Personal Digital Assistants

Hudson, K., & Buell, V. (2011). Empowering a safer practice: PDAs are integral tools for nursing and health care. Journal of Nursing Management, 19, 400-406. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2834.2011.0125.

 This article reports a study of personal digital assistants (PDAs) using Lewin’s Change Theory as a framework to institute change in an educational setting. The authors assert that the use of PDAs improve safety at the bedside through the efficient retrieval of health and nursing facts. They also report that “handheld technologies support learners in authentic and seamless nursing such as within clinical and educational settings” (p. 401). Lewen’s Change Theory was valuable in this study because in this Texas nursing program PDAs were being introduced for the first time.

PDAs in this study included pharmacology, laboratory information, medical dictionary, patient teaching, health assessment, nursing procedures, pathophysiology, calculations, foreign language interpretation and nursing diagnoses. I found it interesting that most of these functions were not used frequently. The most commonly used function was the drug reference (41%), followed by patient teaching (19%). There was much interesting data presented in this article about student satisfaction with the PDA as well as common problems associated with their use. There was even data about the perceptions of client family and staff members when students used PDAs. Most family members liked the PDA use, though one family thought the student was not smart if s(he) had to use it!

I found the most useful part of this article to be the importance of role models in change theory. In this study the authors noted that staff members were not using PDAs. Instructors were using them and had one month to use the device before teaching students. Students were required to purchase PDAs (an obstacle for some). If PDAs improve the safety and quality of patient care as the authors assert, it’s important to support the adoption of this technology.  In order to be supportive, I need to explore the use of these devices, incorporating all the functions in my teaching. Students need to know that the money they have invested in this tool is not wasted. Role modeling the use PDAs in the classroom and in the clinical setting will encourage students to adopt this technology.

Interactive Whiteboards

Turel, Y.K., & Johnson, T. E. (2012). Teachers’ belief and use of interactive whiteboards for teaching and learning. Educational Technology & Society, 15 (1), 381-394.

This research was a quantitative descriptive study of teachers in Turkey who regularly use interactive whiteboards (IWB). The authors investigated teacher’s perceptions about the frequency of their IWB use and their feelings of competence. The authors determined the most commonly used features of IWB’s in this group of educators as well as how they developed skill in its use and what training topics they felt were needed. Three themes were investigated, instructional effects, motivational effects and usability.

Not surprisingly, the authors found that teacher skill increased with their frequency of use. Most teachers agreed that IWB’s are motivating, engaging and enjoyable for teachers and students.  One of the problems of IWB use is the need for appropriate skills and knowledge. Because most teachers were found to have had only one training session provided by their school, or IWB vendor, the training is deemed superficial. The authors defined a range of use between using the device as a chalk board, to using hyperlinks, or incompetent to professional. Most of the respondents in this self-identified in the mid-range of the competent range, and revealed that most of what they know was gleaned from colleagues.

This article is helpful because not much is mentioned in the nursing literature about the use of interactive white boards.  Though the participants in this research study were K-12 teachers, nursing schools could benefit from the positive impact this technology has on helping students become active learners and engage. The IWB adds the benefit of reaching many different learning styles, such as visual, auditory and kinetic. Turel and Johnson point out that the more experience teachers have with IWB’s, the more features they use. As teachers become advanced users of IWB’s, they are able to “construct meaning using interactive and fluid lesson strategies” (p. 383). Research about effectiveness of interactive whiteboards is needed in the field of nursing education.

Differentiated instruction

When reading the module on differentiated instruction and the use of technology, the concept of multi-tasking comes to mind. The process of identifying the needs of learners in a large classroom is a complicated task, but technology can assist in identifying these needs in a more efficient way, for example with on-line survey like Survey Monkey or ProfilerPro. Planning instruction to attend to all of these different learning needs is also a huge task. I liked the idea that through on-line learning, many different assignments could be used, giving the learner choices in the best way to assimilate ideas. Technology can make this process more efficient, effective and engaging, the important 3 E’s and a great rubric for planning and evaluating teaching and learning.

I can see how a survey might be used to identify learner needs, while students could choose from different learning opportunities to provide feedback to themselves and others about the quality of their learning. A student might create a survey or a video, or even design a wiki site as a group project  to apply concepts, just a few of a whole host of other options that technology can offer. As a teacher, creating all these different options without the use of technology would be too cumbersome and time-consuming. Since the one-lesson- fits all has been shown to be ineffective, variety is crucial to the learner in this new technological era.

A challenge that needs to be addressed is the support required to maintain technology. Teachers need continuing education to keep up to date since technological developments are occurring so quickly. Just as one device is mastered, something new comes along. Motivation is also important in order to stay on top of things. I’m curious how many institutions have the ability to support both students and faculty in the use of technology to support differentiated instruction.