Learning anywhere: Podcasts to the rescue.

by Dr. Eduardo Mayorga

There are many situations in which you might have the feeling you are wasting your time, but at the same time you can't avoid them, such as when you're standing in a line, commuting to work by car or on public transportation, at the doctor's waiting room, at airports. There are also times where even if you do not feel you're wasting your time, as when you jog, workout or ride your bike, you might feel guilty because you have a lot of topics you need or want to update on, but still, you are using this time to exercise.

In all these situations, podcasts can help. If you are not familiar with podcasts you may want to watch the following video.

There are many programs that you can use to search for and organize your podcasts. As mentioned in the video, the one I like best is Itunes.  If you don't have it already installed in you computer, you may download it clicking here.

Open Itunes. At the top click on "Podcasts"

At the top right search box type "ophthalmology"

Then, at the left menu, click on "Podcasts" again

You will be presented with a number of podcasts on ophthalmology.

If you click on the number of the podcast you will start listening to it. If you click on the third column,  "Podcast", you will be taken to the page of the podcast's author.

One of my favorites is Dr. Joshua Young's "As seen from here". Joshua is a great interviewer. He makes the practical questions you would like to do.

When you get to the author's page, on the left, you will get the opportunity to subscribe to the author's podcasts. 

If you do so, the most recent podcast will download and from then on, every time a new podcast is published, it will download to you computer. From there you will be able to copy it to any mobile device. Mobile devices with internet connection will many times allow you to download podcasts directly to your device.

If you know of any good ophthalmology podcasts, please use the comment form to let us know about them.   

Finding images to enhance your presentations

by Dr. Eduardo Mayorga



The brain has 2 kinds of memory: a long term memory where what we know is stored and a short term memory.

When we learn, information enters through visual and phonetic areas into the working area where it´s processed, related to previous knowledge and finally stored to long term memory.

There is a continuos enconding and retrival proccess going on all time, between working memory and long term memory.

Working memory has a very small capacity, it can only hold from 5 to 9 pieces of information at a time.

Working memory has also 2 substorage areas, one for visual information amd one for phonetic information. One way to strech working memory is to use both storage areas.

The practical application of this theory is that when making presentations you should use visuals (images, animations, videos) to facilitate the understanding, processing and final storage of the facts or concepts you want to transmit to the audience.

Most of us use PowerPoint to present and usually add text to the slides. Eventhough, limited short bulleted content can be of some help to learning, text goes into the memory using the phonetic channel so soon your speech and text on the slide overload the phonetic channel, but your visual channel is not fully used.

Every time we finish preparing a slide we should ask to ourselves at least 2 questions:

1) Which words in the text could be replaced or enhanced by a image.

2) What part of what I will be saying, can be enhanced with an image.

These questions will probably bring to your mind many images. So: How can we get the images we need?

Today it´s very easy to find images on the web using Google. The problem is we are usually not allowed to use these images without the permission of the author.

Following is a list of places where you can get images. Some free and some paid. (Many very inexpensive)
This list was originally posted by David Anderson at the "E-learning Heroes" blog.

Most popular stock image sites

• Clipart.com
• Fotolia
• istockphoto
• Microsoft Office Online
• Photos.com
• Shutterstock
• Thinkstock

Free stock image sites:

• 4FreePhotos
• Caricature King
• Dreamstime
• Every Stock Photo
• Flickr Commons
• Free Digital Photos
• Free Historical Stock Photos
• Free Photos Bank
• Free Vector
• FreeFoto
• FreeRange
• Image Base
• Imageafter
• Kavewall.com
• Nations Illustrated
• Openphoto
• Photogen
• Picapp
• Pixel Perfect Digital
• Pixmac
• Public Domain Pictures.net
• Public-Domain Photos.com
• stock.xchng
• Stockvault
• Toasto
• Turbo Photo
• Unprofound
• Vector Art
• Wikimedia Commons

Pay-per-image, bundle or subscription:

• 123RF
• Animation Factory
• Big Stock Photo
• Clipart.com
• crestock.com
• Cutcaster
• eLearning Art
• Fotolia
• Depositphotos
• fotosearch
• Getty Images
• Graphic River
• iClipArt
• istockphoto
• Kavewall.com
• Morguefile
• Narrator Files
• Photos.com
• Pixmac
• Presenter Media
• shutterstock
• Thinkstock
• TrellisCreative
• Turbo Photo
• Vector Art

Working together on Microsoft documents: PowerPoint, Excel, Word.

by Eduardo Mayorga

On previous posts we have commented on ways of sharing documents on the web using Google Docs. This is convenient for many things but, on occasions, you may want to work on a Microsoft document such as PowerPoint, Word or Excel and at the same time have others edit it from distant places.
Google has now come up with a way of doing this. All you have to do is download  "Google Cloud" from http://tools.google.com/dlpage/cloudconnect

Google Cloud will install as an add-on in your Microsoft programs, allowing you to share and synchronize with others, the documents you want to share.

Webstreaming – The Classroom in your Living Room!

Dr. Anthony Vipin

(Note of the editor: In this post Dr. Vipin explains how L V Prasad Eye Institute shares its morning lectures with the world. There are many tools to share live lectures over the Internet. We have covered some of them in the past. If you would like to try a free streaming tool, go to http://www.ustream.tv/)

Access to media both video and audio in today’s world is scaling new heights. The ability of current technology to deliver information to the end user in various forms is getting better by the day. In the education front, the impact of Video is much greater as they say – A picture is worth a thousand words!

Web streaming is the process of delivering multimedia — usually audio or video — over the World Wide Web. Web streaming requires three things: a media source in a format that can be streamed; server software that can stream it; and a client, or player that can play it on a user's computer or other device such as a smart phone.

It can be either streamed in real time or can be made available as video-on-demand for the participants.

A novel concept that we have embarked on is to make our Morning Classes LIVE for the entire world. L V Prasad Eye Institute is a World Health Organization Collaborating Centre in Hyderabad, India in the fight against blindness. Training and Education are recognized as key factors that influence the reach, range and quality of eye health service delivery.

We have begun transmission of our classes held at 7 AM (Indian Standard Time) on the Internet. The registration is FREE for users around the world.

You can click on the following link or can visit www.lvpei.org to register for the Online Webcast for Free.

http://174.122.81.186/patodia/

Confirmation of registration is both by SMS (available only in India) and Email.

We also add in a small document titled “Webcast requirements” in the email to help the users have a better experience. We list all the necessary hardware and software required to view the stream. The most common problem that we encounter is Low bandwidth speed at the user end that causes the stream to buffer and load. A minimum of 512 kbps is recommended.

Access to high quality education and content forms an integral part in improving the standards of training among the residents and fellows alike. Bringing the classroom to the living room truly gives the student the freedom to attend lectures and access world class content at the click of a button.

We believe that this initiative will open up many collaborations between academic institutes for the benefit of Ophthalmic Education in India and also the world.