Trends and Roles Assignment - PIDP 3100

Trends and Roles Assignment

Articles

            For this assignment I chose 3 articles to share and review with my partner. The first article is Tech Talk: Mobile Apps for Nurses and can be found at: http://www.nursingcenter.com/lnc/journalarticle?Article_ID=1059927.

The second article I chose is iPads in Nursing Education and Practice: Brief: Literature Review which can be found at: http://firesidelibrarian.com/content/ipads-nursing-education-and-practice-brief-literature-review. Lastly, for a third choice I selected a report titled Advancing Technology in Nursing Education: Intergrating iPads into Clinical Practice and Patient Ed. This report can be found at http://nnlm.gov/mar/funding/reports/robertmorris.pdf.

New Insights

A major insight into the role of the adult educator that I have gained from completing this assignment is that we have to become increasingly more technologically savvy, even outside the classroom. I have also realized that adult educators of the health sciences programs now play a vital role in educating students about the proper use of technology in the health care setting. This can include educating them about the use of technology and its potential impact on patient confidentiality, as well as, teaching them to be ‘tech savvy’ by educating them on how to choose apps and related resources wisely.

Trends

The major trend that my partner and I focused on for this assignment was the use of personal tablets (i-pads), and associated apps in the classroom and in the practicum environment. While researching into this subject I was shocked to find out that the use of i-pads in nursing education is actually very common. I have tried to utilize the use of i-pads or personal tablets inside the classroom, but have never explored their use outside the classroom which can open up many new avenues of education for students.  One of the trends that stood out in the research was that apps are becoming a widely used educational resource in health sciences. For example, it has now become common for nursing students to use a drug manual app instead of using the actual paper manual especially while in the clinical environment. There are a variety of nursing related apps available for students to use and I now plan on doing further research into these so that I can introduce them to my students in order to further increase their learning experience.

Web-Conference

I enjoyed the web-conference experience. My partner and I were easily able to converse regarding trends and roles in each of our closely related fields of study.  I learned that at my partner’s school they are already utilizing i-pads in their student’s educational experience by providing them to use throughout the program which I found fascinating. We debated the effects of new technology both within the classroom, as well as, during the practicum components of our programs. We talked about the worry of possibly hindering students by providing them with ‘the easy’ apps for their personal tablets. We also talked about the concern of students ‘goofing off’ on their tablets or mobile phones during school or while in practicum. Overall, the web-conference was a very engaging experience.