Day 6 - Review

This course has certainly opened my eyes to the capacity of IT as a learning tool to incorporate in my tertiary teaching activities. As I am a PBL (Problem-based learning) tutor of Yr 1 Med students, I can see the potential of this in my group. The seeds already planted in the past week during our tutorials, I hope may motivate the students into using these tools to help them in their learning. I plan to review these activities with them in the coming weeks. I have introduced to my group the concept of " Dropbox" , an ability for them to share their documents (Learning Objectives research including an Exam Question Bank) from every computer that they log onto. Have a look at the video discussing this online sharing facility https://www.dropbox.com/
This really makes sense when the students have to access their information at university including from home computers. The ease of loading up these documents including during tutorial time can be easily and effectively done in real-time rather than having to do it later, hence saving time and effort.
To my amazement, many of the students that I have spoken to about the course I have just done did not have the skills nor the knowledge of how to create blogs or wikis. Some of them, even the more technologically sound people in the group did not know about wikis. I am surprised because I thought I was a dinosaur in this aspect but I am pleased that many of the younger generation, even though they had grown up with this technology do not seem to know many of the Web 2.0 technology that is available nor know how to use them.
Thank you Matt and UNDA for allowing me this opportunity to spend a week focussing on these skills and the interactive and hands-on , plus positive attitude that encouraged me in wanting to learn more about these IT tools really benefitted me immensely. Thank you too to all the participants, who made the course really enjoyable....knowing there are other academics in similar IT knowledge states is a real comfort that I am not alone in my struggle to learn these new skills!
Hope to keep in touch with some if not all of you at some point via our wikis and blogs. You would have noticed, I have added those who have sent me links to my favourite links. I commend you to check Dianne Chambers link on Borroloola-GP Aboriginal experience . For those who wonder what this is all about, our practice , Inner West General Practice www.iwgp.com.au was involved in supporting an Aboriginal Medical Clinic in a remote centre Borroloola, a town in the Northern Territory of Australia. It is located on the McArthur River, about 50 km upstream from the Gulf of Carpentaria. Dianne was the initiator of this project and many of our doctors including others went to work at that medical clinic. I went up there in July 2009 and found it an extremely rewarding and culturally interesting experience.