I have decided to use twitter as my personal learning network. When researching which type of personal learning network I wanted to use, I found that twitter seems to be the most easily accessible tool for sharing information. With twitter, I can search keywords and hashtags that are related to physician assistant studies and the medical world. Twitter is also great because you can easily find people to follow based on who else is retweeting and liking the posts I do. Searching keywords and and looking at who is tweeting about things related to healthcare and medicine allows me to best find scholars in my profession. Just by using twitter’s search tools I was able to find doctors, physician assistants, and students to follow. All of which tweet and like posts which are similar to my interests. It is also easy to connect with scholars by commenting on tweets or even directly messaging them. It is so easy to share my knowledge, experiences, and ideas with scholars just by writing and posting a tweet. For all these reasons, twitter seemed to be the best network to start my personal learning network. Before creating my twitter, I knew I didn’t want to be all that public, as I am used to having no social media at all. But now that I have explored different networks and seen how productive they can be, I am okay with being public on my twitter. Twitter allows me to be active throughout my week, as I am checking it daily. I am constantly finding posts in my profession that are interesting to me. The more posts I see, the more profiles I am finding and following as well. I am trying to follow new accounts daily, as well as tweet, and retweet posts a few times per week. which is easily obtainable since I have made checking my twitter a daily routine. I will know if my personal learning network is serving me well if I am getting things out of it. I know for me a big goal is going to physician assistant school after graduating from Plymouth State. A lot of the accounts I follow are physician assistant programs or students currently attending them. These accounts give me insight on what the workload is like and how to manage my schedule, as well as some insight on the things I will be studying. So far I am enjoying using twitter as my personal learning network. I find it to be an easily accessible network that allows for easy communication and sharing of ideas and knowledge between scholars.
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Earlier this week I had the opportunity to interview Dr. Julie Bernier, a professor here at Plymouth State university. As the director of athletic training, Dr. Bernier also teaches in the health and human performance major, with a focus on athletic training and allied health sciences. Some of her classes include kinesiology, injury assessment, medical sales, and courses in the graduate school of athletic training. Dr. Bernier holds a bachelors in athletic training from Keene State University, a masters of curriculum and instruction from Keene State University and a doctorate of sports medicine from the University of Virginia. She spent time working as an athletic trainer here at plymouth before going to work on her doctorate in Virginia. After teaching for 14 years, Dr. Bernier switched over to working in administration for 15 years as the University’s vice president and provost of academic affairs. During this time Dr. Bernier explained how she took a break from research to focus on her work at the school. In 2016, Dr. Bernier decided to get back into the classroom as a professor. She explained the difficulties of being out of the field for 15 years, as she is still trying to catch up with all the research that has come out in the time she spent working in administration. Dr. Bernier says she stays current through teaching, as she needs to stay up to date with what is coming out in order to apply it to her classes. Interdisciplinary work is nothing new for Dr. Bernier, as most of the work she does can be considered interdisciplinary. Dr. Bernier worked on research at the University of Virginia, she worked with a radiologist and biomechanist in the gait lab. With the radiologist she worked on developing a new tool to measure the amount of ligament disruption in the ankle. The Radiologist used x rays to validate their new tool. Along with the radiologist she also worked with biomechanists, who helped confirm functional ankle ability in patients. One of Dr. Bernier’s most recent examples of interdisciplinary work is her new class, medical sales. This is a class that works with the sales department, health and human performance department, and the nursing department. The course brings elements from three different majors and applies it in one course. Dr. Bernier explained that students will benefit the most from the class due to having professors from different departments each adding in elements from their own areas of expertise. At the end of my interview with Dr. Bernier, she gave me advice for my future in healthcare. She shared that patience is key, throughout my education and career, as there will always be more to learn and more to research in my field. I am so thankful to Dr.Bernier for lending her time for this interview.
Last week I read three articles that really allowed me to think about pushing my limits throughout my interdisciplinary education. The readings discussed a new idea of using personal domains as a learning tool for students. There were a lot of key points in the readings that got me thinking about my educational past and where it can go in the future. When I think about my past education, I know I have completed strong work and I often wish I could look back at how far I have grown as an intellect. In “The Web We Need to Give Students”, Watters states, “And if a student owns their own domain, as she moves from grade to grade and from school to school, all that information – their learning portfolio – can travel with them”. This quote made me realize how amazing it would be to have a portfolio to look back on all the work I have accomplished. It would be a tool I could see myself using for motivation, when I need a boost of confidence to complete a difficult assignment. Now that I have been introduced to cyberinfrastructures, I am hoping to see a change in the way I learn and work this semester. One of the best features I learned about having a personal cyberinfrastructure is that I get to make it be exactly what I want. I can use social medias to post about what I did this weeked, but with my own cyberinfrastructure I can also post things that showcase my educational strengths. Campbell wrote in “A Personal Cyberinfrastructure”, “To get there, students must be effective architects, narrators, curators, and inhabitants of their own digital lives”. I really appreciate that when I create a cyberinfrastructure I get to be in control. I can go out of my comfort zone and use new and creative tools that will allow me to build my own personal domain. I have never built my own website and I am not technically inclined, so even the thought about making one seems frightening. Being a little scared won’t hold me back though, because I know that the benefits of having a personal domain will be worth it. I will finally have a space to keep my work, build a portfolio that I can use to further my education, while I get to design it the way I want, and I get to choose what I post and who sees it. Another thing I find amazing about personal cyberinfrastructures is that I can choose how public I want it to be. In Cheney’s, “How Public? Why Public”, he says, “I want students to find productive ways of going public that I never thought of. I also hope some students will say no”. Some people tend to be more public than others, and while there are benefits of being public there are also benefits of being less public. For me, I never liked sharing my life with the public, and to have the option to keep my cyberinfrastructure personal and private makes the whole process more comfortable. The three readings from last week allowed me to open up to a new idea I had never heard of before. The idea of having my own website and being able to create it the way I want and choose what I put out there on it is exciting. I can’t wait push through my limits and create my cyberinfrastructure this semester, and to continue to grow throughout my interdisciplinary journey.
Carol Dweck’s “Brainology” was a very eye opening article on the way students learn and apply themselves to their education. In her writing Dweck discusses different mindsets students have, and what performance looks like under each mindset. The two mindsets are fixed, the idea that a person has a fixed amount of intelligence and is limited to what they can achieve, and a growth mindset, the idea that intelligence is something we can continuously improve through the want of learning. She also talks about studies that have been done to show the growth or decline of students as a result of praising, and mindset workshops. The results of the first study showed that children who were praised on their intelligence performed poorly overtime, while children who were praised on their effort performed better over time. The children who were praised on intelligence because embarrassed of making mistakes, or doing poorly. Due to the pressures put on these children, their performance ended up declining. On the other hand the children who were praised on their effort were able to keep working hard and increasing their performance. I think this study in particular was highly relatable. The other study Dweck wrote about was with two groups, one who had eight study skills sessions and the other group had study skills and growth mindset sessions. It showed that the group with only the study skills showed no improvement and the group with the mindset training had been improving. Dweck’s writing, while it was surprising in some ways, it was also very understandable and easy to relate to (Dweck, “Brainology”).
For me, ever since elementary school, grades were always a competition with my friends and I, each of us wanting to be the smartest. We studied hard and put the time and effort into assignments because we didn’t want the embarrassment of having the lowest score of our friend group. As I got older the need to do better became harder, and whenever I was faced with a challenge it made me want to quit. I had the idea in my head that if it was challenging and difficult for me to understand then maybe I just wasn’t smart enough. I was stuck in a fixed mindset, I thought intelligence was something I couldn’t change, either I was smart or not. Once I reached high school I began realizing that grades weren’t a competition and that If I applied myself I could do well. Once I started making goals for my future I used those as an incentive to push myself to reach my potential intelligence. I am striving to learn now, not because I want to be the best but because I want to gain the knowledge. Overall, Dweck’s article was definitely inspiring to read as a student. For those who are still stuck in fixed mindsets, the idea of Brainology gives hope that they can improve to a growth mindset. The ideas in this article can be helpful for educators as well as parents. Everyone has the potential to grow as intellects, we just need to learn how to get in the correct mindset. |