Archives for the Month of March 2008 on Srimana Niyomkar's Online Journal
Research in Second life
The other day I went to the medical simulation center to observe the research using Second life in part. The PI compared three different activities of students in a simulation clinic: (1) An interview between medical students and standardized patients. (2) An interview between medical students and a puppet standardized patient. (3) An interview between medical students and standardized patients’ avatars in Second life. For the second and third activities, the students did not see the real patients face to face. The puppet and avatars in second life are amazing! In my opinion, the puppet is better than avatars in second life since it can move its mouth and limbs including showing its emotions under the control of the patient actor who controls the tablet connected with a computer. Although the avatars in second life cannot move their mouths, they are free to use. There is not much investment in second life compared with puppets. Moreover, we can arrange instruments and atmosphere as a real situation in both second life and the place where the students took the interviewing test. These help the students feel like they are in a real clinic. I hope someday my nursing students will have this practice with interviewing and physical examination of virtual patients before they interview real patients .
By the way, I was very impressed what all staff at the medical simulation center and ITAC did. They were very active and willing to help the researcher conduct her research.
Second life
Who is going to believe???????
I have my Avatar. I send the picture of my Avatar to Kung, my friend. She has not believed that I did it by myself……e’e’e……….I will not tell her that it is not that difficult. Let she think that I am so smart especially in computer technology.
Now I am installing second life application into my computer. Probably something is wrong since it has been being downloaded since 20 minutes ago, and I got only 40% !!! No problem, today I have plenty of time. We will see what happened when it is done.
My Avatar went to newee (not sure) island first. This island helped me learn how to move the Avatar by using page up, page down buttons and cursors, communicate (talk or write down messages), search, and change my appearance. Later on I moved to help island. Everything in this island is free. It was called freebie (I was thinking of Frisbee, a game that I first play when I came here a year ago; it was fun though). So I changed my clothes here from a Japanese girl to an American girl. I like blond hair, so now I am a good looking girl with blond hair and long legs (never be real). I also had wings like an angel. However, wings are not necessary since I can fly without wings. Eventually I am ready to fly to the main island, Clevelandplus. See you tomorrow.
One hour has gone. My computer has been downloading the application.
Blackboard
Wow!!! I have my own course on Blackboard.
There are three students in my class, Genevieve, Mridu, and Kung. We all had interactive participation in the class. I used most tools such as course tool – assignment, announcement, course document, course information -, communication and collaboration tools - chat, virtual class room, blog, discussion board -, assessment tools - test, survey, grade book -, and user management. Blackboard is also allow instructors to record their virtual classrooms.
I want to say that Blackboard is user-friendly software. It allows instructors to put course materials, links, and quizzes onto the World Wide Web without knowing HTML. All its easy handle tools will definitely encourage my college, who are unknowledgeable about computer technology, can create our online courses willingly, and enjoy to use it.
However, I found that it need a huge money to invest with this system.
According to
Blackboard executives, costs for their network environment products, including Blackboard Learning
System, may start low but as subscribers integrate more functions into Blackboard, subscription
licenses may be $200,000 to $400,000-a-year(Bradford, porciello, Balcon, & Backus, 2007).
Although it provides powerful and easy to use systems for educational instruction, communication, and assessment, I do not think that my school can afford this burden. Looking for open sources probably be the best solution.
Course management systems that I have known are Blackboard, ecollege, CourseInfo. Other open source systems are , for instances, Moodle, and Atutor.
What is blackboard? Here is answer. Anyway, the article form Bradford, porciello, Balcon, & Backus (2007) give me more information about Blackboard.
* Course management systems (sometimes called courseware) are web-based software program that provide online versions of class rosters, course outlines, assignments, discussions, quizzes, and grade books.
First meeting (copy)
I do not know what happened, but I could not find my first copy is. It is not shown!! So this in a duplicated one.
• Overview of the School of Nursing, Chiangmai University, Chiangmai, Thailand.
The School of Nursing is a large organization consisting of 164 full-time faculty members, and 130 full-time academic support staff. The school is divided into eight departments, and there are 1,300 students, both undergraduate and graduate, studying in three national undergraduate programs, 11 national graduate programs and in one international program each for undergraduate, masters and doctoral degrees. The school is under the control of the Ministry of Education, so it is high on formalization.
The school has a Computer Service Center available for students and faculty members, which offers word-processing and on-line facilities, research programs, and training to ensure up-to-date competence in all computer-based applications. The Center, which is composed of four IT staff, is responsible for maintaining the computers throughout the faculty, and is connected to the main University network for research and communications. About 163 computers in computer laboratories are provided to students. Every computer has been connected each other via LAN.
The website of the school is http://www.nurse.cmu.ac.th/webeng/index.html
• Today I have learned about Blog. In the past I just knew the definition of it, but now I am going to use it. That would be great!
• What does this following address tell us? http://www.nurse.cmu.ac.th/plan/webthai/en/index.asp
1. index htm tells about homepage.
2. en is a file in folder named webthai.
3. webthai is a folder in folder named plan.
• I am going to figure out what kind of methods that the school has used to make online course. How do they deliver their curriculum? How do they transfer web files to a server? However there are several means to transfer:
1. Using code: only programmers could do that.
2. Using some software such as Dream weaver, Front page, Golive, Flash
3. Portal/ Form to fill out: fill your contents in a template.
4. Enterprise system: it is like blackboard.
I found out that the school use ATutor to deliver online course. ATutor is an open source web-based learning content mamagement system (LCMS) designed with accessibility and adaptability in mind. Is it some types of portal/form to fill out?
CAI is a Computer Assisted Instrction. It is an offline, not online.