It’s been a long time since I’ve updated my blog, for a few very good reasons. The first and most important is that in the middle of last year my daughter was born. I took time out from as many non-essential work-related activities as possible so that I could spend time with her whenever I could.
During this same period of time I also developed and ran an open online course on Professional Ethics in collaboration with Physiopedia as part of a sabbatical project I was working on. While I blogged extensively as part of the course, it meant that I had no time to write about other things I found interesting.
At about the same time, I agreed to chair the organising committee of the 2014 SAAHE conference, which was recently held in Cape Town. The conference organisation and sabbatical research project, together with my normal workload and commitment to family time meant that I had to take a step back from blogging.
However, now that the conference and research project is over and our family have settled into a more structured routine, I’m finding that I have a little more time to start blogging again. I thought that I’d get back into the swing of things by saying a little bit about the main projects that I anticipate working on during the next few months.
The first is my Clinical Teacher mobile app. It’s been ages since I’ve added any new content and I’m feeling really guilty about that, especially since interest in the project seems to be growing. I’ve slowly been adding bits and pieces to a few articles that I wanted to write but never had the time to finalise any of them. Over the next few months I’m hoping to finish 2 or 3 articles and get them published into the app. I’m also going to work on a visual refresh for the app. I’ve been really impressed with the material design principles highlighted in the the developer preview of Android “L”. The flat design and use of colour and depth, together with new ideas about fonts and how they display on many different screen sizes, has got me thinking differently about the app.
The change won’t be anything drastic but I do want to give the app a more modern look and feel, and remove the faux leather covers and gradients. I also want to come up with a consistent image theme for article headers. The more recent articles have had an “animal” theme, where I try to find an image of an animal that somehow speaks to the topic (even if the link is only in my mind). However, there have been times when I’ve ignored that trend and just used something clearly related. I haven’t yet decided what to do but am clear that it will be a design decision that will be consistently applied moving forward. Finally, I want to experiment with the new features that Snapplify have been building into the platform, including publishing video and audio, annotations, and text highlighting.
I mentioned earlier in the post that in 2013 I ran an open online course on ethics, and would now like to build on that work. I’ve submitted a funding proposal to support the next phase of the project, which is to offer the course in a variety of countries and educational contexts, and across a range of professional disciplines. We learned an enormous amount during the 2013 experience and we want to build on those lessons by doing something that really challenges how we think about physiotherapy education in an international context. I’m definitely going to work with Physiopedia again, since we had a really great experience during the first course and their input was invaluable. I’ll post more about that project once I’ve found out about the funding outcome and ethics approval.
Finally, and on a somewhat related note, we’re going to be developing a few courses within our department, which we will offer to our clinical supervisors and clinicians at the placements where our students work. They will most likely be a blend of online and physical components, and be relatively short in duration (ranging from a few hours to 2-4 weeks). Our supervisors have identified several areas where they would like additional input that they feel will help them to better support our students. For example, assessment and feedback are two areas that could be improved. So, we’ll be exploring different ways to support our clinicians and supervisors over the next few months.
In addition to these projects, I’m also going back to Brazil in November to attend The Network: Towards Unity for Health conference. The main reason for attending is to try and establish partnerships with colleagues from other institutions, who might like to be involved in the international ethics project that I mentioned earlier. There are many parallels and similarities between Brazil and South Africa, and I’d like to develop stronger links between my own institution and others over there because there’s a lot we can learn from each other.
So that’s it. My tentative plans for the rest of 2014.
