Personal Professional Development Goals

I have several professional development goals. I constantly strive to learn more, whether it is in technology, teaching methods or ultrasound. As far as short term goals, there are many monthly "EdTech Tuesday" presentations that I have been attending here at OUHSC since January. Earlier this month we learned about Voice over Power Points which I am very excited to begin utilizing. I was hoping to use it so that students could listen to a lecture prior to coming to class and then we could spend more time discussing their experiences, questions and how to better apply what they are learning. (I think maybe it sounds a little like what Adam is doing with his class??) Another short term goal that I have is to study and pass my OB-GYN registry in Sonography. I've got the study materials and I don't think that it will take too much time to prepare but right now with 3 classes and then my job, I have no time. Hopefully in the short summer breaks I can spend more time on that!

At the end of January, I was required to attend a meeting in our Provost's office regarding professional development planning and maintaining an up to date Curriculum Vitae, etc. There were new faculty members from around the OUHSC campus at this meeting and we all discussed questions and problems that we were encountering in our new posts. While sitting in that meeting and reflecting upon it afterward, I developed a long term goal for professional development--not only mine but for others. My goal, after I obtain my master's and get a little more settled into my department, is to begin developing workshops on teaching methods for other faculty. As I sat listening to others in this meeting, it hit me that most of the faculty in these specialty areas (Medical School, Speech/Language Pathology, etc) were maybe experts in their fields but very few of them actually have any foundations in education. Most of them are hired to teach because they are good in their field, yet many of them have no idea how to organize content in a meaningful way for their learners and they admitted to struggles and frustration. This is what I envision myself helping with in the future--I want to work with these faculty to give them some of the pedagogical resources that we learn in education and help them to be more comfortable in their roles so that it will be a better situation for them and their students.

Progress on Teach a Technology Project

Honestly, I haven't had a chance to do a lot yet. I have been looking over "Voice Thread" which seems really interesting. After having gone to the website and browsing around a bit, I guess I have questions about the registration/making an account. I noticed that to use this with students and to allow other faculty to use it, there is a pretty sizable fee. Is this something that I can design my project around and get feedback from other factuly yet not have to "subscribe" to it? I really like the idea of the verbal interaction even though it is "asynchronous". I think that with online work, students feel a bit disconnected and this would probably help some with this. I can see the possibilites for doing projects with students using this technology.

I have looked a bit at iBooks Author as well. I'm still really interested in learning more about this and possibly utilizing it with my students and other areas of my work. I've been discussing it with my program director because she really loves iPad and I think that it is something that she would like to utilize too. We even had a short discussion about some things that we could possibly do along the lines of possibly collaborative projects since we are potentially going to work with the students from the Medical School on the Schusterman Campus.

Do you think that it would be too much to try to do both? Or would you like me to just focus on one and research the other on my own? Also, I know that you said you wanted us to present a draft of our project prior to meeting with you. I couldn't remember though, if you wanted feedback from those we will present this too also by that time or is that after we meet with you and included with the final project?