(Continued from page 6)
Congratulations to Jan, Lori
and Leslie for presenting
their poster at the 9th annual Nurse Educator Conference at Oklahoma City University Kramer School of
Nursing (KSN)!
They said the Conference was great
and here are some highlights:
1.
Review of many teaching strategies. During the presentation we used
the hands on activities.
2.
Lots of positive feedback on
poster presentation. Presenter encouraged us to continue to move forward
with our strategy.
3.
KSN support decreasing student anxiety through the use of 2 therapy dogs that are present in the classroom and lab settings. The dogs are
turned loose in the classroom and lab
to have on the spot stress reduction as
needed. Students can come to the nursing office and checking out the dogs to
play.
4.
The KSN has a new building
with spacious labs and classroom settings. This is a very student friendly
setting.
Thank you for representing
TCC Nursing so well!
Technology:
From Workshop
to the Classroom
By: Dorothy Minor
Incorporating technology into our teaching is
not always easy or simple.
Technology for its own sake
does not enhance learning.
We need to find the right
technology to engage our students and enhance their
learning. Another component
Dorothy Minor
has to be our own comfort
with using the technology.
For some of us, that may
mean using the blogs and
journals found in Blackboard.
For others, branching out to
incorporate some Web 2.0
tools into our current teaching style, subject matter, and assignments. The technology
should not be an added burden, but should be a tool to augment learning and teaching.
That it can add elements of engagement and even fun should be bonuses. Bob Wise,
president of the Alliance for Excellent Education, reminds us that “digital learning starts
with teachers, whose performance is enhanced by technology—not the other way
around.”
I enjoy scouring the Web for innovative tools to share with students and colleagues. In searching, I keep in mind the goal of locating tools which will be easy to use,
free, and, primarily, enable students to learn. In several recent workshops, I have
shared some tools to aid in teaching and learning.
Last fall and this spring, I have facilitated workshops with new faculty and long
-time faculty, both part-time and full-time. On all those occasions, my objective included
demonstrating Web 2.0 tools that work well in the classroom and that lend themselves
to meaningful assignments. I choose tools that I have used successfully in the classroom and ones that students have shown they can use easily—and that they enjoy incorporating into their work.
In the recent workshops, I have shared JogtheWeb, InstaGrok, Themeefy, Linoit, Wordle, and Glogster*. These Web 2.0 tools are free or have a free component,
sufficient for our use.
Jan Nolen, Leslie Guthrie and Lori Franklin
8
On the home page of JogtheWeb, we learn Jog
the Web “is a Web-based tool that allows anyone to
create a synchronous guide to a series of Web sites.”
What does that description mean in terms of our using it, however? By creating a free account at JogtheWeb, we can collect Web sites on specific topics, add
pages with our own content, and share the link with
others. I created a jog on Tim O’Brien’s “The Things
They Carried,” a short story about soldiers in the Vietnam War. The sites collected include O’Brien’s
home page, history of the Vietnam War, soldiers’ accounts of their experiences in the war, and a reading
guide. I added questions for students. The questions
and readings helped students understand the story