Thursday, September 29, 2011

Learning is a social activity.

By Helena Filipe

Twitter is a free social network consisting of a microblog allowing users to send and receive short (140 characters, maximum) messages designated as tweets.

The concept can be visualized as a flock of birds flying in the same direction, following a common interest or purpose. This can be brought to the context of ophthalmic education.

Suppose an ophthalmic subspecialty expert posting (tweeting) an innovative idea or concept clearly grounded on solid scientific medical evidence. Imagine that this scientific foundation relies on a recent scientific publication present in PubMed and the tweet contains its link.
The explained model is what Prof. Bertil Damato proposes in his Bertil Damato@eyemelanoma : Click here to view the page

A statement solidly grounded in a scientific article identified by its link in PubMed is an elegant invitation to learn and be current with the latest content, in this case on melanoma.
The educator is graciously sharing, facilitating updated knowledge coming from an unquestionable reliable source (both the person and the supportive didactic resource) to all of those interested in the topic. Prof. Damato´s tweets main aim is at his fellow’s medical education.

Certainly this methodology can be used in other ophthalmic subspecialties and applied to different levels of learning including continuous medical education/ continuous professional development (CME/CPD).
We will be leveraging previous online educators and learners skills and collaborative CME/CPD. Learning will be time and place independent and focused on following worldwide renowned experts in each one´s own specific ophthalmic field of interest. As a blogging activity it promotes reflection and interaction.

There is good explanation about the Twitter´s general concept as there are also directions on how to create a Twitter account in clicking here

The idea is to follow key thinkers in one´s own field of expertise and/or be followed as one ophthalmic expert. Receiving and sending tweets: small, concise and complete pieces of content scientifically grounded will present a window to collaboratively build ophthalmic knowledge learning from the best.
Learning can be seriously fun!