Talking to young people in aged care about networking

Tomorrow I am talking to a group of young people who work in aged care about how to use the Internet to build networks. I wouldn't normally be allowed to join the group because their definition of "young" is up to the age of 40, so that rules me out. But being that I am a speaker to the group, I have a special dispensation to attend.

Plan
To be honest, I haven't given my talk much thought up to now. I had planned on reguritating a similar talk I gave at the Aged Care Queensland conference last November. But some of the people coming to the meeting tomorrow may also have been to the November conference, so I need to put a slightly different slant on things. I also have to remember that my audience will be slightly younger than I am used to talking to - the 'dreaded' Generation Y. So whilst it would be easy to assume that they know about social networking, that may not actually be the case.

Key points
Here are some ideas for my talk:

• Why networking is important as a young person starting off in a profession.
• What an online network is.
  
• What online social networking can offer a young professional.
• How to build a network.
• What issues you need to consider with online networking.
• Some tools to consider using.
  

Is there anything you think I could add? What points do you think it is important for me to include in my talk?


Image: 'Happyness' zanzibar
www.flickr.com/photos/32585800@N00/200769296

Missing my girl

I am extremely privileged to have a wonderful daughter who I am very proud of. We are best friends as well as daughter/mother. We have missed each other very much since I have moved to Brisbane although we speak to each other most days via Facebook and MSN. I have even been able to give her my advice on what to wear on a date as she showed me the various choices of outfit by web cam (not that she took my advice, of course!).

Visit to Brisbane
The last couple of weeks she has been here on holiday with a friend. They have done the Gold Coast and Surfers Paradise, and dropped into Brisbane for a few days to see me.

Catching up
We had a fabulous time catching up, shopping and doing lots of eating. The highlight of her visit was having a ride on the Brisbane Wheel and going to the Sunday markets.


Back to the cold and wet
She's gone back to New Zealand and we'll be seeing each other again at Easter. In the meantime, we'll keep in touch with the wonderful communication tools that are the available on the Internet.

To choose or not to choose: matching participants in an eMentoring program

This is the second post about matching participants in formal mentoring programs. I would be very interested to hear your opinion in how I should match participants in the eMentoring program I am managing.

Here are the three options - what do you think would be most appropriate, keeping in mind the issues of matching that I discussed in my previous post.

1. I match the mentors and mentees myself - I take all the information that the participants send me and match the skills and experience of the mentors to the goals and needs of the mentee. This is done before the mentoring workshops so that they can meet face-to-face, and then go on to develop their mentoring contracts.
   
2. I ask the mentors to provide biographical details and photos and I post them on a web site. The mentees choose who they want as mentor. This is done before the eMentoring workshops. Then they meet at the workshop etc.
3. They meet up at the workshop and choose then. The problem with this is that they will not all be at the workshop - I will be running small workshops of no more than 10 mentors which will restrict the choice for the mentee. And what if all the mentees go for the same mentor?

What do you think is the most effective way of matching that causes the least amount of trouble for me, yet meets the needs of the mentees and mentors?


Image: 'match bouquet' ḃĭțʑḯ
www.flickr.com/photos/58055760@N00/265052668

Matching participants in eMentoring programs

One of the big issues I need to address in the eMentoring project I am managing is how to match the participants ie which mentor to put with each mentee. This is the first of two posts about the issues of matching participants in a formal eMentoring programs.

Blind date
My original intention was to match the participants myself according to the information they give me, a bit like a dating agency. The mentors will provide information about their skills and experience which I match with the goals and needs of mentees. I will also ask participants to provide information about personal interests with the aim of matching people with similar interests, so they have something in common to provide a foundation on which to build the mentoring relationship.

Face-to-face connecting
One advantage that these participants will have is that they will be able to meet face-to-face at the start of their relationship. The project has funding that will allow participants to attend mentoring workshops to learn more about the mentoring process. The participants will meet their mentoring partners, develop their contracts and agreements, and make a start to getting to know each other.

Gender
Nevertheless, there are a number of issues to consider when matching people in formal mentoring programs. One issue is gender and how that effects relationships. Ehrich (2008) cites a number of authors and studies that state that cross-gender mentoring can lead to romance and sexual intimacy which result in professional and personal problems. Participants can be pressurized to enter a sexual relationship because of power imbalances. At the same time, people may be dissuaded from entering a cross-gender mentoring relationship because of the potential of these problems developing. I would imagine that online relationships are less likely to have that problem because of the physical distance between participants, but it should still be considered.

A further problem can be that stereotypical behavior between male and females is accentuated ie females are submissive and males are dominant or paternalistic (Ehrich, 2008). If this is the case, the mentoring relationship will be dysfunctional.

Ethnicity
Cross-ethnic mentoring can be similarly problematic if power in-balances come into play. People who struggle to maintain their ethnic identity are more likely to connect with mentors/mentees of the same ethnic origin (Darling et al, 2006).

Different disciplines
The other issue to consider when matching people in this project is the difference in professions and role. This may cause difficulties because of a lack of understanding of people's contexts and backgrounds (Stewart & McLoughlin, 2007). But as mentoring is about reflection, learning and development, this should not be a major problem. But it will be interesting to see if occupation has an effect on the 'success' of the mentoring relationship.

Diversity
At the same time, diversity is to be celebrated, and too much similarity should be avoided because it may dampen down the challenges and stimulation that occurs when there are differences in approach and opinion (Klasen & Clutterbuck, 2004). Cross-gender and cross-ethnic mentoring encourages people to be accepting of differences.

Pragmatics
It may be that I am restricted on how I match people by the numbers and locations of people. I am keen to match people to ensure they are not in the same geographical location so as to test the efficacy of computer-mediated communication, and to increase confidentiality. But in the end, it may be pragmatics that underpin the matching process.

What is your opinion - what do you think are important issues for me to consider when I think about matching participants? What would you want from your mentor/mentee if you were in this project?

My next post is considering exactly how I should match participants in the eMentoring program.


References
Ehrich, L. (2008). Mentoring and women managers : another look at the field. Gender in Management : An International Journal, 23(7). pp. 469-483. Retrieved 21 February, 2009, from http://eprints.qut.edu.au/17129/1/c17129.pdf

Darling, N. Bogat, G., Cavell, T., Murphy, S., Sanchez, B. (2006). Gender, ethnicity, development, and risk: consdieration of individual differences. Journal of Community Psycology, 34, 6, 765-779.

Klasen, N., & Clutterbuck, D. (2004). Implementing mentoring schemes. London: Elsevier.

Stewart, S., & McLoughlin, C. (2007). Design features of an e-mentoring system for the health
professions: Choosing to learn in partnership. In ICT: Providing choices for learners and learning.Proceedings ascilite Singapore 2007. Retrieved 20 February, 2009, from http://www.ascilite.org.au/conferences/singapore07/procs/stewart-s.pdf


Image: 'la cumbre de los fósforos' yakanama
www.flickr.com/photos/18473263@N00/276195587

Linking objects to information in the Second Life virtual birth unit

I am feeling that at last I can see the light at the end of the tunnel for the first stage of the Second Life birth unit project. And my feelings of frustration are changing to optimistic excitement. Yesterday, Leigh Blackall, Deborah Davis and I had a meeting which has led to an agreement to the learning activities and time lines for stage 1 of the project.

Lesson plan
I have the responsibility for developing the lesson plan/s for the activities the students will be engaging with in order to meet their learning outcomes which are:

• demonstrate an understanding of the role of the midwife in the normal childbirth process;
• demonstrate effective evidence based, midwifery practice guided by a sound knowledge base.

These plans are for self-directed activities that encourage reflection, which will complement the students' formal lessons. The ideas so far are a treasure hunt, writing a reflection, completing a questionnaire, taking part in a discussion in the class Facebook group. What do you think we could get the students to do that will not be too onerous for them, but be a useful activity that will fit the learning outcomes.

There will also need to be a notice board or such like that gives the students instructions.

Video
Deborah and Leigh have responsibility for developing a short video that will act as an advert for the birth unit; something that can be lodged in YouTube and similar places as well as the birth unit itself, and sent around the place by email, or linked into the institutions' learning management systems.

The video will consist of interviews with everyone involved with building the birth unit.

Objects
The other really important job that Deborah and I have to do is agree on what objects we need in the unit; decide how they are to be animated, and how they are to be linked to research evidence. We will then need to summarize the evidence in a short paragraph for the students to read.

What will happen is that a student will see a glass of water, for example, click on it and be shown research evidence about hydration in labour. The student will also be able follow links to the information on a web site (probably Wikieducator). This will allow them to 'bookmark' the information. It will also be a resource that people outside Second Life will be able to utilize.

The objects are:

• Water pool – link to information about use of water in labour & evidence about waterbirth
• Sink-link to information about hand washing & infection control
• Gloves – link to information about sterile technique
• Bed-link to info about evidence of around birth positions & birth outcomes
• Food – link to evidence about nutrition in labour
• Glass of water – link to information/evidence about hydration in labour
• Rope/birth ball/birthing stool – links to information/evidence about positions in labour
• Toilet – links to info/evidence about maternal output eg why we test urine in labour
• BP machine-info/evidence about monitoring in labour
• Pinard – info/evidence about baby monitoring in labour
• Vomit bowl – info/evidence about dealing with nausea
• Fridge – information about ecbolics & active management of third stage
• Object – information about physiological management of third stage
• Object-information about vaginal examinations
• Object – info about hands off’ approach to birth
• Filing cabinet in midwife’s office – information about documentation
• Mucus extractor - evidence about sucking out a baby at birth
• Syringe - evidence about the administration of vitamin K at birth
• Towel rail to warm towels for baby at birth - information about keeping baby warm at birth
• Cord clamp - evidence/information about timing of cord clamp
  

Can you think of any other objects we would need in the birth unit that would link out to research evidence?

The birth unit including objects is due to be finished by the middle of March which is when the SLENZ team has its next face-to-face meeting. It looks as if we'll be introducing the first year midwifery students to the birth unit in the middle of June when they start to look at labour and birth.

We'll be having a grand opening which will include a panel discussion about the principles of birth unit design and how that was integrated into the Second Life project. At this stage, a date has not been decided but it will probably be in May. Plenty of time for me to get a new frock and tiara in honor of the occasion!


Image: 'Evan cuts the umbilical cord' Natashalatrasha
www.flickr.com/photos/68319844@N00/446270864

Finding your way around Second Life

I do not find it particularly easy to find my way around Second Life, or tell people how to get to places. So I am very pleased to find a web site that allows you to make a location link that you can use to tell people where to go.

All you need to do is feed in the location of the site you are visiting to SLurlBuilder, and that then gets made into a link for people to follow.

Here is the link which will take you to the virtual birth unit I am working on in the SLENZ project, in Kowhai.

Go and have a look and get back to me with what you think.

Decorating the virtual birth unit in Second Life

Here is Petal (me) and Aastra Apfelbaum (Deborah Davis) trying to decide on a colour scheme for the virtual birth unit in Second Life.


Thinking that the floor is too orange.


I love this colour but it's probably too crazy for a birth unit.


Planning dark, warm cave-like colours for the birthing rooms.

What do you think?

Super 14 Rugby 2009

One of the downsides of moving to Brisbane for the next few months is that I am going to miss all the home games of my beloved Highlanders in Dunedin, in the Super 14 Rugby this year. It will be just typical - the year I am not there will be the year the Highlanders do really well....I can dream, can't I??!!

A big decision
So the big moral and ethical question I must answer is..........who do I support now I am living in Brisbane? Do I cheer for the Queensland Reds, or for any of the sides that play them that come from New Zealand?! Maybe I just go for which ever side has the cutest players!?

If all else fails, I may have to start going to rugby league games. The advantage of rugby league over rugby union is that the players wear tighter shorts. So you see......a silver lining?!

Virtual rugby
In the meantime, I am signed up for the virtual rugby again. It appears that people have been having problems with the web site, so I hope that gets sorted soon.

If you wish to follow my progress, my user name is "Hototagogirl" - good luck.


Image: 'Ce International Rugby7 14' vampirogordo
www.flickr.com/photos/7216982@N08/2477648391

Learning about high blood pressure in pregnancy

I am thrilled to see that my best mate, Deborah Davis, dipping her toes in blogging waters. Deborah is running a postgraduate midwifery course "Hypertension in pregnancy" on the blog: Jan's Pregnancy Adventure.

I am sure this blog will be a great resource for midwives who want to update themselves; student midwives who wish to learn about hypertension, and women who want to know anything abut pregnancy.

Go and have a look and join in the discussion. The more people take part in sharing information and ideas, the more useful learning will achieved by the students/midwives taking the course.


Image: 'Baumanometer' derklbot
www.flickr.com/photos/49998283@N00/2629189265

Using Skype to get my adrenaline fix

Do you ever do things that you know are wild and dangerous, and potentially fatal like skydiving or white water rafting, but you can't stop yourself doing it? Well, I did that today - had a very scary ride but would do it again at the drop of a hat.

Long distance collaboration
I was asked to work with Sue Hickton to help her present the joys of Web 2.0 to a group of health professionals in Perth - Sue would be talking to the class face-to-face, and I would join in some sort of online form.

We started off a few days ago having a brain storm about what Web 2.0 means to me, and how I use various social networking tools as a health professional. There's nothing I love more than talking about myself and talking about Web 2.0 tools, so this presentation was going to be easy.

Presenting with Skype
Sue and I decided we would try to beam me in using Ustream.Tv because neither of us had used it before and were excited about the opportunity to test it out. Unfortunetly, I do not have administrative rights on my work lap top, so I cannot download Flash and hence am unable to access a number of web sites. But as I can use Skype, we decided we'd have to stick with that.

Taking a risk
You can bet your bottom dollar that when you want to highlight technology, it doesn't work. Sure enough, Sue did run into a few problems, but we eventually got sorted as long as I didn't run Skype video. I felt on tenderhooks the whole time in case my lap top blew up, or Sue was abducted by aliens, but on the whole I think things went very well.

Discussion
We talked for an hour and Sue showed the group the MindMeister mindmap we made, and a number of online tools including Twitter and Delicious. The thing I wanted to get over was that it isn't about the tools, but how we use them to connect with people - it is in the connections that we find knowledge and learning.

The group had a number of issues. They find it frustrating how the institution they work for restricts their access to tools (which seems to be a theme of my blogging these days). They were also concerned about how they could differeniate between online rubbish and professional networking, and how they could access quality information. I made the point that we shouldn't bury our heads in the sand and ignore social networking because our students and patients/clients are using it to connect with each other, find and disseminate information.

Being blind
I am starting to get used to presenting to groups without seeing them - I did a similar thing last week when I talked to my colleagues at Otago Polytechnic about ePortfolios. It is a little disconcerting when you cannot see who you are talking to, and are getting no feedback at all about how things are going, even in the form of instant messages.

But I had fun, and will use this model of presentation when I come to talk about Web 2.0 with the people I am working with in aged and community care.


Online resources
Here is a wiki page with a list of online resources that Sue has put together as a result of our presentation.

What would you say was the important thing to get across to Web 2.0 newbies? What are your concerns about using online social networking tools?

Collaborative mindmaps with MindMeister

I have never been a particularly visual person and have always done my brainstorming in text. But over the last couple of years I have been relying more heavily on diagrams and mindmaps to plan projects, and process my thinking.

MindMeister
I have just been introduced to MindMeister by Sue Hickton, which is a great mindmapping tool . What I really like about this tool is that you can collaborate together on the mindmap at the same time. The other thing I liked about it, is that you can make notes about each node and add a url.

Alternative presentation tool
I think this is a great way of presenting ideas as a change to PowerPoint. I have been asked to talk to young professionals in aged and community care about networking in a couple of weeks - I think I will use MindMeister as my presentation tool.

What alternative presentation tools to PowerPoint do you use?

ePortfolios for health professionals

The last couple of days I have been at the second Australian ePortfolio symposium at the Queensland University of Technology. The reason I went was because of my continuing interest in ePortfolios and reflective practice. I also wanted to gather ideas and information because of my ultimate aim of wanting to head up a research project to look at ePortfolios for professional development for health professionals using web 2.0 tools. This research is a bit of a pipe dream at the moment, but it continues to be in the forefront of my mind.

Highlights
I have to say that the highlight of the symposium was meeting several people I know on Twitter. I have been talking to Colin Warren and Alison Miller for some time, so it was a delight to meet them face-to-face. I think we all felt like it was like meeting old, dear friends even though we have never met before.

Alison was able to tell me about the Australian Flexible Learning Framework which may be one avenue for funding for my potential ePortfolio project. What I need to do now is get my head around the VET sector (vocational educational training) here in Australia to find out the best way to package a proposal.

What I learned
I don't know if I learned anything new at the conference. I have been working with portfolios since 1992, when they were first talked about as a statutory regulation tool for nurses and midwives in the UK. My focus has been on portfolios as a reflection and development tool, aside from formal education programs. So to me, nothing was said that I didn't hear 15 years ago.

I was interested to hear about the examples of ePortfolios being used as assessment tools for students. But the main messages I heard time and time again was;

• ePortfolio needs to be embeded into the curriculum, so it is a true reflective tool as opposed to merely a repository for documents
  
• ePortfolio has to be under the students' control
• students/practitioners need to be able to choose what they make public, and what they keep private
• when we think about ePortfolio, we should be thinking about the process, and not the tools.
  

My presentation
I gave a presentation which looked at my experience of developing an ePortfolio as a health professional. There was some discussion afterwards about the problems of confidentiality which is an old nutshell. I got the impression that the other health professionals were not keen on the idea of open reflection even though I acknowledged that not all health professionals would want to follow my example, but rather keep their ePortfolios in closed environments. What I tried to emphasise is that ePortfolio allows for shared reflection, communication and collaboration, which is particularly important to me.

Another doubt raised was whether keeping a portfolio would make me, or anyone else a better midwife or nurse. What I would suggest is that any form of reflection makes for a better practitioner. What do you think?

ePortfolio for health professionals

View more presentations from Sarah Stewart. (tags: eportfolio lifelonglearning)

Where to from here
For me personally, I will keep on charting my professional development in this blog and my ePortfolio. I was approached by one conference participant who said she modeled her ePortfolio on mine, so that was a very special endorsement for me.

Nevertheless, there is lots of opportunities to investigate ePortfolio and health care practice, which I am looking forward to pursuing further.

Restricting Internet access at work

Another issue that could impact on the eMentoring project I am managing, is how much people are 'allowed' to access the Internet at work.

Restricting the Internet at work
What I am rapidly realising is that a lot of employers are very reluctent to let their employees have full access to the Internet. Only the other day I was talking to an employer who had had to restrict use of the Internet because employees were abusing it, and spending all their time on Facebook and eBay. And the employer's system was flooded by spam as a result.

How do I answer employers when they indentify these sorts of problems? How can I work with employers to encourage them to allow full access to the Internet, yet educate employees about responsibile use of the Internet?

Fun and work
I have talked before that the delineation between work and play will become increasingly blurred. The 2008 Pew/Internet report "The future of the Internet" re-enforces this view and says "The divisions between personal time and work time and between physical and virtual reality will be further erased for everyone who’s connected."

I wouldn't have a problem with my employees using Facebook as long as the work was done. At the same time, I would look at how I could channel people's interest and skills at social networking into more 'professional' activites to facilitate learning in the workplace - eMentoring being one such activity.

Open access
My challenge as manager of the eMentoring project, is to find ways of selling this to employers in aged and community care. I believe one important way of doing this is to model how social networking can be incorporated into work practices. So I am going to start with using Google Documents to develop all the documentation for the project, especially those documents that I am collaborating on.

Does your employer restrict your use of the Internet at work? If so, how do you feel about that? If you are an employer, what are the issues you face with regard the Internet and employees' use of it?


Image: 'Ward at Alpha Hospital' tahitianlime
www.flickr.com/photos/35319816@N00/912907071