Category: Technology

Skills we want our students to have

Jan 8, 2013

in Learning, Physiotherapy, Research, Technology

physiotherapy, reasoning, skills, technology, thinking

This post was inspired in part by this article on the 10 skills that every student should learn. These are some of the skills that we’re intentionally trying to help our students develop, as a way of integrating them into the culture of professional clinical practice. Reading carefully. If you can read you can learn…
Adding complexity for its own sake

Dec 17, 2012

in Assessment, Mobile, Technology

Complexity, curriculum, knowledge, mobile

I was discussing a PhD project with a colleague at the HELTASA conference a few weeks ago and she was describing her plan to me. She’s interested in the possibilities that mobile technology brings to higher learning, specifically in nursing education. I gathered that she was talking about mobile as a combination of hardware and…
Social media and professional identity: Part 4 (ResearchGate)

Dec 12, 2012

in Research, Technology

academic identity, Online identity, professional identity, research, researchgate, social media, technology

Over the past few months I’ve been working towards my final PhD submission, and so haven’t had much opportunity to continue my my series on using social media to develop a professional online identity. Now that I have at least a little bit of time again, I’m going to try and finish it up over…
The Internet is here to stay

Nov 20, 2012

in Technology

Complexity, internet

Quote from Alec Couros‘ blog post, “It’s not going away“: We live in complex, media-rich, connected environments. As adults, we have built these spaces for our kids and set them up in situations where I’ve heard members of our generation exclaim, “I’m sure glad Youtube or Facebook didn’t exist when I was a kid!” But…
Writing for The Clinical Teacher mobile app

Sep 21, 2012

in Technology

android, apps in education, clinical education, clinical teacher, ipad, mobile apps, mobile education, snapplify

I’ve been spending less time on The Clinical Teacher mobile app over the past month or so, having realised that I need to focus on finishing my PhD. Unfortunately, this means that I haven’t been able to put out another article in more than two months. The Clinical Teacher is a mobile reference app (currently…
Social media and professional identity: Part 3 (Mendeley)

Sep 18, 2012

in PhD, Research, Social media, Technology

mendeley, Online identity, professional development, professional identity, social media

Academic social networks: Mendeley Everyone is familiar with Facebook and many people have heard of Google+ so I’m not going to spend much time reviewing them, other than to say that for me, neither of them is currently a big part of my own professional presence. I use Google+ a lot but in a personal…
“Papers” aren’t really papers

Sep 14, 2012

in Research, Technology

academic publication, digital publication, research dissemination, research publication

Can LinkedIn and Academia.edu enhance access to open repositories? | Impact of Social Sciences: “The paper explores other possible reasons for the high visibility of these papers – and one possibility worthy of further investigation is the provision of many papers in HTML formats and not just PDF and MS Word. “ I don’t understand…
Social media and professional identity: Part 2 (blogs & microblogs)

Sep 11, 2012

in Social media, Technology

blogging, blogs, microblogging, microblogs, professional identity, social media, twitter

Welcome to Part 2 of my series on using social media to create and develop an online professional identity. Here is the full list of topics that I’m going to cover: Part 1: Introduction to the internet and social media Part 2: Social media, online identity and engagement (blogs and microblogs) Part 3: Academic social…
eBooks: still no good for education?

Sep 10, 2012

in Technology

ebooks, iadp, international association for digital publishers

I want to love eBooks, I really do. I think there is enormous potential for digital books in education, especially with the rise of cheaper tablets and smartphones. But, I also think that as long as publishers control the ecosystem, the promise of eBooks won’t be realised and they’ll never provide the learning opportunities they could. The…
5 strategies for successful technology integration in higher education

Sep 7, 2012

in Technology

emerging technologies in distance education, george veletsianos, innovation, stephen bright, steve wheeler

This is just a summary of Steve Wheeler’s post from his “Shaping Education for the future” series, with a few of my own comments. Professor Wheeler suggests five strategies that institutions of higher learning will need to put in place, in order for digital technologies to become as successful as pen and paper: Technology will…
UWC “Scholarship of teaching and learning” colloquium

Jun 14, 2012

in Assessment, Conference, Curriculum, Education, Learning, Research, Teaching, Technology

colloquium, innovations in teaching and learning, research, teaching and learning, teaching and learning practices, university of the western cape, uwc

I presented at the UWC scholarship of teaching and learning colloquium last week. Here is the presentation I gave, which is essentially a progress report of my PhD research project. I posted my own presentation a few days ago and here are the notes I took during the colloquium. Can universities be caring? A meditation…
Developing mobile apps for clinical educators

Apr 24, 2012

in Education, Health, Learning, Social media, Technology

android, apps, clinical education, clinical reasoning, clinical teacher, healthcare education, ipad, medical education, the clinical teacher

I’m happy and proud to announce that my first app has been released into the App store. I’ve been working on this project for a few months now, in collaboration with the excellent team at Snapplify, in order to get this release out the door. The name of the app is The Clinical Teacher, and it’s…
Bring your own device

Mar 9, 2012

in Learning, Physiotherapy, Research, Social media, Students, Teaching, Technology

bring your own device, byod, empower, information management, power, self-directed learning

For the past 2 months we’ve been operating under a bring–your–own–device (BYOD) policy in one of the modules I’m co-ordinating. Actually, it’s the module that I’m evaluating for my PhD, and the BYOD policy is just one component of a completely restructured approach to the curriculum. Some background: Physiotherapy students work to solve clinical problems…
Doing more with less. Or, how to avoid distracting myself

Jan 9, 2012

in Technology

distraction, intention, presentation zen, reading, workspaces

I spend a lot of time online. A lot. And I’m beginning to realise that a lot of that time is spent bouncing around between applications, windows, tabs, etc, just checking up on things. When I get notified that new mail has arrived I have to check it, even though I know that I’ll probably…
Using a rubric for a blogging assignment

Jan 3, 2012

in Assessment, Education, Ethics, Physiotherapy, Social media, Technology

assignment, blogging, grading, reflection, rubric

Earlier this year I gave my 3rd year students an assignment in which they needed to write a reflective blog post based on a clinical experience they’d experienced. I just thought I’d share the rubric I used to grade the assignments, as I’ve come across a few people have have had difficulty trying to assign…
HELTASA conference, 2011 – day 3

Dec 2, 2011

in Conference, Education, Research, Technology

academic literacy, action research, courage, critical friendship, difficult dialogues, digital stories, digital storytelling, generosity, heltasa, heltasa11, heltasa2011, higher education learning and teaching association of south africa, jack whitehead, learner-centred, lec-torials, lived experiences, nelson mandela metropolitan university, port elizabeth, reflection, self-study, trust

Today was the last day of the HELTASA 2011 conference. It was a challenging and stimulating exchange of ideas that I really enjoyed. Thank you to everyone who was there and who I learned from. Crossing (some) traditional borders Prof Delia Marshall There needs to be wider social, historical, ethical and environmental dimensions of…
HELTASA conference, 2011 – day 2

Dec 1, 2011

in Conference, Education, Learning, Research, Technology

Cape Peninsula University of Technology, case-based learning, cbl, collaborative groupwork, community of inquiry, conceptual threshold crossing, conflict management, control, conversational framework, cput, discourse, disruption, disruptive technology, emotional resilience, epistemology, garrison, gilly salmon, groupwork, hard technology, heltasa, heltasa11, heltasa2011, higher education learning and teaching association of south africa, interpretive boundaries, laurillard, learning events, learning management system, liberalism, lms, nelson mandela metropolitan university, online learning, online presence, Ontology, pbl, piet naude, port elizabeth, postgraduate supervision, power, problem based learning, public good, scientism, small group learning, social presence, soft technology, student wellbeing, teaching presence, transformative change, troublesome encounters, utilitarianism

Explaining, naming and crossing border in Southern African higher education Prof Piet Naude This was one of the most challenging presentations I’ve ever listened to. I didn’t agree with a lot of what Prof Naude said, but he made me question my own beliefs and biases. Ontology: language is the house of reality (language…
Developing case studies for holistic clinical education

Nov 23, 2011

in Assessment, Curriculum, Education, PhD, Physiotherapy, Research, Teaching, Technology, Workshop

case-based learning, cbl, curricular alignment, curriculum, curriculum development, delphi study, document analysis, phd, research, survey, systematic review

This is quite a long post. Basically I’ve been trying to situate my current research into a larger curriculum development project and this post is just a reflection of my progress so far. It’s probably going to have big gaps and be unclear in sections. I’m OK with that. Earlier this week our department had…
Graphically representing a curriculum

Nov 14, 2011

in Assessment, Curriculum, Physiotherapy, Research, Teaching, Technology

cmaps, cmaptools, concept mapping, curriculum, curriculum as platform, curriculum development, curriculum mapping, delphi study, document analysis, graphical representation, phd, platforms, research, uml, unified modeling language

I’ve been a bit quiet on the blog lately, owing to the fact that I’ve been putting a lot of time into the next phase of my PhD. This post is in part an attempt to summarise and try to make sense of what’s going on there, as well as to assuage my feeling of…
TEDxStellenbosch: designing spaces

Nov 3, 2011

in Curriculum, Education, Learning, PhD, Physiotherapy, Research, Teaching, Technology

blended learning, city spaces, cityafrica, learning, learning spaces, phd, research, stafford massie, steve vosloo, teaching, tedxstellenbosch

A few months ago I attended TEDxStellenbosch at Spier wine farm near Stellenbosch. It was one of the better TEDx events I’ve been to during past few years and I enjoyed it immensely. During the day I re-tweeted comments from other participants, mainly as a record of speakers and the comments that resonated with me.…