Taking handwritten notes on your tablet.

Taking notes at lectures is one way we will be able to bring back ideas and concepts to enhance our medical practice. Using traditional pen and paper does not allow you to keep all your notes with you at all times.

Taking handwritten notes with an electronic device is as easy as using paper and pen, but allows you to keep your notes always with you and share them through email.

On today's post I will comment on devices that use Android as their operating system. On my next post I will comment on software that can be used on an Ipad.

Even though the following software is better suited for tablets, it can also be used on Android phones.

Genial Writing allows you to share memos with friends through email, other messages and facebook. You can customize your pen width and color and decide if you want to use portrait or landscape orientation. You can copy and paste between notes as well. There are 12 kinds of notebooks, you shake your phone to delete something and lastly you can insert pictures from your phone. You can do OK with the free version but the inexpensive paid version adds some features.

Bellow you can  see a short demo. In the demo, a cursor is used for writing, but on you tablet or smartphone you can use your finger or a rubber pointed pen.

  

Customized Virtual Learning Meeting Points

By Helena Filipe

Internet offers both learners and educators customized virtual meeting points. Today we will present software with such capability.

Drop box http://www.dropbox.com/ enables us to store our own multimedia files (photos, videos and other documents) and have them available in all devices (laptop, smartphone,…)where its app´s have been previously downloaded (offline working)

or in any computer with internet connectivity (online working).

We can store our files and have them instantly available on the move without the need of the classical pen drive avoiding its possible associated troubles such as simply forgetting it, spreading virus or losing our content for any other reason.

Documents will be securely saved in the virtual space, instantly available offline if we are working in a computer with this software or in any other device as long it has Internet connectivity. In this last case we must have a Drop Box account and once logged in, it will be as if we were working in our own computer: all our stored content is there ready to be worked on. This happens because whenever we store files using DropBox they are simultaneously saved in our computer and in Drop Box website.

Folders created to keep ophthalmic specific subjects can be shared within a group (learning community) with a common goal and same interests.

Once found a scientific article or a new surgical technique video focused on a specific ophthalmology subject and stored in a Drop Box shared folder, it will be instantly available for the whole group of people, previously invited to share that folder content.

Drop Box allows us to work together on the same projects and keeps track of what is happening concerning the evolution of those projects. This activity involves authorship at a certain extent, social tagging and collaboration falling under the umbrella of social bookmarking.

As examples of this software use we present: Ocular Surface Disease created to store scientific content related to be available among a group of colleagues sharing the same subspecialty.

Recently another shared folder was created to allocate and allow cooperation to build our monthly Portuguese Society of Ophthalmology newsletter. Since a group of three people is engaged in this task, whenever there is a change in the document it will easily tracked by the others which will optimize our work.

This software is downloadable from http://www.dropbox.com/ and a free use of a 2GB subscription can be used though it can be extended to 100GB. If we invite more “friends” to DropBox our subscription capacity can be extended. The Drop Box site offers a concise but complete explanation through a video clip of the concept at stake and how to make its best use.

Downloading Videos from YouTube: Can we? Should we?

By Dr. Eduardo Mayorga.

When looking for videos to train our residents, YouTube becomes a great source for them. The videos can be watched on line during a class or you can send the residents a link for them to comment on the video or part of it. On occasion and for different reasons, you may want to have the video or part of it on your hard drive so, is there an easy way to do this? Are we allowed to do it? Let's answer each question at a time.

Is there an easy way to download videos from YouTube?: Yes, there is. YouTubeDownloader works very well and easily converts YouTube videos into several formats. As with any free software you should be aware that some of them can install spyware in your system. I have not found this to be true with YouTubeDownloader. 

Are we allowed to download videos from YouTube?: A fast and safe answer would be: No, you are not allowed..., unless you have permission of the person that created the video. Please be aware that not always the creator (the owner of the rights) is the person who uploaded the video.

There are at least 2 ways to get permission: the first and faster is to look for the type of license the owner has assigned to the video. If it's a Creative Commons Licence, you may reuse and edit the video as far as you acknowledge the authorship to the real creator.  The other way to get permission is to write to the owner of the rights. You can read more on Creative Commons Licences clicking here. 

Evaluating computer skills

Computer skills is a competency all residents must acquire. Electronic medical records, searching for evidence in literature databases, preparing presentations, are only a few examples where they will apply these skills.

There are at least two ways in which you can evaluate their competency: The first one would be looking at the final product, eg: the completed medical record, the search results, the final PowerPoint presentations. The second one is the process. Evaluating the process is very important because sometimes you can have a good final product through an inefficient process. For evaluating the process you would need to sit beside them while they complete it. Many times finding the time to meet with your residents to do this is not easy. This is when screen capturing software can help you. 

Using screen capturing software you resident can record all the process he or she did to reach the final product. As it is recorded as a video, you can go through it fast forwarding so it may allow you to review the process in a shorter time that it would have taken if you sat beside the resident during the actual work.

There are many screen capturing software. One that you can try is Screencast-O-Matic.

Screencast-O-Matic is a cloud based software that can be used for free, for recording up to 15 minutes of continuous capture. You can see an example of how it works below

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!

Improving Teaching in the Clinic with tablet devices.

By Dr. Karl Golnik

Teaching in the outpatient clinic is one of the most effective ways to ensure learning
occurs. The resident is highly engaged in the process of evaluating patients and actively synthesizing information to achieve a differential diagnosis. However, it can be difficult to provide effective teaching because residents and teaching faculty tend to busy in their attempts to care for the many patients seen in one day. Thus, I always try and sit down at lunch and at the end of the day to discuss at least several
interesting patients seen throughout the course of the day. Additionally, I try and make important points throughout the day as patients are evaluated.

I find my tablet device to be a useful adjunct to my clinical teaching. I store all my clinical photographs (e.g. optic discs, MRIs) and videos (e.g. pupils, eye movements) on the tablet. As it is immediately ready, little time is spent demonstrating key findings and showing other examples of the entities encountered in clinic on any day.

Residents find it is valuable to see other examples of the same entity or photos/videos of conditions in the differential diagnosis of the clinical findings at hand. This approach could be accomplished with a laptop computer as well but the immediacy and portability of the tablet makes this an ideal technology for improving teaching and learning in the clinic.

More on posting your conferences to the web

By Dr. Eduardo Mayorga


On a previous post we showed you ways to post your presentations with audio to the web. In that post we covered "AuthorStream", a free but rather limited web based software and "Articulate" , probably today´s gold standard for developing web presentations, quizzes and interactions but that comes with a high price tag.

Today we would like to draw your attention to "Snap" by Lectora.

"Snap" allows you to convert your presentation to a Flash format so that  you can upload it for web viewing. The software allows you to insert videos, interactions and quizzes. It integrates into PowerPoint where it adds a tab at the top menu of PowerPoint.

Having  similar features to Articulate, it's price is, at this time, 10 times lower.  "Articulate" carries some fine tuning features that "Snap" doesn't, but "Snap" can be an very good option if you have budget constrictions. 

Those interested in building and sharing lectures with other residencies programs may be also interested in learning about the "Web Based Teaching" course project that we believe will be finished by the end of this year.