Nursing Education can be Fun!

Future students,

This letter is my vow to you that you will never be lectured into bordum during my class. Nursing educators are often captured by the ease of lecture style teaching, I am not one of these educators! Nursing educators often lose track of how they are teaching and focus solely of covering the necessary content, not me! Nursing educators often forget that they are teaching people, with different learning styles, and unique interests, I will NEVER forget this! As an educator I strive to make teaching and learning fun. I recognize that each of you have different learning styles and interests. I also recognize that not only the content important but also the way in which this content is taught. Health care is an ever changing and advancing field. To keep up with this fast paced change it is necessary to introduce the use of technology early in education. That is why I will use varied techniques to teach. I will implement methods such as role-playing, case studies, simulation, Voki, videos, and any other new ideas or technologies that are available. I encourage my students to use these techniques in their presentations and in their class participation to keep the environment stimulating and help others to learn. Teaching and learning should be fun. When we are having fun we are retaining information and that is what is most important!

21st centruy nursing education

Move from stagnate to.......... interactive teaching

Called to Care

Learning in the 21st century classroom is fun and exciting. Prior to this course, my professional goal was to become a clinical nursing educator at a local nursing college. Now, I am excited to use the student-centered teaching approaches I learned throughout this course in both the classroom and clinical setting. I am inspired to teach interactive nursing education which encompasses nursing informatics. As required by the federal government all patient record must be in the electronic form. As nursing educators we must prepare our students to be confident competent 21 st century technology successful nurses. Moving away from the boring projector style of lecture to the interactive form of group discussions, simulations, problem-based learning, role palying, blogs, and voki teaching is the required teaching method. This style contributes to the profession of nursing.

Future students of this course, I challange you to share the stuedent-centered approaches of education with your peers and nursing education faculty to include the use of student-centered learning in the nursing curriculum. We can make a difference in promoting the professionalism of nursing by perparing our students to meet the challanging demands of healthcare.

Christie Sinclair, BSN, RN

EST

Staying in our comfort zones is tempting, but we lose out on expanding our knowledge and understanding of our world if we refuse to step out. Change is scary for everyone. You may look around you and think that everyone else has it together but you. It is not true. I celebrated my 40th birthday by returning to school. I had been out of school for 20 years, which is longer than many of you reading this have been alive! I had never heard of APA format. What was wrong with MLA? I was supposed to "go online" to see my schedule. I did not send emails; how was I supposed to "go online"? In my world, research involved a trip to the library and using the card catalog. What do you mean I'm supposed to "go online" for my research? I had never created a Power Point. I was unable to complete a lot of my initial school work until my (now husband) informed me that I did not have the correct software. Excuse me, how was I supposed to know what software I needed? I bought a computer; wasn't that good enough?!
When I informed my co-workers that I was pursuing a master's degree online, they laughed. Everyone knew that I did not belong online! However, kicking and screaming aside, I have moved into twenty-first century technology. I cannot inspire students to be lifelong learners, if I am unwilling to pursue learning. My desire is to facilitate your learning. I want the courses to be learner-centered, and the instructional methods to be current and relevant. I understand struggling in academia and life. My personal mission is to develop nurses who can demonstrate clinical thinking at the bedside. I will use clinical simulation, blogs, youtube, and asynchronous chat to achieve that goal. Every semester, I will encourage students to share the latest and greatest in technology, and I will endeavor to integrate it into the classroom.
We are on the learning journey together. Let's move out of our comfort zones (kicking and screaming!) to explore the fascinating world of nursing together.
Copy and paste this link into your browser for a little "tongue-in-cheek" humor:
http://youtu.be/XOrhawEiqOo