Random Reviews and Reflections
Premiere of “Beyond the Physical”: All new series on Athletes with Disability.
Meet Singapore’s best Athletes with disability in their sporting and life journeys in this groundbreaking new series that features the crossing of paths between them and their able-bodied counterparts.
“Beyond The Physical” premieres on 16 June 2008, 7.00pm on Channel 5.
Be sure to catch it.
The Wired Campus. June 17, 2008
Sarah E. Forgie, an associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Alberta, gives medical students song parodies and other offbeat study aids for her bacteriology class. Her favorite podcasts include “Sweet Tetani” (an infectious sendup of “Sweet Caroline”) and “Bad Bugs” (a parody of the Bloodhound Gang’s “The Bad Touch”).
Q. Why did you start doing podcasts?
A. This was actually a summer project I had a student do. I just had an idea. My kids love their iPods, and my husband loves his iPod. I’m not quite as savvy, but I thought, Wouldn’t it be cool if I could put something interesting and succinct on an iPod for my course?
Q. What did the student come up with?
A. I gave him the general information for the course and let him think about it and what would be useful to students. He made weekly reviews, including some songs.
Q. How were the podcasts received?
A. They were really helpful. Our hypothesis was that the students would like the songs better than the spoken podcasts, but they were pretty much equally well received.
Q. Did students who used the podcasts get higher grades?
A. The surveys about the podcasts were anonymous, so we don’t know.
Q. What other kinds of alternative teaching methods do you use in your class?
A. I do a beatnik poem about Harry Houdini. [The magician died of an infection after his appendix ruptured.] I came up with a way of setting this poem to music and called it “Harry Houdini and the Enteric Jazz Band.” I said, “Here are the bugs that are the big players in abscess formation. This bug is this instrument, and that bug is that instrument.” I started telling the story of how Harry Houdini died. At one point the saxophone stops and the other instruments keep going, just like how this one bug doesn’t die and sits there and waits for the right conditions. When the conditions are right in the story, the sax starts playing again. It kind of was to symbolize the time it takes for an abscess to form. In tests I found that stuff presented in notes or in more didactic lecture form resulted in 50- to 60-percent recall, and stuff from the jazz band had around 100-percent recall.
Q. Do these methods make your students better doctors?
A. Absolutely. It shows they can have a little bit of fun and still learn, and that not everything has to be serious and boring. —Catherine Rampell
Okays, I am trying to tag various Occupational Therapy (OT) Books for this blog. One of the reasons to share out with the OT professionals and students about book sharing and recommendation of books. This to mobilize a knowledge round the sphere of allied health care industry. Well, how did I do this?
Let’s me introduce to you guys BookJetty.com. BookJetty.com is a social utility that connects you with your friends’ bookshelves. Doesn’t need to be OT related. Novel and any type of storybooks will do. You can share and reckon all the books that you wanted, reading and read to your networks of friends. Make new friends through the interest of book. Plus, check out the widget above, that I have mashed up and reckon to the OT community to read.
If you wish to know more about BookJetty.com, you can visit to BookJetty.com.
If you wants to know and meet the community in BookJetty.com via Facebook, here is the url.
Lastly, if you want to find more Occupational Therapists based in Singapore, via Facebook, here is the url.. Join us in this Singapore Facebook Occupational Therapy and we can share our knowledge practice in this industry via social networking approach.
What can BookJetty.com do for us?
For more detail, you can read from the developer of BookJetty.com’s blog, here.
What can I wish for in the near future?
I hope La Trobe University’s librarians would also connected their university’s OPAC with BookJetty.com. Just like NTU Library, NLB, UOW Libraries and the other 300 libraries.
By the way, La Trobe Libraries has facilities for people with disabilities & special needs. Wow, this is a good. In Singapore, lot’s of the libraries here actually miss out this part. For example, in NTU library (the older buildings, as also in NYP Libraries. In fact, most of the library entrance in Singapore are actually unfriendly to disabilities with the 3M Gates greeting all the patrons right door of the libraries. I hope, local librarians would actually look take this serious, as Suhaila did mention to me, the next few year, there will be more elderly in Singapore, especially the public libraries. The Government has to cater such needs.
What come to my mind straight?
Unfortunately, I spend with my paternal grandfather only till I was 7 years old. He left us in a misfortune accident, due to a flight of ladder. And couple of other stories from my friends, on how their grandfolks left them. At least 60%, are due to unfriendly infrastructure, such as in vehicles, homes and public areas. One thing, I learnt about having grandfolks at home, they are the best librarians (plus with any former training). Their knowledge and strories share with the grandchildren are great. It is seldom to hear father and mother sharing their childhood stories with their children. But between grandfolks and children,tones based on my observations. This is one of the factors that actually contribute to generation gaps.
Anyway, that is my view point. Till now, I left you guys, with BookJetty.com.