Byte to Gigabyte in a Nanosecond- My Final Reflection Blog

This is an ultrasound of my oldest daughter, an ultrasound is essentially a reflection of sound from the tissues of our bodies. So I figured it worked in the context of this post, also as you may be able to see she is scratching her head, the same thing I've been doing as I contemplated this final post.

Final reflection is a bit of a misnomer here. This may be the final blog for the EDES 501 course however, it is far from the end of the learning. That snowball has just begun to roll out of control down the hill. I struggled with how I would put this post together, likes then dislikes, personal vs. educational, chronological, or haphazard! I decided I would piece this together chronologically through the various tools that we have used. Illustrating how I could implement them in my profession.
"Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me."
This quote shows how I felt entering this course! I took this course to get out of the valley and to get up to date on all these fantastic (I call them fantastic now) internet tools that were passing me by. I came into this course having owned a computer for only six years and a cell phone for only 3 years! So it should be pretty clear that I knew very little (and that is being generous) of the cyber world. In Will Richardson's blog, Weblogg-ed he says, "What I want are master learners, not master teachers, learners who see my kids as their apprentices for learning." This quote encompasses why I took this course, I wanted to be able to learn these tools in order to provide a better environment of learning for my students.
In this post I will reflect on each tool from an educational stance first and then from a personal standpoint, I will touch on the valuable things I learned from my colleagues, and finally wrap it up.

Flickr
From an educational point of view Flickr fits in quite nicely in the world of ultrasound. After all day in and day out we are creating, observing, and critiquing images. At first I thought Flickr would be a fantastic educational tool all on its own, but of course as the class progressed on to other tools that used multimedia the love affair with Flickr alone kind of fell apart. I created a photostream to demonstrate how I could use Flickr in the classroom, what I've done is used the very first lab experience that our students encounter. I will be using this format throughout my post. The students can view the photostream and get acquainted with the 'knobology' and better prepare themselves for that first lab. The photos will have a question attached to them, and the students can go in and discuss the answers.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tomb6/sets/72157623682585689/

Flickr as a tool is more useful to me personally vs. educationally. This has changed since we started the course. With so many other tools that are more educational in nature due to the multiple media that they use, the simplicity of Flickr from a personal stand point is very appealing. Having a site for all of our relatives to be able to tap into at anytime they choose, to keep up to date on all of our happenings is excellent.

YouTube
Like Flickr, YouTube has its place in the world of ultrasound. Often we will have to take a 'clip' of a fetal heart, or of a carotid stenosis, or perhaps of a 'vegetation' on a mitral valve. Having the ability to put these clips on YouTube and allowing the students access to them 24/7 is great option and superb supplement to their education. Just like Flickr using YouTube alone is an option, but having the ability to combine the 'clips' with images and text as you can on a wiki page is more appealing. If one is just starting out getting their class web 2.0-onized then starting with these tools is great foray into the brave new world. Once you see the benefits and the ease of the tools then one may move on to a more multi-media approach. That is just my opinion. As far as searching for information, YouTube is a fantastic source of information in so many areas. Students can use it as preparation for class projects or as a supplement to their courses. Again I've included a YouTube video that I created based on the introductory Physics labs that our students partake in. This clip is 5 minutes long so don't feel like you have to watch the whole thing, I'll never know anyway!

Personally, I'm not sure if I'll produce much on YouTube after this course,  however I will always use it as a place to gather information on any topic that I may be curious about. There is so much material available on YouTube for one to access, and most of it is quite good.

Social Bookmarking
This tool was the first frustration I came across in the early stages of this course. Once I switched from Delicious to Diigo everything was just peachy! I will discuss this tool in terms of both personal and eduational usage, as I see no differentiation between the two. Having the ability to bookmark and retrieve your bookmarks from anywhere is a bonus, but that is not even the greatest part of the Diigo social bookmarking tool. You can highlight important areas, leave yourself sticky notes in any particular area that you are interested in, and you can put tags on them so they can be easily located. I'm just getting into this tool, but the more I use it both educationally and personally the more I enjoy it, having the ability to high light an important section and add a note as to why that was important to me is tres magnifique. Then to be able to open that article up later down the road from where ever I happen to be is just icing on the cake!

Podcasts
Ahhh podcast my arch nemesis! This was the most difficult section for me, obviously not from a listening point of view, that is quite easy. No this little tool has proven to be quite a challenge for me, I in my youthful naivity decided that I would do another podcast for this final reflection, a final attempt to slay my demons if you will. I decided to include a podcast for two reasons: A). To prove to myself and everybody else that I could do it, and B). To show how I could use it in an eduational format. In keeping with my theme of the intro physics lab here is my redemption podcast ( hopefully).

Powered by Podbean.com
I will continue to search for Podcasts that interest me, the Spark podcasts I've found are interesting and will keep me in the 2.0 loop, but also podcasts that are health related, and podcasts that are of personal interest. There is no question that I will have podcast subscriptions, just probably not a lot of actual podcasts.

Wikis
Having no knowledge of wikis prior to this course this was one of my favorite tools we played with. I set up a wee wiki for a couple of my students who were, and God bless them, willing to experiment with it in the middle of thier hectic schedule. The collaborative nature of the wiki and the ability to throw in images and video clips or links to Voicethread and other tools makes wikis such a universal tool and learning device. Having students....no giving students the power and ability to go on and challenge each other in a non-threatening space is priceless, in the world of ultrasound one of the key skills is to be able to work through the problem that has presented itself. Wikis allow students to go into the site and work through whatever problem you present to them, obviously it is instructored monitored, but it is the students who are working it all out to come up with a solution. That alone makes this a very powerful tool for learning, not memorizing but learning! I asked my two eager students to send me some comments so that I could include them in this final post:

" I really enjoyed the Wikispaces. It has the potential to be a great study tool as the class advances and more people comment on the images posted. It was nice that you could comment or edit the things that were posted on there."

" I think with more students on a site like the wiki page, it could be extremely beneficial as we could ask each other questions and learn from helping to teach others, yet the page would still be monitored by you so that we are certain the answers that students have posted on it are correct."

These quotes really solidify the use of wiki spaces in the classroom, and I will be putting one together (attempting to) for my Abdomen course starting in September.

From a personal side, I'm not sure if there will be much use for me in the world of wikis. Of course there will be the occasional look at wikipedia and a few sites here and there, but overall I will be using this tool for the educational benefits far more than the personal benefits.

Multimedia Sharing Sites

This tool has brilliant applications in the education world. Sites like Slideshare and Voicethread allow for student interaction. I created a small Voicethread for my two students to try and again I asked them to comment on what they thought:

"The voicethread was also really interesting. I have never seen anything like that before. For people that don't like to answer in front of the whole class it is a safe way to voice your opinions and answers."

"...but also got us used to the critical thinking / problem solving questions that would be on our exam."

Safe way to voice your opinions and helping them become critical thinkers and problem solvers, that is exactly why these tools are important. These are powerful quotes on one tool, multimedia sharing sites. Allowing the students to have a place to go and work things through and to collaborate to solve problems is beneficial in the classroom but also in the real world. Creating a society of people working together will create a far more efficient not to mention enjoyable working environment. From a professional development standpoint there are hundreds of 'Slideshare' videos out there that are beneficial in my professional life, and I will continue to search them for ideas and information.

Personally I can see myself signing up for an Animoto account just because of the ease of putting together a nice little music video, and with the sites out there where you can create your own music to add to your images well that makes it even more personable.

Social Networking
This is one area where my opinion changed the most, maybe not changed the most but where my eyes were opened wider. I did not anticipate the educational and professional benefits of social networking until this course. Now I am a member of Classroom 2.0 and also I follow Ning in Education. The ability of the Ning networks to allow you to choose the members and have control of the content makes them more appealing in the educational format as opposed to Facebook or MySpace which really only serve a personal basis. Classroom 2.0 is a great site and it proved itself useful many times over the span of this course. I will be checking it periodically to keep up with the discussions and to see what is coming over the horizon. Also I found some sites that are useful for in my role as a health care professional, sites that help families deal with palliative care patients and general health care nings that cover a number of health care concerns. These sites provide a multitude of information in numerous categories, all contributing to one's professional development.

As far as Facebook and similar sites go they have their place in the web world but not in education. Facebook has allowed me the opportunity to connect to so many family and friends it is crazy. Without it I would never have spoken with some of these people again, and not by choice, but by circumstance. In this aspect it is great, otherwise it is a bit of a time consumer and somewhat stalkerish! As you can see to the right is some of my extensive Facebook time well spent...

Twitter
Ahhhh, Twitter how skeptical of you I was! Some might say that being proven wrong as much as I have been for this course could be damaging to one's ego. Fortunately the opposite has happened, finding these tools to be anything but useless has boosted my confidence in the world of Web 2.0. Twitter is a fantastic educational/professional tool, completely caught me off guard. I've already began to use it to forward anything interesting I find in ultrasound or health care in general. When my new students begin in September I will ask them to follow me if they wish. It may not be class specific but it will always be profession related and that will help them to understand what is happening in their chosen career path. This ultimately will lead to a richer and deeper education in my mind, and that can't be a bad thing! Coupled with a blog reader, Twitter is a very powerful tool that can reach thousands of people very quickly with the re-tweet application and the ability to send and receive 'tweets' with your cell phone. Just today I re-tweeted a Rick Mercer tweet to all (15) of my followers, and it had already been re-tweeted by over 100 other people whom I'm sure had more than 15 followers, that is roughly 2000 people reached in under half a day! There are certain professional sites that I will follow for personal development interests, there usually will be at least one very interesting 'tweet' per week in the few sites I follow. Prior to this course I never even would have had that one.
Personally for me twitter has very little use, which is fine. There is always Facebook to keep up with friends and family, or that ancient telephone thing where you actually talk with your mouth! I will continue to follow people that interest me, I just probably won't be doing a lot of repartee with it.

Blogs/RSS Feeds
Last but not least by a long shot are Blogs and RSS feeds. "RSS allows you to create your own newspaper of sorts, from a conglomeration of whatever sources you like..."(Ward, 2007) This quote sums up the value of RSS feeds to me, having the ability to search through and locate Blogs that are of interest and then subscribing. Every morning you can peruse your aggregator and see what is there for you. There is also an educational value in blogging, by releasing your thoughts to the world you instinctively hone your craft, and learn the material. Putting oneself out there is a learning experience in and of itself. The tricky part with blogs is being able to weed out the weak or inapplicable ones. Once you've mastered that art form it is quite easy to skim through and find what is important to you. The best part is once you find a couple of sites that are great, you will now have links or references to other great sites, and the cycle continues. From a PD view this tool is fabulous and I will be using Blogs as a source to improve my learning and my teaching.
There are several blogs that I follow for personal reasons and I will continue to do so, as for blogging itself we'll wait and see, I enjoy it, I would just need to make sure that I know what I'm talking about, or at least be confident that I know what I'm talking about. George Couros has a great little article in his blog 'The Principle of Change', that discusses Twitter, RSS feeds, and Diigo in education quite nicely, and seeing how he is from Saskatchewan you know its good!

One of the greatest assets of this course was my classmates! What an unbelievably bright group. Every blog post I read I learned something new. Now to be honest and in the interest of time, I did not get the chance to read every blog from every classmate. Some I read more then others and commented on, others I just read, and some I never read at all. (Sorry)
Todd's Voicethread was the first time I had ever experimented with that tool, which gave me the confidence to create one myself. Todd also pointed out the security issues with Twitter, "...using four square and Twitter actually lets people know where you are...this also means where you are not..." This taps into the awareness parents/all users of these tools must have. In Joannes Trailfire there is a great article along these lines, 'Parenting in the Digital Age'.
Nicola's posts were always very astute, especially from the personal uses side of things. Using podcasts as memory banks, introduced me to the Diigolet, as well as PodBean two tools I was struggling with. Brad is the king of TechnoLand in my eyes, he was on a different level the whole course. I enjoyed reading his blogs as he always had something I had never heard of, Mindmap and Slideshare just to name a couple of the easier ones.
 Brandi probably taught me the most important thing of all, and she probably doesn't even know it. Right from the very first blog what I learned from Brandi was that these blogs could be fun! That was a huge lesson, being able to relax and just go with it, 'free your mind and the rest will follow!' (Sorry for the En Vogue quote, I'm not sure where that came from)
 Many of us had the bonds of being relatively new to the digital-cybertronic-techno universe we were entering and that was very comforting to say the least, having the comraderie and the online collaboration of our failures/successes really helped push me along when podca.... I mean when things got tough.

This has been the most difficult blog of the course for me. Trying to reflect on the massive amount of information and new knowledge that I have obtained in the last three months is horrifying. I tried to keep it simple (not too long, yeah right!) and to show how I could use these new tools in my professional career as a sonography instructor and as a sonographer. I'll have to admit that when we started this course I thought that I was at a disadvantage not being a Teacher/Librarian. I figured that there was so much material out there for all of you and very little for myself, well this course taught me many things one of them being, if at first you don't succeed try a different blog/wiki/ning/etc. and you will find what you are looking for. Web 2.0 is one the greatest educational sources out there. Like Will Richardson says in Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, etc., "...there is little doubt that the Internet will continue to explode as the most comprehensive source of information in history." Another key aspect to Web 2.0 is the collaborative nature of all these tools. Input is coming from tens, hundreds, even thousands of people working together to create a comprehensive global outlook on whatever the topic may be. This is evident in the quotes of my students who had a limited exposure but still managed to see the value of collaboration! You can't measure the amount of growth that I have experienced in the past three months, literally I have gone from byte to gigabyte in a nanosecond!
 Davis and Merchant (2009) discuss how education can benefit from the student's exposure to all this new media, as long as the students have guidelines and understand the nuances of what/who they are interacting with.
This leads me to the most important thing this course has done for me from a personal side of things, that 'knowledge = security'. Having two younger children getting ready to enter cyberspace and having this new knowledge better prepares me for what they are getting into. It allows me to educate them and gives me some piece of mind that I know what is out there.
 I won't be sitting in my room wondering what they are doing, I'll be more involved and not just a passive bystander watching the world leave me behind.
This has been a most rewarding journey, I can't remember willingly spending so much time learning on my own? But that is what happened with this course you were just engulfed with information to test and play. Part of me wanting to implement these new tools in my classes is due to the joy and excitement that I experienced from them.
 That says it all right there, 'do unto others as you would have them do to you!'

Notes:

Davies, J. & Merchant, G. (2009). Web 2.0 for schools.

Richardson, W. (2006). Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other powerful web tools for classrooms.

Ward, J. (2007). RSS feeds: Sweating the really simple stuff. Toxicology Pathology, 35, 846-847.