Friday, February 20, 2009

Medpedia

This Medpedia project looks quite promising.

According to the creators of Medpedia:

"Editors are now collaborating on the Medpedia Project to collect the best information about health, medicine and the body and make it freely available worldwide. Only physicians and Ph.D.s in a biomedical field are allowed to make edits directly to the Article pages. However, everyone is encouraged to contribute by using the "Suggest Changes" link at the top of each Article page."

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

M-learning and Usability

I like Jakob Nielsen's recent post on usability issues for the mobile web. Considering that many e-learning professionals see mobile learning or "m-learning" as the next big thing, and given the huge amount of time and budget and development that is already associated with online learning, it is kind of scary to think of creating a "mobile" version of e-learning applications specifically for mobile devices. Tony Karrer has some interesting insights into the topic where he mentions mLearnopedia.

According to this recent article from the BBC that outlines a 'Mobile health' campaign launched, and another article on the mHealth Alliance on mobile health and NGOs, mobile or "m-health" is also a rapidly growing area (thanks to Raj for sending me these links). There will be particular issues with security and usability for this audience.

Not surprisingly, it looks like there will be even more design and usability issues to consider with the evolution of m-learning.

Photo courtesy of Flickr creative commons: Treasuremytext for iPhone: SpringBoard by katielips.

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Neat Way to Animate (for free!)

GoAnimate Demo: Star Trek Launch from GoAnimate on Vimeo.

This tool looks like it might be a fun, visually rich way of communicating and creating mini-animations. I'm going to give it a whirl to see what kinds of cool things I can come up with (and, to see if they can be educational). Thanks to Raj for sending me the link.

Monday, February 9, 2009

Twitter and Health 2.0



(if the above presentation doesn't fit the screen, click here to see it on the VizEdu site)

This presentation is done by Bertalan Meskóthe, a medical student and the same person behind the PeRSSonalized Medicine and Webcina. I'm not sure if we'll really be using Twitter within Healthcare as Bertalan outlines, but it's an interesting concept.

PeRSSonalized Medicine

Personalized Medicine (beta)

For busy clinicians who don't necessarily have time to use their own news aggregator, this tool could be useful for helping to managing pieces of information. The creator dubs it as a way to keep up-to-date and create your own "medical journal" through a personalized space.

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Listening in on Social Media Conversations

I find such great stuff on Donald Clark's Big Dog, Little Dog blog. Thanks to Donald for pointing me towards Spy, which allows you to "listen in" on social media conversations by showing threads on a particular topic on Twitter.

Check out the Spy listings for e-learning; or, try another e-learning list through Serph.