Making Progress

I'm proud to say I've gotten a "second wind"! After getting bogged down in summer "school stuff", I've finally had time the past few days to work on adding some of the ideas I gathered while in New York into my fall courses. I am SO excited! Just this morning, I created a Jeopardy game using a PowerPoint template (Walter, I found one through a Google search that a Wake Forest math teacher designed and allows others to modify from hers - YEA!!!) It looks SO cool, and I'm even working on making up one for another one course. AND, I (hope) I have found some software from Google called Sketchup (at www.sketchup.com, if anyone's interested) that will, at least, get me started on my idea of the 3D house students can use to assess their home health patient. This was my "idea" for one of our first assignments, and I posted about it in, I think, my very first BLOG. Maybe I won't need so much help from those computer geeks after all (or am I becoming one!!?? :)

Well, I must get back off to work since I seem to be on a roll!! Hang in there, guys!

News from Cathy

I have slowly been working on my course I started in New York. Now, I hope I am the one who ends up teaching it!! We are interviewing a prospective new instructor today, and we have not worked on teaching assignments for the coming year until we know for sure what our faculty make-up will be. YIKES! I may just have to put my foot down about this particular course after I put all this work into it!!

For this specific course, I've actually found a website with video clips that work better than the things I've found on YouTube! I am so excited. I was looking at the TV guide on-line the other day to see what types of shows were upcoming on Discovery Health (which our cable company does not have, so I've got to find somewhere I can record them first). When I linked on to the Discovery.com site, I uncovered the most amazing wealth of information and numerous video clips of ALL types of procedures, conditions, etc. It was GREAT! So, presently, I am working through my syllabus and incorporating some of them to the on-line portion of my course, as well as into some PowerPoint presentations for many of our "in-class" sessions. The one other drawback is that I am waiting on a review copy of a different textbook, which if I decide to change, may alter my content a little, but maybe not enough to mess up any of my preliminary BlackBoard work. I feel like a NEW teacher (well, no pun intended, since I have only been doing this a year anyway!! :)

Back Home & Back "to the grind"

Well, the weather here in Alabama IS indeed much warmer, mid 90s yesterday, but we FINALLY got some MUCH needed rain - still not enough! I have to admit, though that with the temperature at which they keep this building, I'm not a lot more comfortable than I was when I was freezing to death in NYC!

I have been quite busy since returning to work Monday, so my course I was working on has not taken on any different shape, but I definitely have been "talking up" a lot of the things we learned! I showed our department head and some of her summer research course students how they could use bubbl.us to create orgnaizational charts; I've continued to search "youtube" for useful videos for my clinical conditions course, and of course, talked endlessly about my visit to the "BODIES" exhibit. My husband thinks I'm SICK!!! :)

Hope all of my FRN classmates remain enthusiastic about expanding their teaching repetoire to utilize all of our great info we gained!

WHAT A WEEK!

It is hard to believe this week is over! We have learned SO much, but the time has gone by very quickly! Sorry I missed posting yesterday, but I was busy with my "homework". Now...I've made it (I hope, successfully) through my presentation and am beginning to feel some sadness at our eminent conclusion. I have made some wonderful friendships and hope we can continue to encourage and support each other, share ideas, etc., and I truly have gathered a WEALTH of information that I can't wait to get back (well, actually, I really can - a few more days, anyway! :) and put it to practical use as well as to share it! Thank you FRN, Minchi, and all of my wonderful classmates! I'm headed back down south.....where it's WARMER!!!!

Half Way

I cannot believe our week is over half over! My brain is overwhelmed with everything I've seen, heard and learned. Like Donna said to me earlier on our break, it's easy to stay focused on these things while we're away and engrossed in this course; however, it is my goal - which I want everyone to help me stay on task and succeed with - to return home (to school) and be faithful to implement, at least, SOME of these great ideas. I KNOW they will make my courses more interesting and interactive to my students, and although initially more work for me, they also should be more fun for me to teach, facilitate, grade, etc. I need an accountability partener to ensure that I continue to stay eccited and committed to this endeavor - any takers??

I appreciate ALL of the examples shared by my highly technically skilled classmates and will certainly be able to utilize the suggestions of YouTube, dmoz, bubbl.us, etc. Thanks a BUNCH!!

Expanding my knowledge

Well, this afternoon we've had some interesting examples shared of a variety of online learning programs and specific courses. I have to say I was the most interested in the Blackboard example, since that is what I currently use and am most familiar with. I do not believe that my institution has the same version of Blackboard, so I may not be able to do ALL of the things that the example course did; however, I am quite sure there are many ways I can expand my present use of this tool through some of the information shared by Linda.
Other interesting things I have heard about (and already signed up for or experimented with) include PRIMO, merlot, and FutureMe, so I thank everyone in my class for sharing their knowledge with the rest of us. Maybe after being in the academic field for several more years, I'll have something to share with you!
I never did understand much in Chemistry and would have been among those saying that it was a subject that could not possibly be taught successfully on line, though after seeing the examples with the barometer and the one Minchi shared, being a visual learner myself, I think I might could have understood it better THAT way!! Also, after seeing those, I am convinced there is someone out there who can help me design my "house" for my authentic learning task idea from this morning!! Anybody "game"???

Authentic Task for OT

I liked the first example in Dr. Herrington's paper and created mine based on a similar situation that was easily modified for my occupational therapy discipline.

Occupational Therapy students are given the task of completing an evaluation on a geriatric home health patient. The website simulates a person's home that the student can click on various items/places within the house. By clicking on the patient sitting in the chair, they are able to "interview" him/her to determine personal history, significant medical background and individual demographic information. The student can then navigate the home environment in order to see how the patient functions within each area (kitchen, bathroom, bedroom) and task (dressing, taking medication, getting up from chair, etc.). For example, in the bathroom, the student may discover that the patient requires no assistance with toileting, though requires maximum asssitance getting into the tub/shower.
After the O.T. student has adequate information gathered, they can then proceed to the icon of the evaluation form (provided) and complete their assessment, writing areas of strength, areas needing improvement, goals and treatment plan. This same exercise could be adapted to return later and re-assess the patient to determine if any progress had been made.
If I had the computer technical skills OR access to an innovative IT person to create this virtual environment, I can forsee many applications throughout this activity as well as numerous other authentic task applications in my field.

Faculty Resource Network

Today has been an exciting adventure into on-line learning. Like many terms, including my profession of "occupational therapy", words and phrases change in their meaning throughout time and culture development. Therefore, the discussion of instructional technology can be many things to many people, though to me, technology is the mulimedia use of computers, digital cameras and videocameras, audio, television, etc. that permeates the society in which our students live and we teach. Having only been an instructor for a year, I am still trying to grasp the "teacher" concept of my position, but with some knowledge of computers, and in particularly, the Blackboard program, I hope to now enhance my teaching through this multimedia explosion of our "culture".
Learning is a unique and individualized concept of each student as well as each field of study, so I feel that part of my job is to asssist my students in self-determination of "how" they learn as well as their perception of how I "teach" so that we can make each course as effective as possible. I do believe that, in teaching graduate level students who had to compete to get into this professional program, they should possess a certain amount of desire and motivation to learn and seek out knowledge; however, I remain realistic enough to know that I need to make it exciting, fun and interactive. I have already gathered many ideas from my colleagues here in which I can integrate an on-line component to each of my courses, and it is my goal to work on that between now and the beginning of Fall semester.
I am only familiar with Blackboard; therefore, I do not have a good example of an online learning program at this time, but will rersearch that and share if I come up with one.