The Role of Instagram for Students in the Online Classroom

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instagram and the online classroomWhen people think of Instagram in the classroom they typically think of problems students have goofing off on social media and sharing pictures and video when they should be paying attention to what the teacher is talking about. When it comes to online learning and the digital classroom though, Instagram might be a useful tool instead of a useless distraction.

Instagram and the Online Classroom

For those of you not familiar with Instagram as a service, it’s a social media platform that specializes in sharing pictures and video both among Instagram users and within other social media platforms. For those whose entire classroom experience takes place over the Internet, the ability to quickly share images and video with classmates can be a necessity. Instructors may also find the video-sharing capabilities of Instagram to be beneficial for making announcements and for getting lectures into a student’s news feed.

The real power of Instagram isn’t the speed with which this media can be shared though; it’s that Instagram posts across different platforms. This means that someone can post an image or video once, and it will shoot across several different social media websites. This can be extremely useful for teachers, or for group projects when someone wants to make sure everyone sees an update, but that person doesn’t want to post and re-post the same content a dozen times.

Any technology that allows for faster, more streamlined communication across great distances is going to find a use in the online classroom. The key to Instagram is to use it to enhance the learning experience. For more information about social media and its place in the online classroom simply contact us today!

Smartphones, Tablets, iPODs and iPADs: What Do They Mean for the Healthcare Classroom? Let’s Take a Look.

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More and more students are discovering the benefits of taking college courses online using smartphones, tablets, iPODs and iPADs. Students can review lecture material, study for finals, and take exams at home or while sitting in a café or a restaurant, for example. Although many people have taken advantage of mobile technology for general education purposes, healthcare practitioners may wonder what smartphones, tablets, iPODs and iPADs have in store for the future of healthcare education.

smartphones, tablets ipods ipads avidity medical designAccording to an article found here, “44% of medical students are digital omnivores, using a smartphone, tablet, and computer routinely in an academic or professional capacity.” This has increased over the years ever since these options were made available to students.

Mobile devices are a great way for students to learn on the go, as well as in the traditional classroom. As stated in another blog, titled, Benefits of Mobile Devices in the Classroom, “The mobile approach can encourage student engagement with the content. For example, students can answer polls, tweet questions, and look up information during lectures.” The same is true for students in the healthcare arena, who are studying to become medical transcriptionists, medical coders, and registered nurses, for example. Using mobile devices, a student who is studying to become a medical transcriptionist can respond to polls about transcribing medications in discharge summaries, history and physicals, and emergency room records. A future medical coder can tweet questions about how to assign the correct ICD-10-CM code for a postsurgical mechanical device complication, or how to assign the correct CPT codes for injections, infusions, and critical care. A nursing student can research lecture material on patient case management, sterile gloving, and right and left heart catheterization. Using smartphones, tablets, iPODs, and iPADs each of these students can enrich their learning experience both in and out of the healthcare classroom.

Avidity Medical Design can help you develop healthcare courses that support and encourage medical mobile learning. We develop healthcare curriculum designed to help your students immediately transfer what they learn in the classroom to the doctor’s office, clinic, or hospital setting. We specialize in both e-Learning and blended learning for both the educational and corporate sectors.

Sheila D. McCray, MS, CCS, CCS-P, the principal of Avidity Medical Design, has an M.S. in Instructional and Performance Technology and holds certifications in Captivate, Dreamweaver, Sharepoint, MS Office, and multiple healthcare-related areas. She is also a certified online instructor, medical coder, medical biller, and medical transcriptionist with an extensive background in healthcare information management. She designs curriculum for all areas of healthcare, as well as general education curriculum for K-12 students.

Feel free to contact us for more information on how we can incorporate innovative mobile learning strategies into your healthcare classroom.