The Indisputable Benefit of Social Media and Web 2.0

Earlier today, we submitted a proposal to do a workshop for medical educators on learning how to use Social Media tools.  Who is "We" you ask?

Therein lies the story.



Anne Marie Cunningham (@ancunningham) in Cardiff, Wales, UK

Natalie Lafferty (@nlafferty) at Dundee, Scotland, UK and

I (@Neil_Mehta) at Cleveland, OH, USA



As you can imagine planning the content and flow of a highly interactive and hands on activity needs excellent collaboration, best done face to face.  But we were separated by time and distance.



We planned the entire workshop using Google tools.  There are some really useful features (some recently added) that make it easy and efficient to collaborate.  I am going to highlight a few.

1. Google Docs: We all know how you can create and share a Google document with multiple people.  The comment feature is particularly useful.  Much like MS Word, you can highlight a sentence and insert a comment.  But in Google Docs, if someone else comments on your comment, you automatically get an email with the new comment and a link back to the document.


2. Google+ allows you to have a rich discussion on a topic and keep it private - between the collaborators.  You get e-mails when someone adds to the discussion and also get notification on the Google bar.


3. Google Hangout provides a free method for multi-user video conferencing.  The quality is excellent as long as all parties have good broadband connections.  If necessary, one can "mute" the video to improve audio quality.


4. Google Hangout recently added extra features which allow you to share your screen or even share and edit a Google Document collaboratively.  


5. You can also take notes during the Hangout.  The notes are automatically saved in Google Docs and are available after the Hangout session.  Participants who clicked on and viewed the notes during the Hangout can see these in their Google documents.


6. Scheduling a Hangout can be a problem as right now Google+ is not directly linked to Google Calendar.  But you can create Available appointment slots on your Google calendar and ask people to reserve these.  After trying this once, we switched to Doodle.

Overall I think all 3 of us learned a lot about these features and I for one would recommend these without hesitation for anyone collaborating over a different time zones or even across the campus!

There is a lot of buzz about using Social Media in (medical) education.  There are a lot of people reluctant to jump into the fray, often for valid reasons.  This story is a very good example of one indisputable advantage of Social Media and Web 2.0.  I have never met Anne Marie Cunningham or Natalie Lafferty face to face.  Still we got to "know" each other via Social Media (mostly via Twitter and reading each other's blogs) and found that we share a lot of common interests around medical education and were able to collaborate on a workshop at an international meeting.  

Social media helps us connect with people who one would never otherwise meet, and helps overcome logistic barriers to collaborate with them.  It helps broaden our horizons and in a true social constructivist sense, it  helps us learn.

Making the most of learning opportunities - "Informal learning outside the classroom"

A Weekend Morning Story with a Moral for Medical Education



We wonder about how technology impacts education and whether it makes educators forget pedagogy as they eagerly incorporate the latest shiny toy or software into the classroom.  But there are times when I am just glad that we have the resources we do.



This Saturday morning I woke up to the sound of rolling thunder and rain beating against the window.  This was a matter of great import as I had to take our daughter to her soccer game about 40 miles away.  We were already cutting it fine (as we usually do for weekend morning games) as we jumped into the car.  Still I had enough of my wits about me to stow my iPad and MiFi between the seats.



You see I had a plan.  I knew the first questions she was going to ask me as she put on her cleats and her shin guards.  The questions would be:

1.  Dad, how far is this place?  Will we get there in time?

2.  Will they cancel the game due to the weather?



And instead of just telling her what I had already looked up, I asked her to fire up the iPad and look it up herself.  She knew this was going to be one of those trips, "I suppose you got the MiFi and you are not just going to tell me the answer!"  So we switched the MiFi on, connected to it with the iPad and were all set.  We had plenty of time, and so I let her figure it out.

So what were the tasks:

1.  Go to e-mail and get the address of the soccer field

2.  Punch that into Google Maps

3.  Fire up Weather.com and look at the radar and cloud maps

4.  Learn what the different colors on the map meant

5..  Play the video to see which way the storm was moving.

6.  Estimate what the weather would be at the field by the time we got there.



The good news was that the storm was going to move out by the time we got there.  She loves soccer and she was thrilled to know that the game would be played.  I was happy to see that she learned how to use these tools to find answers for herself.  The technology made it possible to use her motivation and the car trip for this great learning opportunity.



As we work with medical students and residents, we have to remember that most of the learning does not occur in the classroom.  As we work together to solve clinical problems we should guide them and help them use various tools to find the answers for themselves.