What is Deliberate Practice? an Animated Infographic

What works well in healthcare education?

Why use Micro-Blogging for Faculty Development?

The most common uses of the Internet are to collect or receive data or information (Solomon & Schrum, 2014). Along with this common utilization it would only make sense to utilize this tool for the sake of educational purposes. Predated arguments that were critical of the Internet’s use for education have since been superseded and proven against using validated and evidence-based methodologies that are currently considered best practices and prompt learners to construct their own knowledge (Uzunboylu, Bicen, & Cavus, 2011). New tools also lend to providing the learner with the capability of creating content within courses or blogs along with their peers. There is a growing abundance on online educational tools for teachers and learners to profit from. The tool that we have chosen to educate others effectively and provide learner response and collaboration is the Blog. The blog is a dynamic way for people to collaborate and converse over topics, questions and problems. Since the advent of Twitter and social media platforms which were built to share and promote attention to external sources, blogs have become popular ways of both disseminating knowledge and recruiting knowledge as well. The combination of Twitter and Blogging have been coined micro-blogging and have proved to be fruitful in their application and spawning higher-level metacognitive thinking for learners in higher education (Gomez-Sanz, Ortego & Pavón, 2016).

References

Gomez-Sanz, J. J., Ortego, Á., & Pavón, J. (2016). BoloTweet: A Micro-Blogging System for Education. In Methodologies and Intelligent Systems for Technology Enhanced Learning, 6th International Conference (pp. 53-60). Springer International Publishing.

Solomon, G., & Schrum, L. (2014). Web 2.0 how-to for educators. International Society for Technology in Education.

Uzunboylu, H., Bicen, H., & Cavus, N. (2011). The efficient virtual learning environment: A case study of web 2.0 tools and Windows live spaces. Computers & Education, 56(3), 720-726.

Re-Launch of the SiMCentral Blog with a new purpose

The re-launch of the SiMCentral blog will take a new role in being primarily functional and formative to end-users, as opposed to being entirely informative in nature. In order to facilitate an ongoing means of development and growth in methods of instructional design and utilization of simulation, this blog has been reincarnated with a new intention. This is spawn from newly revised Policies and Procedures at SiMCentral which have required training for faculty and educators prior to utilization of facilities and resources, as well as on an ongoing basis. These Policies and Procedures will take effect on September 1, 2017. 3 units of faculty development credit will be required before a new faculty's utilization of resources at SiMCentral. For current users, ongoing development must be recorded at a rate of 1 credit every 6 months for continued use of SiMCentral resources.

On a sporadic basis, this blog will post new topics, questions, surveys and evidence-based research for your review and discussion. In some instances, posts will direct you to other external web resources. Some posts will be accompanied by a summative evaluation which will count as 1 or more units of faculty development credit. Participation through commentary and continued discussions which are supported by scholarly or peer-reviewed sources will also count toward development credit at a rate of 1/2 credit per supported post. Please review and adhere to our guidelines for commentary and discussions on this Blog. As an added convenience to the end-user (you), this blog will be syndicated through a twitter account. As a further convenience, it is recommended to subscribe to SMS notifications to catch all new posts, as they will sporadically be posted on the Blog. For current Twitter subscribers, to enroll in SMS notifications text START to 40404, then simply text FOLLOW @simc_updates to 40404. Once submitted your Twitter account will be following @simc_updates as well as receiving text notification when a new post has been submitted. For users that do not have a Twitter account, you can find simple instructions for creating a Twitter account here:Twitter Set-Up Guide. Once you have created your account, simply follow the text procedures above to enroll in SMS alerts.

At any point you may unsubscribe from text alerts by simply texting OFF @simc_updates to 40404.