Category: Research

New version of Mendeley

Jul 14, 2009

in Research, Social media, Technology

mendeley, pdf, research, upgrade

Quick post to mention the new 0.9 release of Mendeley. I’m not going to go into too much detail, because the blog post announcing the release covers it all quite nicely. I just wanted to mention my 2 favourite new features: the internal, tabbed PDF viewer and the ability to annotate and highlight documents (see…
My presentation at SAAHE 2009

Jul 4, 2009

in Conference, Research, Social media

blogging, creative commons, license, microsoft, opendocument, openoffice, physiotherapy, presentation, saahe, slideshare

My presentation at SAAHE looked at the use of blogging as a tool to facilitate ethical and clinical reasoning among final year physiotherapy students in my department. The abstract is available here, and I’ve shared the presentation slides on Slideshare. You can either view it online, or download it. I’ve shared it under this Creative…
PhD progress

Jun 29, 2009

in Research

Directorate of Teaching and Learning, head, mrowephd, phd, professor in my department, research

Things are finally starting to move on the proposal now that I’ve managed to catch up on a lot of other regular work that’s been outstanding. I’ve had a few meetings with my two supervisors (one is a professor in my department and another is the head of the Directorate of Teaching and Learning at…
Disseminating research results

Jun 1, 2009

in Research, Scholarship, Social media

academia, articles, credibility, journal, presentation, publication

I attended a short seminar a few months ago that reviewed the academic publication process. At the time I thought it was reasonably informative and useful. Now, after having spent a bit more time thinking about the nature of formal, academic publication, I wonder if there isn’t a better, more efficient way to distribute new…
Results of a reflective blogging assignment in physiotherapy ethics

May 24, 2009

in Physiotherapy, Research, Social media

assignment, author, blog, clinical reasoning, digital native, ethics, healthcare, healthcare education, healthcare system, physiotherapy, presentation, reflection, saahe, software clients, student, university server

Earlier this year I gave my 4th year Ethics class an assignment in which they were required engage in a reflective exercise that not only encouraged interaction with others, but allowed them to see that their own perceptions of the world were different to others’. Reflection has been shown to be a significant factor in…
First article published

May 23, 2009

in Physiotherapy, Research, Technology

abstract, article, communication technology, education, healthcare, healthcare workers, ICT, learning tools, professional practice, research, World Health Organisation

I just had my first research article published. It’s based mainly on the literature review I did for my Masters degree last year, with a few updates. It’s strange, but when I submitted it about 6 months ago, I thought it was a reasonable piece of work. Reading it now, I feel like taking it…
Managing digital libraries

May 12, 2009

in Research, Technology

bibliographic, bibliographic tools, citeulike, digital libraries, fedora, generation web, kubuntu, mendeley, openoffice, research, word processor, zotero

I just re-installed Mendeley after moving from Fedora to Kubuntu and in the process came across a few other posts / sites discussing the problem of managing large numbers of research articles. Here’s a few of the more interesting ones I came across. Defrosting the digital library: bibliographic tools for the next generation web How…
Mendeley: research paper / PDF management

Apr 6, 2009

in Research, Social media

citeulike, collaboration, cross platform, data from both services, desktop tool, internet-enabled computer, Manitoba, mendeley, Mendeley library, online library, pdf, PDF library, reference management, reference manager, remote server, research, social media, social networking aspect, social networking tools, web service, zotero

A little while ago I wrote about Zotero and how I felt it came short of my expectations for a reference manager (my main contention was that it wasn’t very efficient at managing my offline content, for example, PDFs. Incidentally, see this interview, which also mentions this shortcoming of Zotero). Today I came across Mendeley,…
Open research

Mar 27, 2009

in Open access, Research, Technology

blogs, collaboration, Google, Google Docs, internet connection, Jean-Claude Bradley, jon udell, methodology, open notebook science, open research, open science, peer review, publication, researcher, secrecy, social networks, social tools, wikis

I’ve been thinking about the concept of open research since listening to Jon Udell’s interview with Jean-Claude Bradley on his open notebook science project. The idea is similar to the open approach to writing software in that the process is transparent and open to scrutiny by anyone. This could have important implications for the soundness…
Zotero

Mar 13, 2009

in Research, Social media

addon, apa style, blogs, citation, content management, educational technology, Firefox, literature, open access, pubmed, real estate, research, semantic, standalone tool, zotero

I first mentioned Zotero a while ago but didn’t go into very much detail in that post. Since then, I’ve been experimenting with it a bit and am really starting to enjoy it. It’s a Firefox extension that facilitates the research process by streamlining the collection of information accessed through the browser. With more and…
Google Docs for collaborative writing

Mar 13, 2009

in Research, Social media

buzzword, cloud computing, collaboration, copyright, desktop work processor, Firefox, Google, Google Docs, google gears, greasemonkey, journal, microsoft, microsoft office live, missouri, online version, online word processing environments, peer review, physiotherapy, publication, research, thinkfree, twitter, undergraduate, word processing, zoho

We’ve recently started using Google Docs for collaborative work in the physiotherapy department and it’s been great so far. There are other online word processing environments with different feature sets (Zoho, Thinkfree, Microsoft Office Live, Buzzword), but after playing around with all of them, I found that Docs offered the best mix of features, usability…
Twitter in undergraduate physiotherapy research

Mar 4, 2009

in Education, Physiotherapy, Research, Social media

bit.ly, communication, education, Firefox, laconica, micro-blog, micro-blogging, physiotherapy, plugin, research, students, tweets, twitbin, twitter, URL shortening

I’ve spent the past few weeks experimenting with Twitter, a micro-blogging service that allows users to post short “tweets” of up to 140 characters. I’ve been following it’s development for a year or so but never really got it. I finally saw it’s potential in education when I realised that it’s only a small leap…
Writing for publication workshop

Dec 1, 2008

in Research

peer review, physiotherapy, publication, research, workshop, writing

A few weeks ago my department began a “Writing for publication” workshop, in which each participant would both write and review an article for publication. In theory, this has two distinct advantages: 1) Everyone gets to submit a peer-reviewed article at the end of the workshop, and 2) Everyone gets to experience the process of…
The semantic desktop and research papers

Nov 28, 2008

in Research, Scholarship, Technology

author, default search application, desktop search, documents, file using author, files, filesystem, ideas, kde, linux, metadata, Microsoft Windows, MP3, nepomuk, Ontology, operating system, Personalized, qt4, research, semantic desktop, tags, temporary solution, themes, thesis, usable solution

I’ve been following the idea of a semantic desktop for a few years now, waiting for someone to implement a framework that enables a user to actually do something that’s useful. I think that time has come. It seems as if KDE has managed to integrate the Networked Environment for Personalized, Ontology-based Management of Unified…
Reference extract: credibility in academic searching?

Nov 19, 2008

in Research, Scholarship, Technology

credibility, credible search results, Google, information literacy, librarian, reference, refextract, research, search, search results

I’ve spoken before about the need to teach students how to search, not just by typing keywords into Google, but by being able to validate the search results in terms of credibility. Reference extract is a new project seeking to do just that, provide credible search results by using librarians (of the human variety) to…
Continuing professional development (CPD)

Sep 29, 2008

in Learning, Research

Continuing Education Unit, CPD, healthcare professionals

It’s our responsibility as healthcare professionals to keep up to date with our professional development in terms of maintaining clinical skills, improving knowledge and many other aspects of our practice. Unfortunately, due to host of problems, it’s often difficult to stay current and to accumulate the required number of points. One option is to sign…
Conference: Higher education as a social space

Sep 16, 2008

in Conference, Research

abstract, grahamstown, HESS, HESS08, ICT, quality management

I just found out that the abstract I submitted for the Higher Education as a Social Space conference has been accepted. I’ll be presenting a paper on the use of ICT by physiotherapy students in South Africa, based on the results of my Masters thesis. The conference will take place in Grahamstown from the 30…
Knol: a unit of knowledge

Aug 11, 2008

in Learning, Research, Technology, Web

articles, citations, copyright, Google, knol, knowledge, reference, wikipedia

http://knol.google.com/k/knol and Wikipedia article on Knol Knol, described as “a unit of knowledge” by the project’s creators, is a new initiative by Google that allows anyone to write an article, called a “knol”, about any topic. It’s a bit like Wikipedia in that respect but is limited to discrete articles with no links between them.…
Clinical guidelines: should we be using them?

Aug 6, 2008

in Clinical, Research

Centre for Allied Health Evidence, clinical guidelines, evidence based practice, guideline applications, handheld devices, healthcare, Karen Grimmer-Somers, National Institute of Clinical Excellence, Professor

I attended a lecture a few days ago by Karen Grimmer-Somers, a professor at the University of South Australia and Director of the Centre for Allied Health Evidence (CAHE). An adjunct professor at the University of Stellenbosch, she visits Cape Town every year or so and this year we were fortunate enough to have her…
Managing information 2.0

Aug 5, 2008

in Research, Technology, Web

content, content management, desktop search, Firefox, Google, information, information management, online experience, openoffice, pdf download, research tool, Runtime (AIR), scrapbook, software, web 2.0, zotero

Edit (07/07/08): I need to include PDF Download, another Firefox extension that makes managing PDF documents within the browser a lot easier and more flexible. Up until the latest release, my main use of it was the option to automatically download any PDF document, rather than open it in the browser, a process that’s really…