Welcome to Week 8, where we will be delving into the world of cloud learning as it specifically relates to education in the medical field. Our OER will look at:
- A brief overview of the cloud
- How the cloud is currently used in the medical field
- How the cloud can support current goals in medical education
- A survey of cloud solutions for the medical field and medical education
Our aim is to immerse you and your team members from Assignment 2 in a cloud environment to solve a problem.
Please join us at http://etec522cloudlearning.weebly.com/ to find out more. Click on the start button to view an introductory video that will explain the site and activities for the week.
Please do not hesitate to ask questions as we go along. We hope you enjoy Week 8!
Riea, Erin, Aaron, Kuljinder, Brendan, Laura
Hi Group 8, great launch. We have a bit of an issue on our group 7 cloud collaboration space. Would the person assigned to monitor that space mind kindly checking in to clarify a few things? Even if signed into Padlet, I am unable to edit, move or rearrange posts (I was careful to sign in when making them so I’d be able to do this, but still can’t). Maybe our email addresses can be added to stop unassigned people from posting unrelated things in our space? We can happily provide this to you if there’s a way do it. Thanks in advance for you assistance!
Hi Bobbi, thanks for pointing out the group 7 issue. It appears your group has found a few of Padlet’s flaws, moving or editing posts that are not your own is not an option unless there is an assigned moderator. I would suggest creating a new wall for your group and assigning one of your members the role of moderator. Once Erin has an opportunity to respond to the issue she could assign one of your members as moderator to the existing wall if do not wish to start over.
http://jn.padlet.com/category/6-posting
http://jn.padlet.com/article/98-can-i-add-a-moderator-on-my-wall
Our apologies about the bumpy start, if you feel that Padlet does not have the functionality necessary to complete the activity let us know.
Hello Bobbi,
I checked out the padlet page, and unfortunately, I do not have access to give anyone more powers (one of my peers might, I am waiting to hear back)…. so for now, I see your group is utilizing a google doc (if I can participate that would be great, perhaps you can send me the link privately?)….
I am not sure who posted that comment, but if they are in the group, I guess we are all entitled to our interpretation which is good, but I suggested via the padlet forum that discussion remain on topic moving forward. I appreciate you raising concern in regards to padlet, I think it is interesting for this task the arrangement or perhaps lack of structure that padlet provides has proven to be a significant challenge.
Thanks,
E.
No worries. Thanks, one of the first things we noticed is that we can’t edit comments (not even our own), we can’t have a proper threaded discussion, can’t move/resize posts that are overlapping, and we didn’t realize that everything we posted was wide open for the world to see (and now unchangeable). Some are a bit uncomfortable at being forced into the public sphere without a bit of prior warning. We did try making a new (private wall) with both administrator and editor roles so we could have some of these collaboration features, but really the key missing element for us is the lack of ability to make a table, or any one place in which more than one person can edit/contribute to the same block of text. For this reason we don’t feel we can adequately complete the assignment on Padlet because it’s lacking basic productivity features. It’s more like sticky-notes in some ways. We can likely still give a great review of it though, and continue to use it to post check-ins on our progress.
Was the intention to have the groups completely open and public so that anyone could see each groups comments and progress? Also, is anyone from any group supposed to be able to contribute? Just wondering if we’re supposed to be making our doc completely public (editible by all/anyone like the Padlet was) or just members of group 7? Let us know how we can safely add your email address (maybe you can put it in a non-public draft post temporarily so we can add you?)
Thanks in advance for the clarification!
Hi Bobbi,
The intention was to have the groups completely open and public so that anyone can view the groups comments and progress. As for contributions group members should stick to editing their week’s space and not other groups. Again our apologies for the bumpy start. You are welcome to ditch padlet and work in that google doc that you have posted a link to I can update the site to just go straight to that. Just let me know if that is okay…
Laura
Yes, no worries at all that is completely good with us. Sorry we added complications to the launch! We’ve opened our Google doc to be viewable by anyone, and editable only by the members of our group. Erin, if you’d like to be added to it also so you can check in and type let me know, I’ll just need your email address to do this. : )
Thanks again!
That sounds great. I have edited the site so you can quickly go to either the Padlet or the Google Doc. Just let us know if your group has any other questions, we appreciate your feedback so far. We had originally designed the week to have all groups working in Google Docs but then decided to incorporate different cloud environments to generate discussion and a new experience. Your feedback has helped us fine tune the activity and we appreciate your patience.
Your framework looks fantastic so far!
Hey Bobbi,
Thanks, I have sent you an email via connect with my email address. I did see the google doc and it looks quite elaborate and amazing – kudos to your group! The resources that your group has pooled and the detail is impressive.
Hi Erin, I received the email and you’re now added. Thanks again! 🙂
Hello W8 Group.
Thanks for your well done Weebly website with its clear graphic and video content support delivery, definitely it was a good choice for hosting your forecast. For the sake of mutual learning, I would critically mark and review some points in your forecast and its topic coverage that I feel may have been better researched and addressed. You somehow particularly missed the opportunity to provide some good and relevant content to readers to teach them about the cloud learning solutions in the main fields to cater to a wider audience and knowledge levels. Pointing to the Week 5 group and their basic definition and coverage of Cloud learning was not perfect idea, because they covered it for the needs of explaining the cloud APPS, so the outside readers and potential NMH readers will not be able to access and connect to that. Also, you might have provided definition of Cloud learning and its current state in the main learning fields, then cover your chosen medical field bells and whistles. Furthermore, the choice of Padlet was not perfect, because it simply did not work well for the groups as a collaboration tool, and was not an optimal solution for live collaboration and productivity, it is more suitable as a simple real-time F2F feedback wall. All our group posts were immediately public, although they were not supposed to, which was a potential privacy concern. You could have simply chosen proven collaboration/productivity solution such as Google docs and it would be good enough for every group collaboration tasks. Medical filed is quite complex and in constant growth in North America, and you bravely tried to cover the most important aspects and cloud learning tools and solutions, which naturally caused the stretch of your horizon from addressing the sensitive medical care and institution data storage and retrieval solutions, as well as ongoing professional development and lifelong learning solutions, resulting in quite wide and generic opportunity forecasts relative to your chosen filed. All in all, it is appreciated that your group put lots of time and energy in the research, curation and compiling of your project, so thank you for the opportunity to learn more about the Cloud learning solutions, problems and forecasts in medical field. I hope that this critical feedback will help all of us to develop more critical thought and sensitivity when analyzing and forecasting venturing in complex technology environments.
Hi!
I was at a EdTech conference in Atlanta all last week and I’m just getting on today. I apologize for the late interaction with your week.
Kendra
Thank you for your candid remarks. We do appreciate the feedback. We will post a synthesis and reflection of the week tomorrow once every group has had a chance to post their final assessment tools and respond to the survey. In the meantime, I’d like to point out that we took the following instructions to heart while designing our OER:
Detailed A2 instructions: 1. The objective is not to provide a generalized overview of a big topic, it is to create a concentrated, highly-valuable opportunity forecast for a leading edge of that topic.
Best Regards,
Aaron
I just wanted to write a little wrap up for the week 7 group: your assessment tools were well developed, critical, and comprehensive. I think that if everyone has the opportunity to view your efforts, they will learn something new. Your group had great collaborative efforts and discussion to work through the problem. I admit, the medical field is not my background either, but it certainly demands that we think not only as a client or patient but also as the investor (government, institution). It also demands that we really analyze those questions that borderline within the ethical realm.
I appreciate your feedback and participation, it was a great learning opportunity for me.
Thanks,
Erin
I thought the activities we very creative in using our existing groups to collaborate on a hypothetical scenario. I like the variety of cloud-based platforms that you employed to have us interact with (although I would be interested in the results of the survey which would make me more inclined to see if there was another platform I’d be interested in using.) I agree with Courtney who was in my group that we did not run into the same problems as other groups, however I did observe a couple challenges:
1) I don’t think we maximized the potential of our Google Doc experience as it had the capability of synchronous chat, among other features
2) Using the comments feature to help date and organize our comments might help in reducing the potential amount of pages worth of conversation and information (although the coloured text definitely helps)
3) Scheduling a specific meeting time(s) would have helped with the quality of the final product
Overall it was a benefical experience
Dear week 8 Group, Thank you for providing us an insight on cloud learning. Your weebly was very well organized and well thought out. For the group activity, we were a little confused at the beginning. Later Kendra who was our spokes person explained & clarified. I feel if you could have given detailed information or may be a sample that would be more beneficial. Overall great work!!
Hello Week 8 Group.
Overall, I thought your OER was well done, but I do feel that there was a bit of disconnect in the overall flow of the presentation. The OER started off really well; the introduction was well laid-out, the introductory video was extremely well-done, and the rationale behind the choice of topic was thorough and well-elaborated. The visuals also added a nice touch to this area. However, similar to Colleen, I thought that the video by Sugata Mitra, while useful, was a bit off-topic. It also seemed like the site was too static initially; activities could have been integrated earlier to avoid information overload, and it probably would have added to your presentation to have had a description/overview of the various cloud applications that were used in the activity. That being said, I do think it was interesting that you were able to integrate the use of a number of apps into your OER, and the survey at the end was easy to use.
Thank you to everyone for your helpful feedback, we really appreciate you taking the time to offer us such sound advice. We are integrating your suggestions prior to submission and are grateful for the opportunity to incorporate the feedback.