Using Google Tools for Healthcare Education

Inception on February 14, 2005, YouTube has seen an enormous boost in popularity over the last 12 years. At the latest rate measured in 2016, over 300 hours of video is uploaded every minute, 5 Billion videos are watched each day and there is a typical visitor list of 30 million people everyday (YouTube, 2017). While generally geared towards entertainment, the use of creating, uploading and sharing video content with users has been extremely useful for education. The benefits of YouTube's use are evident in numerous bodies of evidence. At-risk nursing students receiving faculty facilitated remediation through YouTube passed their coursework at a rate of 91%, and 80% of the at-risk students passed the higher-standard NCLEX exam on their first attempt (Corrigan-Magaldi, Colalillo & Molloy, 2014). Alternatively, in review of healthcare information posted on YouTube, the vast majority of published information is false or misleading, so diligence must be done to promote information that are correct and validated for the layperson and healthcare learners (Madathil, Rivera-Rodriguez, Greenstein & Gramopadhye, 2014). Urging students and laypersons to ensure sources are validated and evidenced based is important.


 Google Drive as a suite is a powerhouse of collaborative uses. Google Drive encompasses Docs, Slides, Sheets, Forms, Drawing and Google Photos. The combination allows a create suite comparable to Microsoft Office that is available to utilize and share online. The use of Google Drive for education is growing everyday and is becoming primary for many K-12 teaching methods, saving school districts an enormous amount of money. The use of Google Drive in Healthcare education serves to promote critical thinking skills in students when students tackle case studies collaboratively (Rowe, Bozalek & Frantz, 2013). The results of collaboratively working on case studies promoted the students perception and role in their education to a meta-cognitive level, taking initiative in their efforts to learn (Rowe, Bozalek & Frantz, 2013). The use of Drive promotes interaction and communication among students.

Google Scholar has become an immense catalog of search tools. In recent years Google Scholar has enabled the ability for students or learners to create an arsenal of libraries and databases that students have access to. By simply going to settings on your Google Scholar Page a learner can add all databases and libraries that they have access to for the sake of being able to search them all at once.

 
References

Corrigan-Magaldi, M., Colalillo, G., & Molloy, J. (2014). Faculty-facilitated remediation: A model to transform at-risk students. Nurse educator, 39(4), 155-157.

Rowe, M., Bozalek, V., & Frantz, J. (2013). Using Google Drive to facilitate a blended approach to authentic learning. British Journal of Educational Technology, 44(4), 594-606.

Madathil, K. C., Rivera-Rodriguez, A. J., Greenstein, J. S., & Gramopadhye, A. K. (2014). Healthcare information on YouTube: a systematic review. Health informatics journal, 1460458213512220.

 YouTube. (2017). YouTube Statistics. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/yt/press/statistics.html