IMU-LS-06: From Tinkering to Tottering to Totally Extreme Learning (Curtis Bonk)

  

ICE Breakers - A Fish That Barks and The Moonwalking Bear!

When the cat reaches the fishbowl, then pause the video and ask your Students/Participants (S/P) to figure out what happens next. Most likely you will get S/P's attention, and stimulate their minds to think creatively about what happens next in a competitive but enjoyable way. If you break S/P up into groups, and then give each group say 2 minutes to come up with their answer, you will get collaborative fun.



WARM UP S/P FIRST, OR THEY WILL ________!
Using short videos found on the Internet as icebreakers to stimulate thinking and help people to get familiar with each other in new situations and environments is today easier than ever, because of the millions (I mean billions!) of videos freely available on sites like YouTube.

More importantly, before you engage your S/P to learn and interact with the subject matter in a face-to-face session (or online session), it is important to warm them up first, or awaken them from their sleep (or whatever they are doing/thinking). It is obvious in sports that we need to warm our relevant muscles before playing a particular activity; otherwise the likelihood of getting injuries increases significantly. Though, strangely enough not all lecturers/educators/facilitators apply this common sense idea to learning. Let's not forget that our Brain is also a muscle that needs to warm up too, or it would probably fall asleep (not literally!), or be in another dimension beyond the subject paradigm.



AWARENESS TEST

Remember to pause after the first scene when the passes have been made, and then ask 'How many passes does the team in white make?' Most S/P will probably answer correctly, and then you ask 'Did you see the Moonwalking bear?' And unless they have already seen this video (12+ million have already on YouTube alone!), they would have ignored that particular incident. Although, this is labelled as an awareness test, it is also a great short video to warm up students' minds before getting them busy with the subject matter.



IMPORTANCE OF LANGUAGE SKILLS

This one is a classic, which I commonly use to emphasize the importance, relationship, and connection of language with understanding and thinking. Instead of being really serious about it, and making people uncomfortable when talking about such matters, you could use videos such as the one above to make a point (that probably sticks better, too).

I have watched this scene (above) from 'The Pink Panther 2' a bazillion times, but I still laugh every time I watch it. I have used this video in several workshops to indirectly encourage S/P to work on their English accents as that might hamper their communication with others (e.g. lectures and discussions), and that new accents can be learned (although it could take time).

These are just four examples of using short videos (less than 5 minutes) found on the Internet to stimulate S/P to think, and break down communication barriers. The best part is that there are thousands, if not millions of freely available videos ready to be plucked from video sharing sites.

If you have any experiences, or discovered some mind stimulating short videos to share, please share it in the comments section (That would be great!).



HOW TO DOWNLOAD VIDEOS FROM YOUTUBE?
I knew that question was coming (obviously!), and here is the answer (link below):

The Real Way to Download-Convert-Insert YouTube Videos into PowerPoint!

What about downloading and copyright? I discuss this issue a bit here.

Don't worry, be happy, and take calculated risks using short videos to stimulate thinking and breaking down communication barriers (though, please consider sensitivities to religion, culture and race).

It is amazing how fun a learning session can become by taking a few risks in the way we facilitate learning :)

IMU Learning Series 04 - The Art of Diagnosis

I teach medical students in the IMU Clinical School at Batu Pahat. These students are in their final semester of the MBBS program. They undergo their senior clerkship training here before appearing for their final examination. The senior clerkship program is designed to train these students make the transition from medical student to doctor.

3 GUIDING PRINCIPLES

My job here is largely to show them how to blend their scientific knowledge with the art needed to practice the discipline of internal medicine. Three principles guide me in this role.

1. The first is not to be a trader. Traders, as you know, sell in retail what they have bought wholesale. If I catch myself merely dishing out information from books and journals, I know I have violated this principle.
   
   
2. The second is to always remember that what the student does for learning is more important than what the teacher does for teaching. This comes in handy whenever I plan my classes.
   
   
3. The third is to be aware that the learning process is akin to the lighting of a candle and not to the filling of an empty vessel.
   

THE ART OF DIAGNOSIS

The art of diagnosis in Internal Medicine is in many ways similar to that of putting together the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. I show students the mental processes involved in fitting together the clues they get from the history, physical examination and investigations of their patients. To put it another way, if the knowledge these students already have from their books can be compared to alphabets, my job is to teach them how to form words and meaningful sentences.

I try to impress on my students that understanding involves more than simply hearing the spoken words of their patients. I emphasize the importance of listening with both ears and eyes, for body language is important too. As Wilfred Trotter, an English neurosurgeon once said – “diseases often reveal their secrets in casual parenthesis”. What patients say, and how they say it, can both provide clues to the diagnosis.

The hospital environment is filled with disease, death and suffering. It is not uncommon for health care workers to be adversely affected emotionally because of it. I make my students aware of this and I encourage them to find ways to develop that protective space within them which Dr. Stephen R. Covey has called ‘the space between stimulus and response’ in one of his books. For it is in that space that we can choose our responses to what we see and find around us.

When I teach these young medical students, I am often reminded of these words from a poem by Khalil Gibran: Your children are not your children for they are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself. They come through you but not from you. And though they are with you yet they belong not to you…… You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you. For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday……

As a coach, I am therefore always aware that the students under my care have the potential to reach heights that I cannot. That, paradoxically, makes me both humble and proud.

Velayudhan Menon, MD

Related Post

• MedTutor - Learning to Think!

Let’s Improve Our Keyboard Skills!

From what I have learned after observing especially Professors and Senior Lecturers (PSL) in action, is that many of them often lack the ability to type quickly. It is often the one, two, three, four fingers magic show! It wouldn't also surprise me if there is a strong correlation between poor typing skills and de-motivation to facilitate online learning.

The faster you type, the more time you have to think (Better yet, do it at the same time!). The beauty of great typing skills comes when you are capable of typing as fast as (or faster than) you think. Also, then you don't need to say, "What was I thinking again?".

In short, to improve the success of any e-learning or online facilitation initiative, I believe it is vital that educators (and students) have good keyboard and typing skills (say at least 30+ words per minute), so that they can efficiently answer e-mails, forum posts, chat sessions, develop content, projects, assignments, and so on.

If you don't have great keyboard skills already, don't worry. Just ignore your stubborn ego, and start practicing. You don't need to spend money, because here are a bunch of free learning tools to assist you:

• keybr.com
  Take a typing speed test and practice typing online.
  
  
• Peter's Online Typing Course
  Provides a set of free online typing lessons and typing exercises for beginning typists, and frustrated hunt-and-peckers who want to move from four-finger typing to full-blown touch typing.
  
  
• Goodtyping
  Free online typing course. Please try it without registering. If you like what you practice, then bother to register :)
  
  
• TypingWeb
  is a free online typing tutor & keyboarding tutorial for typists of all ages. All skill levels will benefit from TypingWeb's free keyboarding lessons.
  
  
• Rapid Typing
  A typing game, where the training takes place in a “virtual picturesque underwater world” adding some fun to the learning.
  
  
• PowerTyping
  An online free typing tutor for kids, students and adults alike!
  
  
• BBC Typing Tutorial
  Aimed at the younger kids, but is great fun for anyone learning typing.

Have fun mastering your keyboard skills, which will empower your potential and ability to really enjoy online facilitation in a 'Boltelicious' way. Just remember to practice and ignore your stubborn and lazy ego (if so!) :)