summary

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In reading posts I keep going back to how these educational strategies could be used in nursing education. Then while working on my nursing ed. project I ran across these two articles. Ohio State University College of Nursing has constructed a virtual community called Mirror Lake. This community contains Mirror Lake Medical Center a virtual hospital.The hospital contains a fully automated electronic medical record and other technologies to enhance the student's abiltiy to learn in new and contemporary ways (Curran et al, 2009). Also featured in the Journal of Nursing Education February 09 issue was an article about using constructivist strategies in nursing education. These articles brought full circle this weeks discussion. We have all been able to verbalize the stratagies for 3-D learning and the constructivist theory based in de Jong's article, to visualize them in practice in our individual areas of expertise was a piece of the puzzle I had yet to grasp. As we have a good number of nursing ed. majors in this class I wanted to point out these articles.

Building a Virtual Community for Nursing Education: The Town of Mirror Lake. Journal of Nursing Education, January 2009

Constructivist Strategies in Online Distance Education in Nursing. Journal of Nursing Education, February 2009

March 7, 2009 9:12 PM

summary

Oops! I posted my summary as a reply.

In reading posts I keep going back to how these educational strategies could be used in nursing education. Then while working on my nursing ed. project I ran across these two articles. Ohio State University College of Nursing has constructed a virtual community called Mirror Lake. This community contains Mirror Lake Medical Center a virtual hospital.The hospital contains a fully automated electronic medical record and other technologies to enhance the student's abiltiy to learn in new and contemporary ways (Curran et al, 2009). Also featured in the Journal of Nursing Education February 09 issue was an article about using constructivist strategies in nursing education. These articles brought full circle this weeks discussion. We have all been able to verbalize the stratagies for 3-D learning and the constructivist theory based in de Jong's article, to visualize them in practice in our individual areas of expertise was a piece of the puzzle I had yet to grasp. As we have a good number of nursing ed. majors in this class I wanted to point out these articles.

Building a Virtual Community for Nursing Education: The Town of Mirror Lake. Journal of Nursing Education, January 2009

Constructivist Strategies in Online Distance Education in Nursing. Journal of Nursing Education, February 2009

March 7, 2009 9:12 PM

Games and Simulations

Whew! what a week. In reading the required chapter Games and Simulations in Online Learning I reviewed some valuable information about the foundation for interactive or computer based learning. 3-D technologies have formed a basis for learning in the context of a online social environment in which the students share the role of creators and consumers of knowledge and learning. Following a constructivist theory, creating online social environments promotes equalities of communication and interactions, a key factor in learning. Transformation from individual participant to central member of community through apprenticeship and increased participation also plays a key role in supporting the social interactions among the community members. The theoretical rationales underlying this pedagogy is based on social constructivism. In this theory, knowledge is viewed as a human product and learning is a social process, meaningful learning occurs when people are engaged in social activities. The use of 3-D technologies basically turn learning into fun! Although authentic tasks must be developed to engage students, educational goals are achieved through the social web constructed by the community.

I also chose to read Scientific Discovery Learning with Computer Simulations of Conceptual Domains as my second assignment. In this reading the use of simulations is discussed. Simulations are good interventions for the constructivist learner. Following Gesalt theory that a correlation exists between conscious experience and learning, computer simulations are useful tools in the knowledge acquisistion process. The instructional support that is neccessary include: Direct access to fundamental information required to do the simulation or experiment, support in hypothosis generation, desing of experiments, making predictions, support for regulative learning processes such as model progression, planning support, moniterinig support, and structuring the sicovery process. All of these supports are needed to make the discovery process valid.