Social media, the democratisation of knowledge and physiotherapy. Can they play nice together?

In this oral presentation at the SAAHE conference, Dr. J. Dempers of the Division of Forensic Medicine at the University of Stellenbosch discusses the use of digital video to enhance the e-learning curriculum already in place in the Forensic Pathology Department. Currently, the department makes use of Blackboard to manage all course content besides testing, calendaring and video. Dr. Dempers made the argument that the use of video could not only provide a valuable alternative teaching and learning tool, but could also be a source of income for the university, should the content be of value to other institutions.

My notes are available in the following formats:

OpenDocument (.odt)
PDF (.pdf)
Microsoft Word (.doc)

Here are my notes from the second keynote address I attended at the SAAHE conference at the University of Stellenbosch on 20 June, 2008.

Professor Christina Tan from the University of Malaya (Malaysia) discussed the importance of ensuring competence among those responsible for examining students, as well as a few interesting points on why we examine and it’s relationship to the curriculum. Again, the emphasis is on medical students and again, I feel that the principles outlines are equally applicable to our approach to assessing physiotherapy students.

You can download my notes in the following formats:

OpenDocument (.odt)
PDF (.pdf)
Microsoft Word (.doc)

• Open source – the source code is freely available, which usually means more stable and more secure.
• Free – as in no cost and free from restriction.
• Cross-platform – they run on multiple operating systems, including Linux and Windows.
• As good as, if not better than, their proprietary counterparts.

So, here goes (by the way, this list is by no means complete):

Firefox – A very popular web browser that offers a more secure, more intuitive and faster alternative to Internet Explorer.

OpenOffice.org – An entire office suite of applications for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, databases and drawing. It uses the OpenDocument format by default and as such, it’s use is encouraged, especially in academia and governments.

Thunderbird – An email client that is a fast, secure and stable replacement for Outlook and Outlook Express, especially if you just need something light to manage your email.

Pidgin – An single instant messaging client that allows you to use all of your IM accounts at once, including IRC, MSN, Groupwise, AIM and ICQ.

Miro – An Internet TV application to subscribe to RSS feeds of free content from a host of providers, including TED, National Geographic and the Discovery Channel.

GIMP – The Gnu Image Manipulation Program. A free alternative to Photoshop that, while lacking some high end, professional features, does more than enough for most of us.

Flock – Social web browser…if you use Facebook, Flickr, Digg, or any other social networking service, this is for you.

Ubuntu – Not a software application but an entire operating system, Ubuntu is a Linux distribution based on Debian. Click here for the Wikipedia article.

Another great application to run, although once it’s set up you’ll hardly ever notice it, is BOINC (click here for the Wikipedia article). After installing the software, register with various projects and join millions of other users who donate their computer’s idle time to solving complex medical, scientific and mathematical problems. I can suggest the World Community Grid to begin with.

And while I’m at it, here’s a link to a post that discusses some of the problems with using Microsoft Word. I personally don’t mind receiving Word documents and understand that many institutions don’t give their employees a choice, but the first step is realising that you actually have a choice.