School Evaluation Summary

By far this was a very revealing artifact. When I started teaching three years ago, I felt that the school was more than adequate when it came to technology being offered. Being that I was technologically inexperienced at the time, I felt that the staff and the students had a good working knowledge of the available system but as I started using the tools offered the only question I had was, how do I use this or what can I do with this even if I did know how to use it? As I began investigating the areas covered in the Maturity Model I started to get the sense that there was a definite knowledge gradient between what technology and tools that were available and that of those who were capable of using it.

The greatest surprise that I found, as I expanded into asking questions to the staff and the students, was how much in common their opinions were. The overall expression towards the school’s technologic capabilities was the appreciation of what they think the system can do but feel limited in personal use due to the lack of in-service or technology support that surrounded them. As I discovered going through all the categories, my school has gone through so many changes to keep up with the times. But the point here is, can a school, having good intentions to solve or update its technological woes, expect to improve staff usage or enhanced learning without giving serious thought to the bigger picture of integrating wide technology support in its long term planning?

Please have a look at my summary of PCC and the survey.

The Use of Blended Learning in Clinical Settings

The NMC Horizon Report: Higher Education Edition, was a task in itself to read, I felt the best thing to do was break it up into parts. As tedious as the report may have appeared I really came away with insight to what has been established and what is potentially to come. My first impression was apparent with my affinity toward the subject of “….Students as Creators” section, being in the medical field I have found that the obvious answer to improving students understanding of fundamental concepts is to incorporate methods such as: collaborative, participatory, project-based, and peer-to-peer learning. BUT, the bigger problem that I feel that needs attention within my department is the lack of blended learning. It may seem like a copout to speak of something so general but how can I want pursue topics such as “social media and students as creators” when I can’t get on “hangout” because its restricted on our schools servers? So, I took Dr. Schroeder idea that was given in the instructions for this assignment and made a prototype presentation to deliver to my director of the respiratory program and the dean of students. The NMC report does offer a great deal of insight to the now, but my take was what am I going to with it for the future?

I have two items to share:

An artifact that analyzes items of blended learning and mixes it with my experiences within the classroom here.

My prototype presentation to hopefully enact Blended Learning within the Respiratory program, here.