Twitter and the FutureLibCon

Last Thursday afternoon, while part of my brain was preparing for the National Educational Technology Plan Public Forum that night, another part of my brain was thoroughly engaged in the Eric Dey keynote for the FutureLibCon series on social computing.

FutureLibCon: http://www.lib.umich.edu/futurelibcon-social-computing-events

Eric was unable to complete the journey here in a way that would allow him to attend, but the co-presenters (Chris Chapman and Marc Stephens) had Eric’s slides and his notes, and built off of these to do a wonderful job of engaging the audience in a really dynamic conversation and learning experience. I ended up quoting some of the conversation from the FutLibCon during the NETP forum, because it was so incredibly relevant.

Before the presentation started, Marc had set up a second screen with a Twitter visualization tool that displayed tweets from a given hashtag with a variety on screen at the same time in boxy text bubbles, with randomly selected tweets growing big and then shrinking again. This was pretty engaging for at least some of the audience, having the back chat available on screen during the talk. With two speakers it meant that interesting questions that appeared in backchat could be addressed in realtime during the talk without requiring the person at the podium to be the one tracking the second screem. I have had no luck tracking down this particular tool, but while I was hunting, I did reacquaint myself with some old Twitter tool friends and find some new-to-me twitter visualization tools of varying utility.

The only tool I could find that would have worked for engaging a live audience with their own charm and cleverness is VisibleTweets. It only shows one tweet at a time, and has transitions between tweets. The problem for using it during a presentation is that the message is obscured during the animation and people have to actually pay attention to the animation to see what is being said, which distracts from the actual presentation. With the tool Marc used, you can occasionally take a quick glance, see what is happening, and return your attention to the presenter.

Visible Tweets:http://visibletweets.com/

Twitter StreamGraphs is not useful as a support for a presentation, but is very useful in tracking discussion over time. In this image it is very clear that this was a short one-time event and not an ongoing conversation. It does a nice job of pulling out what the audience thought were the most important concepts: tools, 2nd life / virtual, Dewey, education / teacher, social / cooperation, change.

Twitter StreamGraphs: http://www.neoformix.com/Projects/TwitterStreamGraphs/view.php

Social Collider “reveals cross-connections between conversations on Twitter.” Which explains in part why it is the only visualization tool shown here that supplies a visualization crossing several days for an event that was two hours long. This is probably the most lovely and least useful of the visualization tools I tried. It took a lot of finagling to get it to actually render an image, and the image kept having large chunks disappear. I am guessing that it might be more robust with a different browser or platform, since the ability to interact with it and drill in to see what words / people / concepts were connecting didn’t seem to work for me in Safari on a Macintosh.

Social Collider: http://socialcollider.net/

People are doing some surprising things using Twitter as either a content source or a data source. This one is the latter – Tori’s Eye allows you to define a tag or a term, searches for that, and the frequency of the term determines the density of origami birds flying across the screen. Really. Not very productive, but I do love origami.

Tori’s Eye: toriseye.quodis.com/

MORE:
Flowing Data: 17 Ways to Visualize the Twitter Universe: http://flowingdata.com/2008/03/12/17-ways-to-visualize-the-twitter-universe/

At long last I came up with the idea of searching instead of through Twitter visualization tools, looking for hashtag presentation tools. Aha!

Event Manager Blog: How to Visualize Twitter at Events: http://www.eventmanagerblog.com/event-management/visualize-twitter-at-events

Speaking about Presenting: 10 Tools for Presenting with Twitter: http://www.speakingaboutpresenting.com/twitter/10-tools-presenting-with-twitter/

I finally found the tool Marc had used – Wiffiti! I think the name is supposed to be a blend of wiki and graffiti, but it makes me think of WiFi, so part of me wants to call it why-feet-ee, and another part tries to say whiff-ee-tee. Still, this was pretty nice exactly for beingn incredibly slow about refreshing the selection of tweets. During the presentation, it typically took 6-15 minutes for a tweet to show up on screen, which frustrated the audience and impaired the sense of real time interaction.

Wiffiti: wiffiti.com/

However, once the events are over, for general utility and metrics, it all comes down to my number one favorite Twitter tool – What the Hashtag.

What the Hashtag: FutLibCon: wthashtag.com/futlibcon

WTH provides detailed metrics on who is using the hashtag, a distribution of frequency, other metrics, and best of all, a complete transcript of the relevant tweets in the correct time sequence, while most Twitter tools give the tweets in reverse chronological order as they would appear in Twitter itself. This makes the following possible – the transcript of the FutLibCon event as viewed via audience tweets.

November 5, 2009
12:40 pm Wrenaissance: Next session: faculty-student conversation #futlibcon
12:40 pm pfanderson: #futlibcon at event, forgot my mac so tweeting slowly fr phone
12:48 pm Wrenaissance: What do think about when you hear “social networking” #futlibcon
12:50 pm Wrenaissance: Web as platform, collective intelligence, #futlibcon
12:50 pm pfanderson: #futlibcon Eric Dey is speaker, delayed. @marquea2 & chapman doing heroic job filling in
12:52 pm Wrenaissance: #futlibcon. Make sure the social media train doesn’t derail you.
12:53 pm pfanderson: #futlibcon bmacadam has gd idea – think of socmed in ed as matrix
12:54 pm Wrenaissance: John not Melville at good time charlie’s #futlibcon
12:58 pm britain: First year med students are not reading this. #futlibcon
12:58 pm Wrenaissance: Are Macs taking over the med school? #futlibcon
1:00 pm Wrenaissance: Dewey: sometimes play is a good way of teaching/learning #futlibcon
1:00 pm pfanderson: #futlibcon chapman says he didnt expect hissing ,)
1:01 pm Wrenaissance: Demo: family centered experience group team tool #futlibcon
1:03 pm Wrenaissance: Cooperation vs collaboration #futlibcon. Tool supports both
1:05 pm pfanderson: #futlibcon egbert 2009 article on cooperation collaboration 4 UMMS course
1:06 pm marqueA2: “Education is not prep for life, education is life itself” -John Dewey #futlibcon
1:08 pm Wrenaissance: Tools not always used as planned. Scratchpad yes; discussion tool no. #futlibcon
1:09 pm pfanderson: #futlibcon changes workflow, not pedagogy #socmed
1:09 pm Wrenaissance: #futlibcon. Med students adapt & use; next goal: change teaching
1:18 pm pfanderson: #futlibcon interesting, CC says “doctors dont wk that way” collab
1:21 pm Wrenaissance: Advanced medical therapeutics online class; geographic distrib dicussion + asynch modules. Bldg more collab. #futlibcon
1:22 pm pfanderson: #futlibcon @marquea2 like Dewey quote. Ed is life. Lrng is play =)
1:22 pm Wrenaissance: Goal: get students to be thinkers and learners not just absorbers of current knowledge. #futlibcon
1:22 pm britain: And away we go to Second Life. #futlibcon
1:24 pm pfanderson: #futlibcon @marquea2 says #sl is socmed cuz user generated content =)
1:25 pm Wrenaissance: #futlibcon @marquea2 speaking abt med ed in 2nd life
1:26 pm pfanderson: #futlibcon want 2 know what anim tool @marquea2 is using to put hashtag stream on screen
1:27 pm Wrenaissance: Histology lab: no more microscopes. Power, Ethernet and virtual scopes #futlibcon
1:29 pm Wrenaissance: 2nd life – wolverine island. 1st session boot camp. 2nd session play2train first responders. #futlibcon
1:29 pm pfanderson: #futlibcon Yay! @britain joined in. He txts faster than me. Watch fingers fly
1:30 pm Wrenaissance: 3rd session at the cave: virtual reality first responders in 3D #futlibcon
1:31 pm pfanderson: #futlibcon marvelous video of virtual disaster triage sim in #sl w/ our stdts
1:34 pm britain: I thought this would be a live demo in SL but I’m glad they just showed highlights. #futlibcon
1:35 pm pfanderson: #futlibcon thrilled that peer asked abt haptics in #sl – smart lady
1:35 pm Wrenaissance: Q: are there haptic systs that work w 2nd life? A: may be some in dev #futlibcon
1:37 pm Wrenaissance: Intrigued abt 2nd life? @pfanderson leads virtual brown bags on Fridays #futlibcon
1:40 pm pfanderson: #futlibcon bmacadam has neat thot – sim/#sl gd for ed of “inherently messy” tasks/domains
1:40 pm britain: @zaren a big group of us librarians are talking with some med school guys about Wolv Island and virtual first responder training! #futlibcon
1:45 pm pfanderson: #futlibcon gd ? Fr joehrli abt socmed integration in ed being best when goal specific
1:52 pm pfanderson: #futlibcon what are best ed tools to promote? Is it abt the tools?
1:53 pm Wrenaissance: A bad teacher with good tools is still a bad teacher. #futlibcon
1:53 pm pfanderson: #futlibcon or is it abt the teacher? Gd teacher can mk miracles w/o best tools
1:55 pm Wrenaissance: A good teacher with good tools is awesome. #futlibcon
1:59 pm pfanderson: #futlibcon @davereadscomics sd no accident gt8 innov came fr higher ed but outside mainstream
2:01 pm pfanderson: #futlibcon <3 tht he sd most impt role of higher ed is intellectual playground
2:03 pm pfanderson: #futlibcon neat – CC says techs like tools, but not always ones stdts like
2:03 pm britain: One of students' favorite study tools: watching the lectures at higher speeds to process faster. #futlibcon
2:13 pm LRC_Phill: #futlibcon is the last slide from today's plenary available anywhere? Those questions seem hugely important but i didn't write them down
2:14 pm LRC_Phill: @pfanderson #futlibcon higher ed's main (core) purpose has always been teaching people how to play in 'grown up' spaces. (cont'd)
2:14 pm LRC_Phill: students in most jobs don't remember 90% of their chemistry I course, but they do know how to pull all nighters when a boss asks them to…
2:14 pm LRC_Phill: just like getting a final project done if some-one/thing else didn't come through!
4:57 pm pfanderson: @LRC_Phill What I notice is people who are successful in higher ed environments are those for whom HE activities ARE play! #futlibcon
9:15 pm litebulb11: Reflecting on my uber techie day… @a2b3 and #futlibcon

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Tools for Learning: Flashcards Done Right, Video Tools, & Augmented Reality

So much for the idea of trying to do a blogpost every day this month. My computer was in the shop for a couple days, sick kid, etc. So, I will try to catch up a little now (and have a lot to share!). Starting here with a list of tools recommended at yesterday’s meeting of Instructional Designers on campus.

More on Flashcards

GWhiz: http://www.gwhizmobile.com/Desktop/Home.php
StudyStack: http://www.studystack.com/

NOTE:
School of Dentistry is doing something wonderfully useful with setting up a collection of oral pathology images with definitions as flashcards in an initiative that uses multiple platforms and tools at once. They are integrating mobile, web, and social sharing, which is exactly what I love to see people doing. Maximize the access and ways people can use the information. Very cool. They evaluated a bunch of tools and selected StudyStack (as a really dependable, well tested platform that had the functionality they sought) and GWhiz for the mobile (because of the integration with StudyStack and the ease of both adding and extracting data).

There is a list of online flashcard tools earlier on this blog, which includes some newer tools not evaluated for this project.

Video Tools

Video is increasingly important on campus as a platform for:
– making content accessible outside of face-to-face class times (asynchronously);
– distance learning;
– in support of students and faculty who cannot come to class because of swine flu or other illness;
– to provide a date/time stamp on intellectual content presented in class sessions.

It shouldn’t be a surprise that several folk presented on video tools they are using educationally.

Camtasia Relay: http://www.techsmith.com/camtasiarelay.asp

NOTE:
School of Pharmacy is really leading the way for the campus with this tool, which makes it super simple for faculty to record, edit and post their own lectures WITHOUT in class tech support. By streamlining the process, this makes it more likely that faculty will take advantage of the potential of video, increasing access. The editing function is a little weak, mostly allowing trimming from the beginning or end of the video, but you can always shift to a more professional video editing application if needed.

VideoAnt:
http://blog.lib.umn.edu/bhosack/videoant/
http://ant.umn.edu/vae.php
NOTE:
The Learning Resource Center were the ones who mentioned this video annotation tool. VideoANT allows you to host comments and discussion around a video link on the web, either one you host on your own servers or one hosted in another system. They like you to use the Flash video format, which is pretty common these days. This means you can grab videos from YouTube or Vimeo or other tools for annotation and class discussion. You can watch the video in VideoANT, mark places to add a note or comment, and also leave comments on other people’s comments. Imagine a class in which the teacher posts a video link, and at specific points in the video inserts a question, asking the students to pause and reply before continuing, then getting the whole class engaged in the conversation. Pretty exciting potential. For one of my Second Life videos, I often am asked for the locations shown. VideoANT allowed me to mark specific points in the video and annotate them with directions.

VideoANT Annotation of Science Learning Opportunities in Second Life: http://ant.umn.edu/vav.php?pid=60058091758860

See Also:
Viddler: http://www.viddler.com/
BubblePly: http://www.plymedia.com/products/bubbleply/bubbleply.aspx
Nico Nico Douga (Japanese video sharing site): http://www.nicovideo.jp/
Veotag: http://www.veotag.com/
Project Pad (NWU): http://dewey.at.northwestern.edu/ppad2/
DIVER (Stanford): http://diver.stanford.edu/
Close Captioning for Youtube videos: http://www.youtubecc.com/

More tools listed at the OpenCast project:
http://www.opencastproject.org/homepage
http://www.opencastproject.org/wiki/project_pad_audio_and_video_annotation_tools

Augmented Reality

What made the discussion on augmented reality interesting was the way once folks understood what it could do, they kept saying, “Wouldn’t it be neat if you could ?” to which the answer was almost always, “Oh, you can, here is the tool that does that.” The ones that seemed most useful were Cyclopedia and Wikitude, both of which allow you to use a mobile device to retrieve information about your immediate location and environment.

Cyclopedia: http://www.chemicalwedding.tv/cyclopedia.html or http://www.appstorehq.com/cyclopedia-iphone-74227/app
http://gizmodo.com/5372243/cyclopedia-augmented-reality-iphone-app-drenches-your-world-in-wikipedia

Wikitude: http://www.wikitude.org/ and http://www.wikitude.me/
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/two_apps_now_superimpose_wikipedia_over_your_iphon.php

Mobilizy: http://www.mobilizy.com/
SmartGrid: http://ge.ecomagination.com/smartgrid/

Other Tools Mentioned

Aviary: http://aviary.com/
TinEye: http://tineye.com/ OR http://tineye.com/cool_searches
TiddlyWIki: http://www.tiddlywiki.com/
EverNote: http://www.evernote.com/

Tools for Learning: Flashcards? Really?

Flashcards seem to lend themselves to the trite, and are often considered old school, albeit tried and true at the same time. People use them a lot because they actually work, after all. I have a collection of online flashcard tools ranging from search engines to make-your-own to online social networks and wikis for sharing and discovering flashcards and tools. Most of these are Flash based, some of them let you make Flashcards with embedded videos and audio, and some have more than two sides! Quite a few of them have built-in software options to make learning more efficient and to manage the display, timing, and repetition of the questions. For those, you want to explore the different options and see what actually works best for you. Some of them include a wiki or blogs along with other social netwokring options to allow sharing and collaboration in studying. Many allow you to create or save flashcards for use on your iPhone or similar mobile device, some of which are both phone and web compatible. So, at the risk of sounding trite, these are not your Grandma’s flashcards, Dorothy.

You don’t have to use them the old ways, either. Try doing something new. Thinking of the more social flashcard sites, like Cobocards or FunnelBrain or many others, set up a group for your class for the students to share flashcards they make, then assign them to make flashcards for a controversial topic. Cobocards lets students use Skype to partner while studying or quiz each other, so you could assign partners or teams. Or ask students to create quizzes for each other (which isn’t new) and then critique the quality of the flashcards they designed.

Using the multimedia options, make flashcards with a auscultation or breath sounds quiz, snippets of patient interviews from cases, diagnostic movements, or examples of interviewing skills and patient history taking questions. The whole point of the “flash” of flash cards is to get at that information that needs to be so deeply embedded and quickly retrieved that it seems like instinct. What you need to know without stopping to think how you know it. Maybe it is professional jargon, maybe it is research methodologies, maybe it is types of charts.

I’ve never seen a flashcard set with, for example, data visualizations on one side and the matching types of data to use as the answers. With images, you can include histology or pathology images, anatomy dissections, drug administration modalities, anatomical landmarks, mapping, disease spread patterns, pathogens, and much more. With the “three sided” flashcards available on some of these sites (like Flashcard Manager), you could do if/then types of questions, or miniature decision trees, or stages of a process. You could have an image, followed by a word or name or date, and then the student gives the other matching piece or the significance.

If you are thinking of these as supporting distance learning, make a midterm from a flashcard quiz, untimed, and assign the students to work through the quiz providing a few sentences or paragraphs in response to the “triggers” given in the flashcards. You don’t have to think of the flashcards as being the quiz themselves, but can think of them as a delivery mechanism, you can turn them into a game. Many of the flashcard creation sites also offer related tools for creating edugames. In distance learning, or working with trying to assess student achievement over the internet, sometimes games can be a really effective and time efficient way to get at this.

The Japanese have a traditional card game played on New Year’s (hanafuda or hyakunin) that is actually very similar to flashcards, and also related to the matching memory games played here. It is based on their most significant pieces of traditional literature, with very short quotations from the work or poems on each card, with images illustrating the poem.

If you really want to challenge the creativity of your students, ask them either individually or collaboratively to create a deck of playing cards to illustrate the most important concepts of the topic, reserving the “royal” cards for the most significant concepts.

Festisite: http://www.festisite.com/cardgame/

While this isn’t exactly flashcards, I used MultiURL to generate a nifty interactive tool for you to explore these. It provides a frame-based exploration. You create an account, list the URLs you want to share, and it gives you a short link. I have 25 URLs listed in this one. As you flip the “pages” with the arrow, it loads the page in the window, making it easy for you to skim the set of collected tools.

Interactive: http://www.multiurl.com/g/00i

LIST:
BrainFlips: http://brainflips.com/
Cobocards: http://www.cobocards.com/
CramBerry: http://cramberry.net/
cueflash: http://www.cueflash.com/
Ediscio: http://www.ediscio.com/
Flash Card Machine: http://www.flashcardmachine.com/
Flashcard Flash (Custom Search Engine for Flashcards): http://www.flashcardflash.com/
FlashcardDB: http://flashcarddb.com/cardset/31497-cells-flashcards
FlashCardExchange: http://www.flashcardexchange.com/
FlashCardFriends: http://flashcardfriends.com/
Free Printable Flash Card Maker: http://www.kitzkikz.com/flashcards/
Free World U: Flashcards: http://www.freeworldu.org/Flashcards/
FunnelBrain: http://www.funnelbrain.com/
iFlipR (Make Flashcard for iPhone or on the Web): http://www.iflipr.com/
IQFuse: http://www.iqfuse.com/
Knowtes: http://www.knowtes.com/
Memorize: http://memorize.com/
Muchobeets: http://www.muchobeets.com/
OmniMemo: http://www.omnimemo.com/
ProProfs: http://www.proprofs.com/
Quizlet: http://quizlet.com/
Scholastic: Homework Hub: Flashcard Maker: http://www.scholastic.com/kids/homework/flashcards.htm
Study Stack: http://www.studystack.com/
StudyBlue: http://www.studyblue.com/
studybulb: http://www.studybulb.com/
WordLearner: http://www.wordlearner.com/

Tools for Learning: Wetpaint

Title:
Wetpaint

Author:
Wetpaint.com, inc.
710 Second Avenue
Suite 1100
Seattle, WA 98104
Telephone: 206.859.6300
Facsimile: 206.859.6301
Email: info@wetpaint.com

URL:
http://www.wetpaint.com/

Recommended Audience:
Any.

What it does:
While many higher education institutions have branded wiki platforms for coursework, it is sometimes challenging for local implementations of popular tool platforms like wikis to keep up with the functionality of commercial tools. With the advent of the social web, we discovered more and more tools offering free and fee versions. Wetpaint is a popular and sophisticated, easy to use wiki platform that offers a free version supported by embedded advertising alongside a commercial version without the ads. When used for educational purposes, defined as with a teacher and students working together, teacher can apply to have advertising suppressed on their sites. (Update: As of August 2009, this is no longer available.)

Wetpaint is not your ordinary wiki. In addition to easy and fully-functional editing that looks almost identical to popular word processors, it also makes it amazingly simple to embed popular media and flash objects ranging from Flickr images (or uploaded photos) to Youtube videos to embedded objects/widgets/gadgets from less well known media sites. You can even easily embed a Google Calendar. Beyond the ease of generating, organizing and editing a variety of content types, Wetpaint has integrated all the basic functions of social networking sites to enhance the collaboration space of the wiki. Users of the wiki can friend other wiki members, have private conversations, open threaded public discussions, and more.

Tech Requirements:
Mac or PC with internet connection faster than dialup; web browser should be Firefox with Flash installed (preferred).

Privacy / Security:
Wetpaint wikis can be configured with a variety of security and privacy levels, from a personal archive site with a single editor, invitation only viewing or collaborating, private project team working space, public-view wikis edited by a small group of writers, public wikis joinable by anyone with editing limited to writers and moderators, and more. The range of security settings available make this a valuable and productive working environment.

Terms of Service: http://www.wetpaint.com/page/terms
Privacy: http://www.wetpaint.com/page/privacy

Support / Troubleshooting:
Wetpaint has a Getting Started section, an excellent help and troubleshooting section, along with a blog for announcements, feedback pages, and forums for community support and discussion. They have easily identifiable community managers in the forums, as in real people with names and faces who actually answer questions, email, and solve problems. Beyond the above, for those who are real coding geeks, there is a developers section with information about how to customize Wetpaint.

Strengths for Education:
Wetpaint has a strong commitment to education, and they put their money where their mouth is. They provide strong resources for educators and the educational community, and have a strong educational infrastructure as well as the no-ads version, educational discounts, and staff devoted to supporting educators. Here are some of the resources they offer.
Wikis In Education
Wetpaint Education Ambassador
How can wikis be used in the classroom?
Education Templates

Limitations:
The big one for most people is that Wetpaint is not browser independent. The big one for most of the faculty I’ve talked iwth is that they want to log in as UM people through our local authenication gateway. As far as I know, there is no easy way to do that. Security depends on setting up a separate Wetpaint account and the permissions connected to those, and there is no surefire verification by institution. That may be possible and just I don’t know about it. On the other hand, for a collaboration with persons outside of our university, Wetpaint may be easier to administer.

Ideas/Example for Educational Use:

E-portfolios & Reflection Spaces
– Example: mine, unfinished)
– Example: Carolyn McIntosh (midwifery educator)
– Example: Association for Authentic, Experiential and Evidence-Based Learning

Collaborate with another class in a different country.
– Example: School Health Effectiveness
– Example: Shanghai American School – Asian History
– Example: China-UK-Chicago

Have students plan a seminar on a topic, and set up a wiki to organize and promote your event.
– Example: E-Portfolio Day
– Example: Forbidden Fruit Conference
– Example: Third Students Conference of Linguistics in India (SCONLI-3)

Create a private discussion and collaboration space for health care students and patients

Collect resources and discussions on controversial topics.

Create an example patient education site with content carefully selected from social media sites. Justify your selections.

Draft an outline of a writing project or short book.
– Example: Medical Education

Private or public small group project space.

Class pages.

Examples from the Wetpaint Golden Paintcan Awards:
– Microbiowiki
– WikiRadiography
– Tension Myositis Syndrome Wiki
– Anatowiki

Tools for Learning: xTimeline

Title:
xTimeline beta

Author:
Famento.com.

URL:
http://www.xtimeline.com/

Recommended Audience:
College and above. High school with teacher oversight.

What it does:
xTimeline is a multimedia timeline editor that allows wiki-style collaborative editing. It makes it easy to embed pictures and videos, and can generate a timeline from an RSS feed. Interactive displays, easy browsing, editing, commenting. Add a time datapoint, and then enrich it with details including media and detailed commentary or excerpts. Entry form for time-point encourages entering substantial metadata. Allows groups, comments, discussion, favoriting.

Tech Requirements:
Web browser, internet connection faster than dialup, Flash.

Privacy / Security:
Requires an account to create or edit timelines. Allows users to set timesline to private. Can invite other editors, share with a group, allow public viewing, and public editing.
Privacy Policy

Strengths for Education:
Novel and engaging way to support in-class presentations or small group reports. Promotes collaboration. Can support critical thinking through editing and discussion of selected time/data points and supporting resources.

Limitations:
Requires use of real dates. While use of Flash is common, some secured environments block Flash or consider it a risk. It would be helpful if xTimeline included warnings or reminders about use of copyrighted material and resources or encouragement for use of Creative Commons media.

Ideas for Educational Use:

(1) Epidemiology Small Group Project.
Track disease outbreak in a community. Have group divide up tracking significant events from when public health concern developed backward to the first known case appearance. Track the epidemiological process forward from awareness of issue through steps to discover origins. Include images, evidence, data, citations.

(2) Patient Case Report.
Use timeline to support interactive presentation of case report. Using fictionalized dates/times, present patient history, significant symptoms, disease progressing. Include pathology images; audio of heart sounds / breath sounds as relevant; video of gait analysis or movement or simulated patient/family interview. Suitable for either individual or small group project.

(3) Model Professional Development Exercise
Have students collaborate on developing and presenting professional ethics question or other controversial issue interactively via timeline with embedded multimedia clarifying aspects of the question. Ask other students to comment on choice or selection of data points. Could do this as a debate – ask one group to prepare timeline in support (Pros) and another against (Cons).

More:
Joyce Valenza. Timelining (A 2.0 approach). School Library Journal. http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/blog/1340000334/post/260011426.html

What I Most Want to (Be Able To) Find in the New Pubmed (Pubmeds Compared)

In a recent webinar Pubmed finally revealed their new interface. A colleague sent out the URL this afternoon, and I came home and labelled the old and new to make it easy to share where things moved that I most often use in teaching. I thought others might find this helpful, so I’m sharing both image versions and presentation version.

Large Size

Full Screen Size

As a Powerpoint (Embeddable or Downloadable)

What I noticed very quickly through the exercise of doing this is that the new interface is much cleaner, tidier, and easier to use. I think once we get used to it, we’re really going to like it!

Embed a Google Custom Search Engine

I’m not the first person to do this, but I didn’t know you could until I came up with it, so I figure it won’t hurt to share the idea.

Yesterday I met with a dermatology resident to find out what I might do that would be useful. What sounded interesting to them was the idea of a custom search engine to get more precisely at some of the dermatology images on the web. The basic idea is easy, so I popped over to Google and built a custom search engine (CSE).

Dermatology Images Custom Search Engine: http://www.google.com/coop/cse?cx=014944954919562708067:gbzwe8mrt24

This was a good news / bad news experience. The bad news was I couldn’t figure out any way to get the CSE to show the images or integrate with Google Image Search. That was sad. I can customize the look and feel to include our brand, but it only shows the brand in the results, and the results will only display links.

The good news is that Google now gives you embed code for your CSE, so you can place the CSE as a widget on your website, or in your blog. I’ve put together a small LibGuide for Dermatology for our folks, so thought, “Hmmmm, I wonder if I put this code in a LibGuide will it break it?” This is another good news / bad news thing. The good news is the answer is, “Yes! It works!”

The bad news is that you have to pay money to get rid of the ads in the results.

So this didn’t turn out to be quite what I hoped for my area, but it might work out really nice for some other topics that are more text focused. Give it a try, and see what you think!

Online Presentation Tools for Researchers

I gave this presentation a week ago, but forgot to post it. The focus is less on the range of tools available (lots more interesting stuff that I show here!), and more on the ways in which researchers do or could use presentation and collaboration tools.

Online Presentation Tools for Researchers: http://www.slideshare.net/umhealthscienceslibraries/online-presentation-tools-for-researchers

I am actually thinking that I should maybe do another presentation just on new and emerging presentation tools. Fun stuff!