Communicating with Google Wave

Communication Software: Google Wave

Communication software is a very important tool when using asynchronic e-learning. It is also critical when building collaborative teaching projects.

There are many types of software you can use to communicate, such as email, wikis, forums and chat.

Each of them has a distinct and unique set of main features.

E-mail is used by almost everybody. Conversations can be kept together and tracked. Wikis are documents that can be edited by more than one person. Forums keep messages and discussions together and allow editing by a coordinator. Chats allow real time discussion of two or more people.

Google has developed now a new tool that combines all of these in one application: Google Wave.

Every time you want to start a discussion you start a Wave. As with e-mail, you can add people you want to participate in the discussion. As in a wiki, everybody can edit the main post, as in a forum you may respond to the main post or individually to an answer. As in a chat, if two or more people are connected to the Wave, everybody can watch what the other persons are writing.

See below a Wave started by me:

Following is Gaby's answer:

Now I have added (edited as a wiki) inside my first post something Gaby will want to comment on: “Gaby: Tomorrow we are leaving at 6,30 am because I must arrive early to the hospital. “

So she adds her comment directly inside my post : “Can we leave at 7,30”

Something very useful about inserting comments is that you can collapse them clicking on the blue balloon where the comment was inserted. See the collapsed comment in the next image:

You may find more information on Google Wave at http://google.wave.com/

You may find the help files at: http://www.google.com/support/wave/bin/topic.py?topic=25155

You may also watch an introductory video at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6pgxLaDdQw

You may find examples on uses for Wave at:http://wave.google.com/help/wave/using-wave.html

Good luck surfing the Wave!

Digital Books

By Eduardo Mayorga.

Keeping up to date on knowledge has many pathways such as meetings, courses, journals, and books. Living in the digital era, digital books are one more option we have.

Digital books have 2 main advantages over paper books: 1) you can carry a whole library on your notebook or reading device, and 2) they are usually less  expensive than their counter part on paper. More important, for those of us that live in countries that have to pay for shipping, electronic books usually save us from 30 to 50% percent of the complete cost of the purchase.

One place to search for these books is the well known Amazon store and specially the Kindle edition.

Kindle is a reading device from Amazon that you can use to buy, download, store and read all the digital books you buy at Amazon. Until recently, you could only buy from the US, but know you can buy from abroad.

You can watch a video on Kindle here.

If you don't want to use a special reading device, you can also manage your Kindle account from your notebook or computer using a Kindle's PC software that you can download form here.

Posting Powerpoint Presentations to the Web

By Dr. Eduardo Mayorga
In past blogs, we have showed you ways to give a lecture to your students when you are away from the place they are, using synchronous communication tools.

But, what happens if you cant't be online at the same time as your students? In this case, there are ways you can deliver your lectures using software that will convert your PowerPoint presentation to a web compatible format.

One of many resources you can use is AuthorStream, a web based software that allows you to upload, convert and store PowerPoint presentations, with or without audio, and view it on the web as the following.

         Classroom vs web based teaching

AuthorStream has a free version (as the one we used above), and paid versions that may add more features.

If you need to post your presentations with more sophisticated controls, notes, search capabilities and quizzes integration, you can look at software such as Articulate. Of course this software is not free and you need a web site to upload your presentations. Articulate can provide this, but you get charged for this also.

The following presentation was built with the Articulate Suite. View the presentation

If you need to ask questions about this topic, please feel free to do so using the the "Comment" area at the bottom.

See you next month!

Social Bookmarking: Sharing Knowledge in the Web

By Helena Filippe   
According to Wasserman and Faust (1994) social networks are defined as a set of socially-relevant nodes, each representing a network member, tied to each other by several types of relations. Relations must always be defined in a relational context. A clinician’s life is all about building relations with others as in a network, with patients centered in our attention.

The learning process happens in a certain social context according to the constructivist paradigm of teaching and learning developed by Vigotsky.

The contemporary educator must bear in mind that he no longer detains the whole control over knowledge but more and more the role of a facilitator for the others around to build knowledge.
In this context it is not difficult to envision us doctors (educators and students) connected to each other thus defining the connectivism paradigm.

Social bookmarking consists in searching, storing, organizing, managing and sharing a data of bookmarks of web pages by tagging or labelling them in a collaboratively facion. A folksonomy or social tagging is then built.

In 2003 Delicious (www.Delicious.com) initiated tagging and the designation social bookmarking came up.

We lately decided to start social bookmarking in our residency group making use of this tool

to search, store, organize and share interesting ophthalmology websites that each one finds

We can very easily access anytime, anywhere the data selected, as a social network. Helpful and useful websites are continually being added thanks to the whole group contribution, in a collaborative way.

We save time, learn more, and strengthen our residency group both in intellectual and human sides.

There is an interesting video explaining how to sign up this Web 2.0 tool that can be accessed clicking here
You can find more information on Delicious clicking here

Being at two places at the same time

By Dr. Eduardo Mayorga

Imagine this scenario: The head of the eye department has asked you to give, tomorrow, the lecture to the residents he was supposed to give at 7,30. You had promised your wife you would take her to buy new carpets for your house at 9. You live 4o miles from your hospital. No way you can make it back in time. What do you do?

Some time ago Karl Golnik told us about Synchronous e-learning. Today we will talk about 2 more tools that can help us with this task: Being at two places at the same time. We will learn to combine Skype, a communications software and Google Docs Presentation, a presentation tool.

Why combine if, as Karl showed us, there are tools that already have these two functions incorporated? I personally like this combination because they work better than any other, when you are not on a high speed connection.

Skype offers excellent audio and video and Google Doc's Presentation offers faster screen synchronization between teacher and students because it does not use screen sharing, as other collaboration software. When using Google Docs, teachers and students are synchronized in the same web page.

If you are not familiar with Skype you can find help on how to use it here. If you are not familiar with Google Docs Presentation you can find help here

Once you are familiar with connecting audio and video with Skype and you have uploaded you PowerPoint presentation to Google Docs you arrange your desktop to look like this.

Remember to activate the "View together"  function, at the right bottom corner,  to take control of the screen of all who are watching.

Questions from the audience can be done using audio or you can have the students write them using the chat area and answer all questions at the end of the lecture.

At this time, Skype only allows 5 connections at a time. You only need one to connect to the lecture room where your residents are listening to the audio from one computer , so you could have 3 other residencies attending or an invited professor from other place. There is no limit as to how many connect to the presentation area, so you could have in the same room, several residents watching their own screen and asking questions through the chat area.

If you need help using this combination or any other software mentioned in our blog, please contact us at elearning@icoph.org

Internet Resources for Teaching Evidence-Based Medicine

By Dr. Gabriela Palis

Evidence-based Medicine (EBM) is the practice of Medicine in a way that integrates the best research evidence with clinical expertise and patient values. This competency is widely recommended to be taught during residency, as a strategy residents should master for finding, appraising and assimilating the best available evidence from studies, and using it for their patients’ care.

Teaching EBM in Ophthalmology can be a challenge for many reasons:

• pre-graduate medical schools not always include EBM in their curricula, so residents’ first contact with this model occurs during residency;
  
• faculty are sometimes not familiar with the concept;
  
• ophthalmologists who are knowledgeable of the theoretical concepts that sustain EBM, and who will teach them to residents, are difficult to find for every residency program;
  
• EBM concepts are difficult to learn and assimilate, so teaching them can be time consuming.

Fortunately, there are some Internet resources that can help teaching EBM. I will describe three free resources I have found very useful:

• Understanding Evidence-based Healthcare: A Foundation for Action (by Kay Dickersin and Musa Mayer).This web course, created by the United States Cochrane Center, was originally designed to help consumer advocates understand the fundamentals of evidence-based healthcare concepts and skills, and is very good as a first introduction to the concepts of EBM. The topics it develops include, among others, what is EBM and why is important; the research questions; research design, bias, and levels of evidence; acquiring, appraising and applying the evidence, etc.

• PubMed^® Online: Excellent resource for teaching how to search and find the evidence. It includes PubMed Tutorial (based on the NLM’s one-day PubMed Training Course, in text format with animations, exercises, etc.) and the Quick Tours, animated tutorials with audio for learning how to search PubMed or how to optimize the use of MyNCBI, for example.

• CAT maker at the Center for Evidence Based Medicine (University of Oxford): This software tool helps create Critically Appraised Topics, or CATs, for articles about therapy, diagnosis, prognosis, aetiology/harm and systematic reviews of therapy. The software includes calculators for clinically useful measures and their 95% confidence intervals. With the calculator for therapy studies, for example, you can load the control and experimental event rates, and you automatically get the relative risk reduction, the absolute risk reduction, and the number needed to treat.

In summary, although daily practice and modeling of EBM are essential for learning how to practice EBM, some theoretical concepts are needed in order to understand the process and put it into practice. EBM resources available in the Internet are useful and easy to use tools that could help faculty teach the basis and practice of Evidence-based Medicine

Wikis: A Collaborative Tool

By Helena Filipe

'Wiki' is a Hawaiian word that means to hurry, swift, giving its name to the Honolulu International Airport shuttle.

Wiki, as far as technology is concerned, consists in an online resource which allows users to add and edit content collectively. They are participative and allow many people work together in a constructivism and connectivism environment.

Wikis, blogs and podcasts are Web 2.0 applications, which means they are a new generation of Web-based tools for virtual collaborative clinical practice and education.

In this context the Residency Group of our Hospital (Instituto Dr. Gama Pinto, Lisbon- Portugal –UE) created a wiki supported by Google technology: Google sites.

This site allows our community to create and maintain our documents as a group as well as keeping track of activities: we know who is doing what and when.

We can prepare documents together, sharing in an asynchronous way the desktop, adding or modifying content. (In this case a PowerPoint presentation)

We can keep our papers presented in scientific conferences and meetings, sharing this information as well as obtaining other types of information and knowledge.

The wiki allows us to communicate with each other at each one’s convenience using posts that allow comments.

We can share information about scientific reunions and congresses (calendar).

We can store legal information pertaining the residency program as well as the guidelines used in each Department to teach and evaluate in the Residency Program.

Wiki’s problems consist in possible vandalism, quality problems issues, as well as they can be a time consuming project.

The access to our wiki is only granted to a limited number of people, restricting the entrance to possible lurkers and web vandals by means of a password.

Even though we have an IT engineer working with us to help in the governance and architecture of the site, Google Sites has a very friendly interface that allows setting up the site with no knowledge in programming.

In summary our wiki is a motivating and engaging web based tool that enriches social networking, stimulates knowledge construction, strengthens the virtual community of practice, making it grow with a sense of duty and responsibility but without losing the fun element.

Synchronous e-learning

By Dr Karl Golnik

There are two broad categories of e-learning; synchronous and asynchronous.

Asynchronous e-learning has advantages of anyplace, anytime, on-demand education. Podcasts, online courses and discussion boards are good examples. However, the instant interaction and feedback that helps the participant stay focused and interested are missing in these formats.

Synchronous e-learning has the advantage of real-time interaction but the disadvantage that participants must be available at a given time. Webinars and online lectures are examples of synchronous e-learning.

For the past year, I have been traveling to a residency program 100 miles away once per month to lecture and teach in the clinic. I supplement this with a monthly one hour, synchronous online lecture.

Various software exists to facilitate this and is available at www.gotomeeting.com, www.webex.com, www.lotuslive.com, or www.yugma.com to name a few. I have not tried all of these but I have been using GoToMeeting with some success (I have no financial interest in GoToMeeting). This software requires registration and there is a 30 day free trial. After that, the charge is 49 US Dollars per month which allows one to host unlimited online conferences with as many as 15 different participant computers. Participants may use their computer microphones or phone to communicate.

Once registered, the host simply clicks on a small GoToMeeting icon and types in their email address and password.

The software then launches a meeting and a tool bar appears on the right side of your computer (Figure).

Towards the bottom of the bar a code appears and you email or call the participants to give them the code. They go to www.joingotomeeting.com type in the code and they can view your laptop and talk back and forth amongst each other. The list of participants appears in the box toward the top of the toolbar. A “chat box” is located in the lower third of the toolbar. This allows questions or comments to be typed if the participant does not wish to interrupt the speaker.Once everyone is online you simply give your talk as you would a normal conference. The obvious advantage to this method is that I can host a conference with anyone anywhere in the world from my house or even when I am traveling. In fact, I recently forgot about a conference, was about to step into the shower and got a reminder call. I rushed down to my computer, set up the meeting, and started the conference in about 2 minutes! The feedback from participants has been very good and they greatly appreciate the opportunity for an extra neuro-ophthalmology conference per month. They even gave me the compliment (I think!) that the online meeting was just as good as my being there.

I envision the possibility of providing this type of synchronous neuro-ophthalmology e-learning to programs anywhere in the world where neuro-ophthalmology specialists may not be present.

Adding narration to PowerPoint presentations

By Dr. Eduardo Mayorga

Every year we give our new residents lectures we have been giving to other residents, year after year.

Many of these lectures, mostly those on the basics of ophthalmology, don't change much.
Teachers' time can be optimized by using the PowerPoint's feature to add audio to your presentation.

For busy teachers that lecture twice or more a week, adding audio to their presentations can help them save several hours a week.

Having your residents watch audio-recorded lectures does not mean you leave them on their own. You just use this feature for the knowledge transfer phase, but you walk into the classroom, once the lecture is over, to answer questions and stimulate discussion.


You can find how to do this using the "Help" feature in PowerPoint.
You may also want to watch this short tutorial we prepared. Click here to view.

Conceptual Maps: Helping your residents learn

By Dr Eduardo Mayorga

Have you ever given a lecture to your residents, come back the next day, ask some questions about it, and find out they remember very few things?
It not only happens to me as a teacher, but also as a learner.

Transferring information (as in a lecture), does not mean those who attend the lecture will learn.

For learning to occur after being exposed to a lecture, other process must take place to facilitate learning.

One of these processes is identifying the most important concepts of the lecture and relating these concepts between them, and with previous knowledge.

A way to do this is through concept mapping, visual mapping, or also called mind mapping.

This can be done with paper and pencil, but is facilitated with special software that lets move concepts and their relations around the screen.

There are many software programs for mind mapping; some are free, some not. At this time, my preferred software is MindManager , which has a cost, and CmapTools, which is free, and is the one I use to work with my residents.

The map you see bellow is an example on how you can show, graphically, concepts and their relations.

Changing the traditional 1 hour lectures to a 15 or 20 minute lecture with collaborative mind mapping during the following 40 minutes, has empowered learning for my residents. Of course we cover less topics in one hour, but these are learned better.

There is no sense in covering more topics if these are not going to be learned.

In the following link you can see a map built by my residents after a lecture on Herpes Zoster, even though it’s in Spanish, you will see the power for concept mapping of CmapTools.

These maps can be built in a collaborative way, simultaneously, where several residents are working on the same concept map, as you can see in the photograph that follows. At the back of the picture you can see the projected map they are working on.

I enthusiastically encourage all involved in resident training to try this strategy. I am sure you will feel much less discouraged after evaluating what your residents have learned from your lectures.