125 Days Until Hell
After staring at a hideous, orange piece of paper for enough weeks you finally take it upon yourself to do something about that hideous, orange piece of paper. What's my hideous, orange piece of paper all about you ask? Scheduling my exam date for Step 1 of the United States Medical Licensing Exam (USMLE). That hideous, orange piece of paper has been sitting on or near my desk for about 4 weeks now. The idea was: if I ignored that piece of paper long enough, maybe I could devise an ingenous plan... the culmination of that plan being a way out of taking Step 1. As it turns out, Step 1 is sort of an important requirement. Something about ensuring all future medical professionals know the difference between a Bartholin cyst and a Nabothian cyst blahblahblahblah. Whatever. It's done and now I have 125 days until the test that will ultimately determine whether I get a residency I want. The more subtle (and much more dire) part of that equation is that i have about 90 days until I have to be serious in my preparation for Step 1. Enough medical talk. Or maybe we should have some more medical talk...
I was fortunate enough to attend an interesting meeting today with several members of my school's administration and our IT people. I've always been interested in education methods whether they were my own, my colleagues, my siblings', or simply educational theory in general. Today's meeting covered bringing our medical school curriculum into the 21st century with the aid of podcasting, wireless PDAs, and tablet PCs. My greatest gripe: Apple had several prime seats at this alleged roundtable. Now I don't have anything particuarly against the Apple Corporation. In fact, my fiancee has a 12" iBook that I 'borrow' rather regularly. But I have a problem when Apple tries to interject themselves into an open discussion on the use of technology in (and out) of the classroom, especially when it comes to the topic of audio/visual learning modalities. I have a hard time believing anyone who has their fist thrust deeply into the proprietary filetype honeypot (as Apple does with their AAC audio format and the ironic Windows-like domination of iTunes over the digital music world) could truly have the greater good of education at the forefront of their mind. But I digress (mostly I rant, but I'll label this as a digression).
We began with discussing the recent shift from streaming-only to 'podcasting' of the Anatomy Saturday reviews. Last year the 4 hour long (and often longer) reviews were recorded and then posted on to the Blackboard site so that students could review it at their leisure. Due to all sorts of logistical nightmares they couldn't support podcasting of these reviews... until recently. Several M1s were present who told of a mythical land where one could download these files and then watch them on their video iPods during their daily bus or L commute. For a moment I thought I was attending a private school. It was that exciting. After a debate on whether this should be approached across the curriculum it was decided to start with 'content reviews' and then slowly move toward systematic recording and podcasting of every lecture. The main obstacle to all of this is lecturer concern over presenting copyrighted photographs during their lectures. The obvious way around this would be to allow access to the podcasts through a university ID & password protected site (say... like... maybe... Blackboard?!??!?!!!?). Then the professors were concerned that their no-good students might decide to share these files with the world. Fortunately one of our deans pointed out that maybe our main concern shouldn't be whether or not the students were going to distribute these files worldwide (I can't tell you the number of times each day I get a request from Norway for one of our Pharmacology lecture mp3s) but whether providing the students with this service would a) improve their ability to learn the information presented, b) foster a better relationship between the administration and the student body, and c) challenge the faculty to present the highest quality lectures (since it may be available to a scrutinizing world wide audience).
It seems like anything that's offered up for podcasting is going to be available through iTunes U which is Apple's new education and university specific portal they've been working on with Duke, Standford, and Michigan. And they're not going to be utilizing and DRMs and everything should be available in formats that are non-proprietary. I can live with all of that. Steve Jobs you have my blessing (like you needed it).
Two of the best ideas that I heard today involved the clinical curriculum. The course director of our Essentials of Clinical Procedures and Professionalism wants to podcast video demonstrations of all the core procedures that M3s and M4s need to perform. Again this was presented as quick review before you have to perform it on a patient, not as first-time learning. These files could then be played back on a video iPod or capable PDA. That's pretty exciting in my mind. I always felt I would be much better at doing a one-off blood draw if I could quickly review the procedure before I had to do it. He's also looking to do something similar for his OB/GYN interns and the rarer procedures they're called on to perform. Another course director is talking about podcasting an entire fourth year elective course in medical safety, almost in the same vein as many of the Continuing Medical Education courses currently be offered. The best part is that they're being designed in an interactive fashion: after several minutes of video a question is asked and based on the student's response you're taken down one path or another. It's the Choose Your Own Adventure of medical education. Maybe I'm just geeking out here as someone who is both a student and a teacher, but I know that anytime you can make learning more interactive, you have a much stronger guarantee of the student retaining that knowledge.
I think that's about everything. The head IT person for the college of medicine and I had a nice chat about requiring laptops (instead of either a desktop OR a laptop). I think it would be the smart direction to move things especially considering that almost the entire college supports wireless and the amount of versatility that a tablet PC gives you. Unfortunately, the administration doesn't see it that way and they also want to mandate that if you want full school support for your laptop (if it was to be required) that you'd have to purchase one of three brands (Apple, Dell, Toshiba, etc). I don't think that's too horrible of a proposition. First of all, we can get any computer purchase covered by financial aid loans as an academic expense (when you're looking at $160,000 in debt what's $2Gs more?). Secondly, the vast majority of my class uses a laptop anyway. I imagine that percentage only growing as the years wear on. They could even hold several sessions during the fall M1 semester with the goal to show students how to get the most out of their 'academic expenses'. Oh well, it's a public school and change happens slowly. I'm almost willing to put money on that mandate being in place by 2010. Almost.
I was fortunate enough to attend an interesting meeting today with several members of my school's administration and our IT people. I've always been interested in education methods whether they were my own, my colleagues, my siblings', or simply educational theory in general. Today's meeting covered bringing our medical school curriculum into the 21st century with the aid of podcasting, wireless PDAs, and tablet PCs. My greatest gripe: Apple had several prime seats at this alleged roundtable. Now I don't have anything particuarly against the Apple Corporation. In fact, my fiancee has a 12" iBook that I 'borrow' rather regularly. But I have a problem when Apple tries to interject themselves into an open discussion on the use of technology in (and out) of the classroom, especially when it comes to the topic of audio/visual learning modalities. I have a hard time believing anyone who has their fist thrust deeply into the proprietary filetype honeypot (as Apple does with their AAC audio format and the ironic Windows-like domination of iTunes over the digital music world) could truly have the greater good of education at the forefront of their mind. But I digress (mostly I rant, but I'll label this as a digression).
We began with discussing the recent shift from streaming-only to 'podcasting' of the Anatomy Saturday reviews. Last year the 4 hour long (and often longer) reviews were recorded and then posted on to the Blackboard site so that students could review it at their leisure. Due to all sorts of logistical nightmares they couldn't support podcasting of these reviews... until recently. Several M1s were present who told of a mythical land where one could download these files and then watch them on their video iPods during their daily bus or L commute. For a moment I thought I was attending a private school. It was that exciting. After a debate on whether this should be approached across the curriculum it was decided to start with 'content reviews' and then slowly move toward systematic recording and podcasting of every lecture. The main obstacle to all of this is lecturer concern over presenting copyrighted photographs during their lectures. The obvious way around this would be to allow access to the podcasts through a university ID & password protected site (say... like... maybe... Blackboard?!??!?!!!?). Then the professors were concerned that their no-good students might decide to share these files with the world. Fortunately one of our deans pointed out that maybe our main concern shouldn't be whether or not the students were going to distribute these files worldwide (I can't tell you the number of times each day I get a request from Norway for one of our Pharmacology lecture mp3s) but whether providing the students with this service would a) improve their ability to learn the information presented, b) foster a better relationship between the administration and the student body, and c) challenge the faculty to present the highest quality lectures (since it may be available to a scrutinizing world wide audience).
It seems like anything that's offered up for podcasting is going to be available through iTunes U which is Apple's new education and university specific portal they've been working on with Duke, Standford, and Michigan. And they're not going to be utilizing and DRMs and everything should be available in formats that are non-proprietary. I can live with all of that. Steve Jobs you have my blessing (like you needed it).
Two of the best ideas that I heard today involved the clinical curriculum. The course director of our Essentials of Clinical Procedures and Professionalism wants to podcast video demonstrations of all the core procedures that M3s and M4s need to perform. Again this was presented as quick review before you have to perform it on a patient, not as first-time learning. These files could then be played back on a video iPod or capable PDA. That's pretty exciting in my mind. I always felt I would be much better at doing a one-off blood draw if I could quickly review the procedure before I had to do it. He's also looking to do something similar for his OB/GYN interns and the rarer procedures they're called on to perform. Another course director is talking about podcasting an entire fourth year elective course in medical safety, almost in the same vein as many of the Continuing Medical Education courses currently be offered. The best part is that they're being designed in an interactive fashion: after several minutes of video a question is asked and based on the student's response you're taken down one path or another. It's the Choose Your Own Adventure of medical education. Maybe I'm just geeking out here as someone who is both a student and a teacher, but I know that anytime you can make learning more interactive, you have a much stronger guarantee of the student retaining that knowledge.
I think that's about everything. The head IT person for the college of medicine and I had a nice chat about requiring laptops (instead of either a desktop OR a laptop). I think it would be the smart direction to move things especially considering that almost the entire college supports wireless and the amount of versatility that a tablet PC gives you. Unfortunately, the administration doesn't see it that way and they also want to mandate that if you want full school support for your laptop (if it was to be required) that you'd have to purchase one of three brands (Apple, Dell, Toshiba, etc). I don't think that's too horrible of a proposition. First of all, we can get any computer purchase covered by financial aid loans as an academic expense (when you're looking at $160,000 in debt what's $2Gs more?). Secondly, the vast majority of my class uses a laptop anyway. I imagine that percentage only growing as the years wear on. They could even hold several sessions during the fall M1 semester with the goal to show students how to get the most out of their 'academic expenses'. Oh well, it's a public school and change happens slowly. I'm almost willing to put money on that mandate being in place by 2010. Almost.
posted by Matt at 6:25 PM
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