Blog 7: Professional Learning Network

It was hard to find an educational group geared toward me because teaching medicine is a bit of a niche, most groups I found were more geared to K-12 or college. I tried joining a couple several weeks ago.
Active learning Facebook group
https://www.facebook.com/groups/12256460391/

Learning Education and Training Professionals Group
http://www.educationalnetworking.com/Learning%2C+Education+and+Training+Professionals+Group

The first turned out to be dead which I didn't realize when I joined. The second was ok, but again, really not geared toward me or what I do. More toward general professionals. I read some aspects of it but really didn't get much out of it.   I have been a member of an online course through Stanford for sometime (https://class.stanford.edu/courses/Medicine/ANES205/Fall2014/about) that involves weekly updates with lectures and various discussion forums to talk about the issues at hand. I think it actually falls under the category of a learning network quite well due to the interactive nature of it and I think I got the most out of it through various discussion on how best to teach and engage patients. The discussions involved both students and the instructors which was nice.

The RSS feed I had trouble using, its information overload for me. I checked it every now and then and usually just used it as a reminder to check out websites I already used on a regular basis. I frequently read the Health Care Blog. Its also kind of a neat way to organize various articles from several journals of emergency medicine like Academic Emergency Medicine and NEJM journal watch. But overall I found it a little overwhelming and difficult for me to use in my general work flow.

I think these are great general tools for education. For RSS feeds: High school students could use it to keep track of recent events for a class, college students could use it to help with research for a paper, elementary school teachers can keep up with other ideas around the country. Its a great idea if you use it right, which I just couldn't find the right way to use it for me. Professional Learning Networks have clear benefits for larger populations like science high school teachers or elementary school teachers. I think my issue is being an emergency physician in education there just isn't a huge community out there like that, its more localized and everyone just already knows everyone and contacts them directly.