W08: Cloud Learning Launchpad

Thank you for your informative OER. I enjoyed the ease of your website and its design. All the tabs were well organized and easy to maneuver. I also appreciated the risk you took in trying out different forms of workspaces. While my group had Googledocs we did not run into some of the same problems as the other groups did. Perhaps I’m a little more positive on this because I did not have to experience them, but I did appreciate finding out which ones were more successful and offered ease of collaboration. It’s interesting to see how Googledocs is still so successful and preferred when it comes to cloud collaboration. I also think these various websites are a perfect reflection of some of the technologies that we use in the classroom. Sometimes it can work perfectly and other times it does not. Yet the idea of trial and error is something that I can sympathize with.

Dear Week 8 Group, Your Weebly is clean, well-organized and easy to navigate. The introductory video on your Weebly site was well done and helpful. If I am being honest though, the definition of the “cloud’ was a little weak. Although you referred us back to week 5, this is supposed to be a stand-alone OER for submission to NMH, they wouldn’t be able to refer back to another project. Market wise, I’d like to know which cloud systems are being used the most and why. Regarding your media choices, I’ve see the Sugata Mitra TED talk before, while it is a great, it does not relate to the medical field and its challenges. There is still no mention of cloud computing until the 20 minute mark. Lawrence Sherman’s TED Talk after 14 mins there is finally a mention of collaboration supported by technology, but nothing directly on the cloud. Are these the best choices for your OER? I got mixed messages from your OER. At first I thought it was on using the cloud for patient care and medical data, which obviously had privacy concerns. Then I realized it was on professional development and lifelong learning courses but it did not remain focused on this opportunity horizon. I feel like your OER could have had greater focus on your specific field. Finally, regarding the cloud tools we were asked to use, we were placed into a collaboration space that was not a collaborative tool. As a result we had to deviate from the activity and collaborate elsewhere. It was quite innovative of you to use our pre-established groups to complete your activities. Survey had a nice comedic element to it but I a not sure if its tone is professional enough for submission to an academic publication. You clearly put a lot of work and effort in to your OER and I think if you focus your cloud lens on medical education a little more you will have a solid product. Thank you for this learning opportunity and I hope the feedback is helpful and constructive.

Hi Week 8! Thanks for your posting. I really enjoyed the presentation software you used, and you did a great job presenting the types of Cloud Solutions out there. It was interesting to read the current marketplace projections, and take a look at the graph of expected grown in cloud-based solutions; wherever there is a need within the industry in information/data management, a cloud-solution becomes an option. The issue was with your Educational based solutions; how does Education use cloud-based software and if not is this area of development? It would have been interesting to see some data and potential uses in this industry. In terms of the medical industry, medical staff, physicians and healthcare workers all need access to highly detailed data regarding thousands of patients, so it would make perfect sense to store it on a cloud, eliminating the need for database infrastructure/server rooms that are simply not viable in urban centres. In addition to your examples, I was particularly interested in the growing need of e-learning in remote areas (as this is an area that I want to pursue) in medical education. Have the medical schools been training doctors on this delivering this type of education? I would be particularly interested in finding the right paths to understanding how medical doctors are trained in this type of e-learning software. In any case, the overall site is interesting, and excellent! Well done! I am about to do the activity!

Thank you for your insight about testing the collaboration tools beforehand. We thought that it would be a good way to try out different tools and share the experience but can see how it can cause some frustrations! We'll also take a look at tying the cloud based solutions.

Thanks week 8! Your market overview of cloud based solutions in general was an informative overview of a broad market. The pieces on cloud based applications in medical schools was also very interesting. I did struggle a bit to see how some of the cloud based solutions in healthcare were 'Ed Tech', as they were often more data storage and retrieval type applications. The idea for the assignment was great. We were able to pull from past knowledge and other courses, which is always good to apply past learning. However, I would have suggested doing a trial run with some of the cloud based collaboration tools. Not all tools are meant for all purposes. In the same way that different social media (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest) are designed for different purposes, different collaboration tools have different purposes. Padlet is a great tool, I have used it with great success before, but never for an in-depth ongoing conversation or project. It is an excellent tool for students to use to throw up a question about today's lecture or share a finished product so that peers can evaluate it. Perhaps there should have been a bit more analysis of the tools used. Thanks for the weekly investigation!