I have given several presentations where I want to include some historical context and make the information more than just a list of events. I recently found some PowerPoint timeline templates on Microsoft’s website that add some action to the information.

3-D timeline that spans across three slides

Pictures that move along a curved path onto the slide

Dynamic timeline

Search for the information, build a resource, and then share it

There was yet again another interesting article in the New York Times that relates to toxicology and environment health. It seems that every day in this newspaper I read about something that relates to the subject matter of a National Library of Medicine (NLM) resource. Because I am one of quite a few trainers providing instruction on TOXNET, a suite of NLM resources covering toxicology and environmental health, I find something pertinent on a regular basis. The latest article of interest to me is in the February 2, 2012 New York Times Home Section titled “To Help Make Sure Your Home Is Healthy, an Ingredients List”.

The author, Fred A. Bernstein interviewed two architects who out of the need to be informed about building materials that are free of known and suspected carcinogens had to conduct their own research. Because they did not find the product information they needed for many of their potential building materials they ended up gathering the data and finally creating their own database. It is available to anyone at http://transparency.perkinswill.com/main

Upon consultation with one of my colleagues at Specialized Information Services (SIS) division of NLM she suggested that two TOXNET resources would provide similar information. Haz-Map® is an occupational toxicology database and HSDB® focuses on the toxicology of potentially hazardous chemicals. All of the NLM web resources are free.

For two architects with a focused need it is amazing to me what they did out of need. I laud them for their generosity in deciding to share their efforts with everyone.

I love my Asics Kayano socks for jogging because they are very comfortable, and moisture wicking. But really it is the color scheme that reminds me of puffins that led me to my first purchase.  As I read my newspaper this morning an article motivated me to look up the product ingredients of my beloved socks.  Just as I suspected, one of the products listed is “NanoGlidea”.

I first become aware and eventually very interested in nanotechnology several years ago because I am involved in the training of the use of the National Library of Medicine’s TOXNET – a collection of databases on hazardous chemicals, toxic releases, and environmental health.

The article I am referring to in the January 26, 2012 issue of the New York Times by Cornelia Dean tells us that an expert panel of the National Academy of Sciences says that not enough is known about the potential health and environmental risks of nanomaterials. The panel has called for more research.  What might be the motivation for concern?  Dean goes on to say that in 2009 product sales from the nanotechnology market was $225 billion.  Who was the motivator for the study? The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) requested the National Research Council (NRC), the research arm of the National Academy of Science to convene the panel.  The report was issued by the NRC on January 25, 2012 and is available right now for $42.30 in the form of a “Prepublication PDF”

The website Nanowerk offers a fine summary of the report at:

http://goo.gl/FIJpX

The old saying: A picture is worth a 1000 words. In this 21st century, a video is worth a 1000 words.

Educreations Interactive Whiteboard (free)
Educreations turns your iPad into a recordable whiteboard. Creating a video tutorial is as simple as touching, tapping and talking.
http://goo.gl/PXElq

ScreenChomp by TechSmith (free)
Record It. Sketch It. Share It. – to create a sharable, replay-able video that tells your story clearly. http://goo.gl/NZArV

Both apps are only for iPad and are easy to use. The apps both provide multiple ways to share the video: email, Facebook, Twitter. Click on the links to view a short example made with each of the apps. I used my finger to draw on the screen.

The National Library of Medicine’s main web [http://www.nlm.nih.gov/] site search added PubMed results to its spotlight feature. The new “PubMed Citations” tab includes the first five citations returned by PubMed. The results include the title of the citation linked to its PubMed record. Clicking on the “See more article citations…” link retrieves the complete results set for the search term(s) in PubMed.
The spotlight displays up to three tabs depending on the search term(s):

Follow this link to read the entire Technical Bulletin announcement: >http://goo.gl/JSU3e

Recently I was interested in investigating two particular aspects of adult learning.

First of all I am interested in what keeps people coming back to a learning experience that involves more than just a single session.

It turns out there is something called adult learner persistence according to the New England Learner Persistence Findings from the New England Literary Resource Center (NELRC).  The following, from their website, lists six “drivers” that fulfill affective needs:

1. Sense of belonging and community
2. Agency
3. Relevancy
4. Clarity of purpose
5. Competence
6. Stability

Please view the NELRC short but effective summary at http://goo.gl/GIHlM

Secondly since I hear the word “feedback” so often I wanted guidelines to define and flesh out my simple understanding. ASCD (formerly the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development) has a chapter from, How to give effective feedback to Your students by Susan M. Brookhart at the link below

http://goo.gl/cDWKS

In summary the feedback should be about the:

• Task
• Processing of the task
• Self-regulation
• Self as a person

The emphasis should be on the strengths and weaknesses of the performance, to help create strategies that will help improve performance, to help the student connect their work with their intention, and to help position the student as the one who did and will do the work.

The breakdown of these principles of effective feedback seems quite straightforward. Imagine instructing someone on how to properly eat a whole lobster. Even when sitting on your hands and shutting your mouth while the learner figures out how to do it, it is so hard to be an encouraging cheerleader while giving effective prompts.  It is hard to resist taking the lobster apart yourself.  Giving good feedback is hard to do.

I recently came across an app category that I am very excited about; Handwriting recognition. Just picture yourself swiping your finger across your iPad, iPhone, Kindle Fire or Android phone screen. Now picture yourself forming letters while swiping your finger across the screen (You can also use a stylus). That’s how easy it is. The apps can be used in meetings, brainstorming sessions, or [your idea here]. Both of the sites below have short demonstration videos to get you started.

7 Notes (Free and a paid version)
http://goo.gl/pOyJX

WritePad ($9.99)
http://goo.gl/jO9Hj

The National Library of Medicine Training Center (NTC) will be creating web based self-paced tutorials related to PubMed®, TOXNET®, and NCBI databases.

We need your input in order to inform topics, length, and format of the tutorials we will develop.  Please visit https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/ntctutorial to complete a short questionnaire.  The questionnaire should take 10-15 minutes to complete.

Please complete the questionnaire by close of business on Friday, February 17, 2012.

Questions may be directed to Sharon Dennis, Assistant Director of the NTC, at sharon.dennis@utah.edu.

1. Do you Tweet? Whittling away at a post can be frustrating while we try to figure out how much of a sentence can be removed and still retain its meaning. Try these two text reduction sites designed for Twitter posts. The first site uses special characters that look like letters.
   • http://txtn.us/text-reduction
   • http://tweetshrink.com/
2. Let’s remember to abide by copyright. Creative Commons has an easy search interface to find photos with the permissions you need.  http://search.creativecommons.org/

3. Mr. Purrington taught evolutionary biology for 14 years at Hudson University. He has some good tips on creating and presenting an academic poster. You will also find a template and links to poster examples. http://colinpurrington.com/tips/academic/posterdesign

Richard Byrne posted a slideshow on the Free Technology for Teachers blog called, “Discovery, Discussion and Demonstration.” If you page through the slideshow you’ll find references to a number of online tools for teaching, including a few that you may not have heard of before: Wevideo, a collaborative online video editor; and Socrative, a free student response system.