Thursday, March 31, 2016

CheckingOut LinkedIn

For my PLP goal #4 I set up my LinkedIn page and did a little exploring. Since I am in a teaching position where I envision myself staying for years to come, I haven't been too interested in LinkedIn in the past. However, networking is always a good idea and can be used to facilitate endeavors other than employment. I found that LinkedIn can be a great resource for research collaboration, contact with other scholars who have similar interests, follow academic interests or professional groups, contact with past students and professors, etc. It looks like, according to zoomsphere.com at least, higher education is representing a bigger slice of the LinkedIn pie than even information technology!


So I ventured in and set up a profile. I mostly set up my profile by following the prompts. When I got stuck, I turned to YouTube.  Here's the link for a Quick Start video for setting up a basic profile. LinkedIn Tutorial by Anson Alexander  He's a fast talker, but covers a lot of ground!

After some trial and error, this is the profile I came up with: Maryanne Sandberg LinkedIn  I think it still needs some work, but it's a start. 

Of course, I then started thinking about how I could use LinkedIn with students. And this is where it got interesting for me. Lastly, I found the LinkedIn resource site for Higher Ed professionals that gives a video presentations, as well as tip sheets for students, webcasts, tools for alumni, a student job portal, and discussion groups: LinkedIn Higher Education  Here's just one of the videos posted: 






I also found a great blog called Intero advisory that I followed and will be exploring in the future: Teaching LinkedIn in the Classroom and Beyond The blogger presents a compelling argument for educators to encourage students to build their own LinkedIn profiles as a means of establishing and sustaining a growing professional identity and network. The blogger goes on to give links to professors who are leading the way in introducing LinkedIn in the classroom. Of course, as an educator, that means I should be modeling this behavior for my students, so I guess I will be continuing with LinkedIn. 

Maryanne


Saturday, March 19, 2016

You've Peaked my Pinterest...

One of my goals has been to explore the use of Pinterest in nursing education. When I wrote my paper on social media use in nursing education, I was unable to find any articles on the topic for nursing. However, I was able to find articles regarding the use of Pinterest in higher education. I wanted to try building a Pinterest account that faculty and students could add pins to as a central repository for information. Currently, we use our class Facebook page, but this requires scrolling through endless posts to find the study guide someone posted last week. I think that using Pinterest will be fun and provide a more organized framework to collect nursing information. Millennials enjoy collaborative learning activities, which fits in with the community Pinterest account to which both faculty and students can contribute.

Today I was able to find a Prezi that addresses using Pinterest in nursing education: Pinterest Prezi.

I also found an article by Shellenbarger and Robb (2013) that I did not see before. The article, Pinstructive Ideas: Using a Social Networking Bulletin Board for Nursing Education, advocated for the use of Pinterest in nursing education - Just what I was looking for! The authors stressed that Millennials expect interactive, collaborative learning opportunities (Shellenbarger & Robb, 2013). The authors further assert that Pinterest has great potential for creating effective learning environments based on constuctivism as long as educators have a "clear, instructional intent" (Shellenbarger & Robb, 2013, p. 206). Shellenbarger and Robb (2013) provided other resources and advice regarding following social networking policies. Here's a video with helpful information about using Pinterest in education, including the "nuts and bolts":



The authors suggested that faculty create some sample boards, becoming familiar with Pinterest, before opening the account to students. I was pleased that they suggested the plan I devised myself. Here's what I have so far:



I have been building my Nursing Pinterest page for some time. I have 16 boards and over 750 pins to date. Initially, it was under my name, but I wanted to create a community board. Today I did some research and consulted the Pinterest Help Desk to find out how to make it into a community board. I was originally going to email the students invitations, but that would have been time consuming. So, since we already had a Facebook group, I just posted the name of the account (CCGA Nursing) and a brief explanation of the goal for the group Pinterest account and cautions about inappropriate postings. I had to create a new Gmail account so that the students were not using my school email account. So far 15 people have seen the Facebook post, 10 have liked it, and 8 have started following CCGA Nursing. Out of 40 students in the class, I think this is a good response, especially for a Saturday afternoon! I will follow up with an announcement in D2L and in class on Monday. I have also started researching and following others with nursing related Pinterest accounts, including professional organizations, former students, and other nurse educators. Hopefully, they will follow us in return. Of course, I will have to monitor the account for any inappropriate content, but I am hoping not to have many issues with that. I'm excited to see where this takes us!

Here's the link to the live page: www.pinterest.com/sandberg05  

Happy pinning!
Maryanne

Sunday, March 13, 2016

Nearpod for Nursing Education

Next Goal: Research Nearpod Use in Nursing Education

I have been using Nearpod in the classroom for my face-to-face Med/Surg class this semester. The students seem to like the interactivity and the ability to go back and look at it again if I post it as a Homework assignment. I can add PowerPoint slides or create slides directly in Nearpod. Under add content there are buttons for slideshows, videos, audio, Adobe pdf viewer, virtual fieldtrip, and even a live Twitter feed! I like the clean aesthetic and the ability to get immediate feedback with the different activities. Activities include those represented by the icons below.

Once the students complete an activity, the presenter can see their responses. The results are displayed in graphic form, and can be shared with the students if desired. The draw it feature allows students to express themselves in more creative ways and the open ended question can be used to spark discussion. Answers can be anonymous, to encourage shy students to participate. I haven't tried the Twitter feed yet.










It's been a little cumbersome for me, so I wanted to see how else I could adapt it for nursing education. I also wanted to explore any information available for using Nearpod in nursing education or higher education in general. So today I did some searching, and found very little corresponding to nursing education or even higher education. I found this video regarding basic instructions to create a presentation:



Here's a presentation regarding a medical topic, but the ideas could be adapted to nursing:



I really liked the use of the Draw It function to indicate something on a picture. This is similar to some types of alternative questions on NCLEX. 

Finally, I found an article regarding evaluating Nearpod at Dakota State University to study digital distraction in students:  http://www.nearpod.com/page/pdf/research-dakota-web.pdf 

I added the authors to my Twitter feed, but couldn't find any other information regarding their study on Twitter. It will have to be a search for another day. I also want to explore using the live Twitter feed in the classroom and see what that entails.  


All in all, an interesting exploration! 

Maryanne