Best Bytes: 3 Cool Gadgets
Posted on March 7, 2011 by kcarlson | No Comments
Submitted by April Frost
Here are some websites and apps that may be helpful for you, students, medical personnel, and even patients.
New Students:
Trust It or Trash It?
This is a very basic tool to help new researchers determine if the information they are reviewing is credible or not. It offers checklists on the areas of “Who said it?” “When did they say it?” and “How did they know?” For expert librarians, this seems very basic, but to new students, this is a great starting point for learning how to determine the validity of any article, website, or booklet.
For Parents:
Teach Parents Tech
This page, sponsored by Google is a low-pressure, easy way to teach others about all things “technology.” It is not an ideal platform for all situations, but if you have a new student, who seems to be lacking in technical skills, you may be able to use this page to get started. The page starts as a generic template with several categories from which to choose: The Basics (Copy & Paste, setting the clock, screensavers, etc), World Wide Web (passwords, setting bookmarks, creating a blog, etc), Communication (email basics, making calls on the computer, spell check, etc), Media (resize pictures, attaching files to email, cropping photos, etc), and Finding Information (view live traffic reports, check flight status, convert currency, find a pizza/movie place, etc). Depending on which items you select for your student (or parent), the page sends an email with links to videos on each of the selected topics. The videos are short and are written to be easy for anyone to understand. I have not seen all of the videos, but the few I did were very well done.
Information Professionals
If you are interested in Healthcare Social Media, I recommend this blog post and the Slideshare included in it, from Patricia F Anderson, to prepare you for the weekly Tweet session. This group is represented by a vast group of “Twitterers” including: medical professionals, marketing team members, librarians, information professionals, pharmaceutical reps, teachers, students, etc, and meets every Sunday night for one hour.
Anderson states, “#HCSM (pronounced Hic-Sum) happens almost every Sunday, at 9pm Eastern Time, 8pm Central Time, and lasts one hour. Officially. Individuals often continue the conversation long after the official hour is over and most people have gone to bed.” Sounds like a great way to get connected and find out what is happening on a weekly basis. The Slideshare has a great list of Do’s and Don’ts which are relevant for any group interaction.
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