100 Serious Twitter Tips for Academics

The above is the title of a blog post from BestCollegesOnline.com. Academics who recognise the increasing popularity of Twitter can find new and exciting ways to incorporate Twitter into the interactive learning activities from the short summaries posted in this blog.

http://www.bestcollegesonline.com/blog/2009/07/21/100-serious-twitter-tips-for-academics/

A lunchtime learning resources dept workshop on Twitter is scheduled 3 weeks from today. It will be open to academic staff and students.

This is a good place to get yourself prepared for the workshop.

Reference Management Software and Social Bookmarking

Reference management software, citation management software or personal bibliographic management software is software for scholars and authors to use for recording and utilising bibliographic citations (references). Once a citation has been recorded, it can be used time and again in generating bibliographies, such as lists of references in scholarly books, articles and essays. The development of reference management packages has been driven by the rapid expansion of scientific literature. Read more at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reference_management_software

A comparison of reference management software is available at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_reference_management_software

Social bookmarking (on the other hand) is a method for Internet users to store, organize, search, and manage bookmarks of web pages on the Internet with the help of metadata, typically in the form of tags that collectively and/or collaboratively become a folksonomy. Folksonomy is also called social tagging, “the process by which many users add metadata in the form of keywords to shared content”. Read more at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_bookmarking

Nelson Essentials of Pediatrics

Nelson Essentials of Pediatrics. Klieman, Marcdante, Jenson, Behrman. Elsevier Saunder. 5e. 2006.

Useful book for medical students and junior paediatric doctors. Focuses on normal growth and development and on the diagnosis, management and prevention of common childhood diseases and disorders. Purchase of the book entitles the buyer to the complete text and illustrations from the book online at http://www.studentconsult.com. Allows content clipping to PDAs. Also provides buyer one year access to http://www.nelsonpediatrics.com, the online version of Nelson Textbook of Pediatrics.

The book covers the core curriculum of the medical school pediatric clerkship.

Good layout. Could use more illustrations and radiological images. Otherwise a very useful textbook for medical students. An alternative to Lissauer and Clayden’s Illustrated Textbook of Paediatrics.

the Rice mother by Rani Manicka

Set in Malaya during the World War II, this story traces the life of a matriarch and the struggles she faces in raising her family. The narrative voice alters between the men and women of this amazing tale. The reader will come across myths that are cleverly woven into the story and enjoy the imagery that it evokes.
A good read for students who want some insight into the history of Malaya and the unheard stories. It also captures the strength of an individual in the face of adversary and introduces us to understanding various perspectives of a situation.

Health Education Assets Library (HEAL)

Looking for health education materials. A good resource is the Health Education Assets Library (HEAL), a digital library of multimedia teaching resources for the health sciences. It provides access to thousands of images, videoclips, animations, presentations, and audio files that support healthcare education. The HEAL library contains two types of educational resources: the HEAL Reviewed Collection and Affiliate Collections.

http://www.healcentral.org/services/servicesCollectionsList.jsp

For a start, you may wish to visit:

‘http://www.healcentral.org/healapp/browse

How to Make a Concept Map

Concept Maps are useful tools for presenting or visualising knowledge. They can be used to present a concise overview, to assess student understanding and to formalise knowledge.  Useful information on concept maps may be found in the following links:

http://www.informationtamers.com/WikIT/index.php?title=How_to_make_a_concept_maphttp://www.informationtamers.com/WikIT/index.php?title=Concept_maps_or_mind_maps%3F_the_choicehttp://www.informationtamers.com/WikIT/index.php?title=Information_map_typeshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concept_maphttp://cmc.ihmc.us/cmc2006Papers/cmc2006-p247.pdfhttp://cmap.ihmc.us/Publications/ResearchPapers/TheoryCmaps/TheoryUnderlyingConceptMaps.htm

If you intend to make your own concept maps or ask your students to do so, appropriate sofware can be downloaded from:

http://cmap.ihmc.us/conceptmap.html

A list of research papers related to concept mapping can be found at http://cmap.ihmc.us/Publications/

ABC of Learning and Teaching in Medicine

ABC of Learning and Teaching in Medicine. Ed. Peter Cantillon, Linda Hutchinson & Diana Wood. BMJ Books. 2003.

A compact well-laid out book covering all the major aspects of learning and teaching in medicine.  Separate chapters cover:

applying educational theory in practic
curriculum design
problem based learning
evaluation
teaching large groups
teaching small groups
one to one teaching and feedback
learning and teaching in the clinical environment
written assessment
skill based assessment
work based assessment
educational environment
web based learning
creating teaching materials
Explanatory charts, diagrams, tables and colour images add to the easy readability of the book.

Highly recommended for academic staff.

Health Risk Appraisal.

http://www.diseaseriskindex.harvard.edu/update/english/

The website above is the Harvard Disease Risk Appraisal site. Here you can find out your risk of developing five of the most important diseases (cancer, diabetes, heart disease, osteoporosis and stroke) and get personalized tips for preventing them. With cancer, it is necessary to evaluate your risk separately for each common cancer site.

The supporting evidence that makes up your risk and the interventions that would help you reduce such risk are clearly spelled out.

You may also like to download “The Assessment and Management of Cardiovascular Risk ” (2003) by the New Zealand Guidelines Group (NZGG) from
http://www.nzgg.org.nz/guidelines/0035/CVD_Risk_Full.pdf

This is also available in interactive format from
http://clinicalevidence.bmj.com/ceweb/resources/estimating_risk.jsp

State of e-Learning in Canada. May 2009

The Canadian Council on  Learning released its report on the state of e-Learning in Canada. The report can be obtained from
http://www.ccl-cca.ca/CCL/Newsroom/Releases/20090514E-Learning.htm

The report points out that e-learning shows great promise to improve Canada’s economic competitiveness and prepare Canadians for the demands of the 21st century and act as a fundamental tool for fostering a lifelong learning society. However, several issues are constraining the country’s ability to take full advantage of e-learning’s potential.

Advanced Critical Care Nursing

Advanced Critical Care Nursing. Ed. Karen K Carlson. American Association of Critical Care Nurses. Saunders. 2009.

Very well designed book on critical care nursing that medical students and medical officers would also find interesting.  Well illustrated in colour. Multiple and useful tables.

Strong on pharmacological aspects of critical care management. Supported by evidence-based annotations, case studies and research utilisation boxes.  Well referenced.

Highly recommended.