School Technology Assignment

This assignment was a little tricky for me, as I do not work at a school and have never worked at a school. However, my dream job is as a health educator at a university, and I have a hankering to move back to New England and be by the ocean, so I dug around the University of New England (two locations in coastal Maine) website to try to figure out the answers to the assignment. My spreadsheet is below. (Sorry it's so small, when I make it larger overflows into the sidebar of the blog! Most of the answers are intelligent.)

Thoughts on Technology Use Planning

The recent assignment about Technology Use Planning got me thinking about, well, technology use planning! Honestly, the concept was completely new to me, though it makes complete sense why a company or school/university would need to plan ahead and think about their use of technology in the future.

In one of my previous jobs I worked for a non-profit. The computer I used when I worked there was about 8 years old, and slow as molasses. Sadly, we didn't have the resources to upgrade, so I don't think technology use planning was even on anyone's radar. At my current job, we try to stay on top of all things technology. All of the employees are issued an iPhone (4s, not the 5!) upon starting with the company, and we all have laptops issued to us, as well. We have a few iPads floating around the office, plus plenty of software for the instructional designers to use. Despite all of this, I'm not even sure we have any sort of technology use plan in place at all, and this assignment has made me want to ask what our plan is (it's a small company with less than 20 employees, and it's easy to find out information like that.)

I also started thinking about how this concept might be applicable in my personal life. My husband and I just sort of buy something if we need it, for instance, his six-year-old desktop computer was starting to be on the fritz, so he purchased a laptop, but we don't really look to the future to figure out what we might want or need, or talk about what our goals for our technology use are. I think it might be beneficial to discuss this, though, because then we might be able to plan for and budget for future purchases, and discuss what works best for us as a family. Right now he doesn't have a smartphone and my company pays for mine, but where do we want to be with that in a year or two? Do we want a tablet? Should we get a printer with wireless capabilities since we both have laptops now?

I actually really like planning, so I may start thinking about how I can apply this in my life, both at work and at home!

Favorite Links

Jen's Favorite Links

http://www.astd.org/Publications/Magazines/TD: This is a link to Training and Development magazine put out by the American Society for Training and Development. This site (and the magazine) provides great resources for training and using technology for training. It's geared toward adult training, not youth education, but I would think everyone in the class would find it helpful in some ways.

http://www.digitaltrends.com/: This site is as the title suggests, "digital trends," and is a fancy, flashy site with lots of interesting articles (like this one about the internet and all those animal movies and trends).

http://www.informationweek.com/education: InformationWeek Education website.

Technology Use Planning Overview

1. Start with defining technology use planning–how would you describe it?

I would describe technology use planning as a way to map out or plan the specific details of how using technology in a certain setting will produce the desired results, or how the planning team anticipates using certain technologies will produce results. It can be short or long term, but might be fluid as the institution learns different ways to achieve the same desired outcomes. 
B. How might the new National Educational Technology Plan 2010 be an effective and powerful resource for technology use planning?
The National Educational Technology Plan 2010 would be an effective and powerful resource to technology use planning because it was created specifically to ensure that technology use meets certain criteria and is the best possible. In other words, following the plan will help ensure an excellent technology plan is created. The plan is also great because it lays out the five components of learning powered by technology: Learning, Assessment, Teaching, Infrastructure, and Productivity. These can be used as a great outline/guideline for starting a technology plan.
 C. Do you agree with See about tech use plans needing to be short, not long term?I really do see his point in stating the technology use plans should be short term. Technology really does change astonishingly quickly, so spending time on a plan that is longer than a year seems like it might be a waste of time. Why plan for five years ahead when the technologies you plan on using will be obsolete? You'll just have to redo your plan with the newest technologies, or miss out on newer technology because you're stuck with your plan and all the money you spent based on that plan.
D.What do you think about his comment that “effective technology plans focus on applications, not technology?” 
See's statement " It may be better to go to your school board saying this is what we want our students to be able to do" makes complete sense to me. Instead of focusing on what you need to buy to achieve the results, you focus on the results you want to achieve. It's like saying that you want your dog to train your dog. You figure out what end result you want, then you plan backwards. If you say "I want to buy a book on dog training," you're not really focusing on the end result, and you may not end up with the right tools for what you're trying to achieve. I think his point of view is a good one, based on experience. 
E. What experiences have you had with technology use planning and what have you seen for outcomes (both good and bad?)I can't say I've had many experiences with this, but the company I work for is very technology-driven. I think sometimes they have tried to plan ahead and buy the newest technology item without thoroughly researching the impact of that item, then they end up needing to buy something else because the newest program or whatever didn't meet their needs. 

Health Education RSS Feeds

Here are a few RSS feeds that I think are helpful for a health educator.

Healthy Recipes from Daily Garnish http://feeds.feedburner.com/dailygarnish

Healthy Recipes from Oh She Glows http://ohsheglows.com/feed/

From the National Institutes of Health: https://public.govdelivery.com/accounts/USNIH/subscriber/new?pop=t&topic_id=USNIH_3  (Not sure this is an RSS feed, but you can go here to enter your email address for updates from the National Institute of Health)

Huffington Post Healthy Living Feed: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/feeds/verticals/healthy-living/index.xml

Teen Health Blog: http://www.healthline.com/health-blogs/feeds/teen-health-411

US Corporate Wellness Blog: https://www.uscorporatewellness.com/feed/

Everyday Mindful: http://www.everydaymindful.com/feed/

Fitness Blog: http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheFitnessista

 Ten ideas for how these RSS feeds can be used to further Health Education & Promotion:

1. Recipe blogs can be shared with those who are trying to make healthy changes to their eating habits. Blogs with colorful photos and tempting-looking food may motivate change.
2. Recipe blogs also show both health educators and those they are educating new and interesting ways of eating.
3. Articles about corporate fitness may give the health educator new ideas to use in their own work...
4. or give an employee at a company without a health or wellness program the idea to suggest such a program at their office
5. Blogs about teen health may help a parent educate their teen.
6. Blogs about teen health may also help the teen educate themselves, as they may be more likely to read information online and try it, as opposed to listening to their parent.
7. The Huffington Post Healthy Living Blog covers many, many topics, and a health educator may gain new perspectives from reading such a variety of articles.
8. Government health websites showcase the latest research and are helpful to the public and those in health promotion.
9. Mindfulness and meditation are in right now, and have proven health benefits. A blog on mindfulness can be used by a health educator to introduce those unfamiliar with the technique.
10. Fitness blogs are fun for health educators and the people they're educating, because they showcase new and interesting workouts and motivation. 

Zotero Bibliography

Although I found Zotero a little frustrating at first, I wish I had known about it when I first started classes last summer! That probably would have made things easier on me. Great tool to know for the future, though!

Barnard, N. D., Katcher, H. I., Jenkins, D. J. A., Cohen, J., & Turner-McGrievy, G. (2009). Vegetarian and vegan diets in type 2 diabetes management. Nutrition Reviews, 67(5), 255–263.

Filippi, M., Riccitelli, G., Falini, A., di Salle, F., Vuilleumier, P., Comi, G., & Rocca, M. A. (2010). The Brain Functional Networks Associated to Human and Animal Suffering Differ among Omnivores, Vegetarians and Vegans. PLoS ONE, 5(5), 1–9. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0010847

Ho-Pham, L. T., Vu, B. Q., Lai, T. Q., Nguyen, N. D., & Nguyen, T. V. (2012). Vegetarianism, bone loss, fracture and vitamin D: a longitudinal study in Asian vegans and non-vegans. European Journal Of Clinical Nutrition, 66(1), 75–82. doi:10.1038/ejcn.2011.131

Schmidt, J. A., Crowe, F. L., Appleby, P. N., Key, T. J., & Travis, R. C. (2013). Serum Uric Acid Concentrations in Meat Eaters, Fish Eaters, Vegetarians and Vegans: A Cross-Sectional Analysis in the EPIC-Oxford Cohort. PLoS ONE, 8(2), 1–8. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0056339

Shang, P., Shu, Z., Wang, Y., Li, N., Du, S., Sun, F., … Zhan, S. (2011). Veganism Does Not Reduce the Risk of the Metabolic Syndrome in a Taiwanese Cohort. Asia Pacific Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 20(3), 404.

Gamification

I am finding that I'm really fascinated with the idea of gamification and gaming, and really enjoyed reading about it in the Horizons report. I thought I'd share some of the ways gaming has been used where I work, since we're already starting to use it a bit.

The company I work for designs sales and sometimes other types of training to pharmaceutical and medical device companies. Although I am not an instructional designer, I see much of what is designed, and do a bit of it here and there.

On of our instructional designers, who just finished up her Master's in Instructional Design last summer, is particularly into gamification and regularly designs trainings that involve games of some sort. For instance, one package we sell is all about the hospital. An interactive hospital/game board map was designed, and to learn more about each area, you click on the "room" in the hospital, and go through a whole series of learning and questions. We also often model interactive gaming sessions after reality TV shows, think Survivor-based learning games and the like. Most recently this particular ID made multiple different game boards and scavenger hunt exercises for a huge pharmaceutical company for their annual meeting, and learning that way really seems to appeal to all ages, even adults.

At this point the technology we use isn't designed so that each individual sales rep can play the game on a table or smartphone, but I think eventually that is the way our training will be transmitted. So, although we're not at that point, we're definitely making use of the ideas behind gaming and gamification, although the availability of it in an electronic format is, like the Horizon Report mentioned, a few years away.