Topic 3 of 5 of the ongoing and inspiring Open Networked Learning Course. …revolving around learning communities and networks.
This topic hit close to home. My “past” as a student and lifelong learner in anesthesia and critical care was centered around the use of twitter, reading blogs and listening to various podcasts. What I was doing, without knowing, was using and establishing a learning network around the globe with people with similar interests.
In medicine we face the problem of ever growing knowledge and the need to keep up to date. Joe Lex said 2012 on a the International EM Education Efforts & E-Learning conference:
„If you want to know how we practiced medicine 5 years ago, read a textbook. If you want to know how we practiced medicine 2 years ago, read a journal. If you want to know how we practice medicine now, go to a (good) conference. If you want to know how we will practice medicine in the future, listen in the hallways and use FOAM.“
A couple of years prior to this quote, the FOAM-Movement was born. A group of Australian physicians complained (the in a pub in Dublin, as the legend tells it) about the hassles of living down under and being to far away from major conferences to take part. They decided to send “emissaries” to the conferences and provide a flow of information for the people back home via social media. They tweeted, blogged and podcastet. This initiative sparked a global movement, called “FOAM” as in Free Open Access Med(ical Ed)ucation. A medical blogosphere formed itself and provided a constant source of joy and education for myself. I am thankful to be given the opportunity to habe a concept of what I was doing all along.
Sometimes networking can be hard, again…thank you XKCD for another precise observation of my reality
The use of different platforms seems to be a major challenge of establishing learning platforms or networks. The ONL-course started to focus on Twitter with tweet chats and by encouraging the use of Twitter throughout the course.
This awakes memories to the last couple of weeks and topics about openness and digital literacy.
Meta
It becomes more and more obvious to me, that the ONL course itself is a perfect example for the implementation of an open eduction curriculum. We learned to decide on our focal points, decide on common tools and strategies, mitigate workload by collaborating and becoming a team.
Tools we used
Der Beitrag Reflections on Topic 3 – social media and critical care erschien zuerst auf ingmar-finkenzeller.de.