What is a Kinesthetic Learner?

Kinesthetic learners achieve the greatest success by learning through doing. A kinesthetic learner prefers a hands-on approach to learning new things. If you are developing lesson plans for computer applications, you need to make sure that you are addressing all types of learners with that curriculum.

How to Address Kinesthetic Learners in Lesson Plans for Computer Applications

As you develop your lesson plans for computer applications, think “lights, camera, action”! Get your students on the move and actively, physically participating in their learning.

Reaching kinesthetic learners allows you to dump out your whole bag of educational tricks. Kinesthetic learners adapt and thrive in a varied educational environment that changes frequently, even within a single class period.

In your lesson plans, be sure to also include opportunities for hands-on projects and group discussions. Also allow time for role-playing and group projects. Have students create a fictional community service organization and then develop publication materials to market it. And schedule field trips, if possible.

What are the Best and Worst Ways to Test Kinesthetic Learners?

Best: Quick! Short answer, true/false and multiple choice tests

Worst: Long! Essay questions or any kind of lengthy test

What to Expect from Kinesthetic Learners in the Classroom

You probably already know who your kinesthetic learners are. They are those students who just can’t seem to stay in their seats. So, give everyone a break to stretch now and then. They’ll likely be athletes. They love any opportunity to get up and move around the classroom. They probably struggle with spelling and attractive handwriting skills. But they’re able to study and focus in the midst of a circus.

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Auditory learners achieve the greatest success by learning through hearing. An auditory learner does more than simply hear something. They are in tune to tone and rhythm and associate memory with sound. If you are developing computer applications lesson plans, you need to make sure that you are addressing all types of learners with that curriculum.

How to Address Auditory Learners in Computer Applications Lesson Plans

As you develop your computer applications lesson plans, think music and rhythm. Putting curriculum to music is a fabulous way to reach your auditory learners. But maybe it’s not the most practical for a classroom full of diverse learners.

In your computer applications lesson plans, be sure to include some other effective ways to enhance comprehension for auditory learners, including narrate as you demonstrate. Do not simply demonstrate how to prepare a presentation for publication (which primarily reaches Tuesday’s topic of visual learners). Talk through the procedure as well. Other things to include in your lesson plans: Watch videos. Narrate curriculum and quiz and test questions, if possible. And don’t forget the lectures! If you enjoy the age-old method of lecture, auditory learners are your ideal audience.

What are the Best and Worst Ways to Test Auditory Learners?

Best: Oral exams or written responses to lectures.

Worst: Timed reading comprehension questions and responses.

What to Expect from Auditory Learners in the Classroom

Your auditory learners are most likely those students who speak a lot in class—appropriately by answering questions AND inappropriately by talking to other students around them. They likely are key participants in group discussions. They are your least likely students to be absent on a day they are scheduled for public speaking. You might catch them with their ear buds in and their music on. And it might be a challenge to keep these students working silently for an entire class period.

Next Up: Kinesthetic Learners

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What is a Visual Learner?

Visual learners achieve the greatest success by learning through seeing.  A visual leaner is always seeking a visual representation of any information you give them. If you are developing computer applications curriculum, you need to make sure that you are addressing all types of learners.

How to Address Visual Learners in Computer Applications Curriculum

As you develop your computer applications curriculum, think about sentence diagramming from your Language Arts classes. You can’t get much more visual than that. Diagramming or mapping content within your lessons will greatly enhance comprehension for your visual learners.

Outlining curriculum is also a great way to reach your visual learners. Outlining is a relatively simple way to organize content in a meaningful way for these students. You’ll likely see them creating their own outlines as they take notes in class.

In your computer applications curriculum, be sure to include some other effective ways to enhance comprehension for visual learners, including using the whiteboard. If the whiteboard is a tool you are fond of, have at it for the sake or your visual learners! Also include videos of skills and procedures in your lesson plans. And if important content can logically be put to graphs and charts, incorporate them into your lesson plans. You can provide them for students or use the process of graphing the content as an assignment.

What are the Best and Worst Ways to Test Visual Learners?

Best: Graphing or diagramming a process or essays with outlines.

Worst: Oral exams or written response to lecture or audio.

What to Expect from Visual Learners in the Classroom

Your visual learners are most likely those students who desire a seat up front. They are likely fashionably dressed and color-coordinated. They will be your best spellers. They will need a few moments to settle information from a lecture or speech into an understanding. As they take notes, you may see them using highlighters and circling and underlining key ideas. And they’ll prefer a quiet venue for studying.

Next Up: Auditory Learners

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Buyer's remorse with your elearning content?

So, what if your elearning health content isn’t working for you or your students? What is the next step? We’ve all been there…you excitedly make a purchase and can’t wait to try it out. But what happens if when you try it out, you realize that this just isn’t right for you? You have a few options.

Make It Work

So, your new elearning health content isn’t exactly what you thought it would be. You can still make the most of what you have. Inevitably there is some part of the content that is going to work for you. Use it! It’s okay to break the content down to smaller pieces and extract the parts you can use. You are in control. If the elearning anatomy and physiology content isn’t in-depth enough for you, then replace it with your own. Or, use the elearning content as an introduction to your more in-depth content from another source. There you have your blended learning!

Call Support

Are you sure the elearning health content won’t work for you? Before throwing in the towel, talk to the content-provider. You may be very pleasantly surprised. Because you had particular content in mind when you made your elearning purchase, you may not realize what else may be available to you. Typically, a good way to find out is to call support. Knowledgeable support staff can likely point you in the right direction. They may also save you some searching time by being able to let you know right away whether or not the content you really need is available. And lastly, by letting support know what your needs are, it could very well be that the content you need can be developed and available to you in the near future. You never know unless you ask.

Cancel It

If your elearning health content was purchased as software as a service, you likely have the option to opt out or not renew your service at the end of your contracted term. If you truly find nothing of value in the elearning health content, you are not obligated to continue to purchase the service.

Try Again!

If you find that your elearning health content was not what you anticipated, give something else a try. The beauty of elearning tools is the ability to try out different things to find what works best for you and your students.

Download your Free PowerPoint lesson on the History of Health Care now and start using  it in your classroom today!

Microsoft Office 2010 lesson plans a blank slate?

Are your Microsoft Office 2010 lesson plans a blank slate?! If your school has recently upgraded to Office 2010, you might be scrambling and asking yourself, “Where can I get Microsoft Office 2010 lesson plans?

Online Software as a Service

One option is online software as a service, such as our own Business&ITCenter21 online. The best software as a service options will provide you with engaging, interactive, up-to-date curriculum. The content is designed to teach students basic and intermediate Microsoft Office skills. After content is presented, students can take quizzes and later module tests to verify their achievement in the content areas.

And not only is the curriculum provided, the best programs will include a grade book to help you gauge how well your students are learning and understanding the content. You can reset quizzes and test and allow students to take them over as needed.

The best part, both you and your students can access the program anytime, anywhere.

Microsoft

Another option is Microsoft’s own Microsoft IT Academy Program. Here you’ll find customizable lesson plans and all sorts of valuable information and content for developing and refining your own Microsoft Office 2010 lesson plans. You can also check out Microsoft in Education for some great ideas.

Online Communities and Blogs

Yet another way, join online communities and follow some blogs online. If you’re not sure how to get started, try a “top 20 blog” list or something similar, such as Scholastic’s list.

If you have some great ideas about where to find Microsoft Office 2010 lesson plans, comment and share with other teachers here on our blog!

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What’s my password?

That’s one of our more common support requests. It’s also one of the more common support requests for help desks at schools and companies. We all have many different passwords for many different systems, and it’s difficult to remember them all. Passwords contribute to online education safety.

Why can’t you just tell me my password?

Our support team doesn’t know your password. Your password is encrypted in our database. This ensures that programmers, support engineers, contractors and server administrators won’t be able to see your password. It also provides another layer of security in case our site is hacked. The hackers won’t be able to see your password.

Password encryption does provide extra security but it’s not foolproof. Hackers can decrypt encrypted passwords but it takes many computers and lots of time.

Do you use the same password everywhere?

When a site is hacked the database of user names and passwords is often used to access other sites. You certainly don’t want to use the same password for an online service that you use for your grade book, Facebook or bank. The best practice is to use a different password for all of your systems.

How do I keep track of the passwords?

With so many systems and passwords it’s impossible to remember everything! My personal preference is to use Google Chrome and synchronize passwords between the different computers that I use. You can also download or purchase Password Managers. One good resource is this article on the Five Best Password Managers from the Life Hacker blog.

Want to keep your data safe in 2012?

1. Start using a password manager
2. Use a different password for every site
3. Change your most important passwords

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E Learning for Healthcare Challenges

There are many challenges to running a blended course where students do much of their learning outside of the classroom. One of the main challenges is facilitating independent learning among different student populations. And, doing this without placing too much of a burden on individual teachers.

Context and Connection

Facilitating independent learning requires not only presenting content, as ebooks do, but also having other features such as questions within the content, quality narration, and periodic quizzes. The best online allied health content systems provide these and other features in a fully integrated system. Something the typical ebook just doesn’t provide.

Easy Implementation

With the best systems, instructors can be up and running, and enrolling students within 30 minutes. Additionally, instructors should also be able to easily manage the display of content. Students should only see content central to the course, so they avoid wading through unrelated content that is always part of the typical ebook. Plus, the instructor should be able to quickly view summative assessment from the curriculum that is automatically graded.

Saves Instructor’s Time

While ebooks provide a wealth of material, they do not provide other helpful tools. The goal of most online resources is to not only provide a wealth of material, but to deliver it in an easy to use, integrated system. A system that helps instructors to meet the challenges of running a blended course.

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One of the first questions many ask is how do I choose modules for my blended learning course?

This blog introduces a process that, hopefully, makes it easier to select modules for your course. The process helps narrow down the module list until you have only modules that fit your course. It is important to remember this process is only a suggestion – you certainly can change anything in it to suit your needs.

Select a Template or Topic Filter

We’ve created filters that cover common health care courses or topics. These filters are used to reduce the full list of HealthCenter21 modules to a smaller, focused list.

1. Sign in and go to the Catalog tab.
2. The list of template and topic filters in on the left. Choose a filter that best matches your course. The modules associated with the filter are displayed on the right.

Note: If there are no filters that meet your needs, you will have to work with the full list.

Review Module Outlines and Choose Favorites

Next, you need to get a better feel for the module content. This is done by viewing the module outlines. The outlines contain a description and list of lessons for each unit in the module. The idea is to further reduce the list of modules by choosing “favorites” based on the outlines.

1. Choose a module and click View Outline.
2. Review the unit information. Based on the filter, some units might be listed as optional. This means the unit does not contain content related to the filter.
3. After reviewing the outline, if the module interests you, click the Favorites Star.

Repeat this process for all the modules.

Review Module Content and Further Filter Your Favorites

You can now review the module content to possibly refine your Favorites.

1. In the Catalog tab, on the left, click Show My Favorites.
2. Choose a module and click View Content to displays the module’s Unit menu.
3. Click a unit to display the unit’s Lesson menu.
4. Click a lesson to display its content.
5. Review the lesson as desired.
6. If you want to return to the Catalog, click Return to Catalog in the upper right. Otherwise, use the navigation controls in the Menus and Lessons to review other content.
7. After reviewing the module, return to the catalog.
8. If you are not interested in the module, clear the Favorite Start.

You can repeat steps 1-3 to add more modules from other filters. Here’s a video on using the catalog.

Create a Course and Add Modules

After you have selected and refined your Favorites list, you can now create a course.

1. Go to Courses tab.
2. Click New Course to create a new course.
3. Click Add Modules, and then click Show My Favorites.
4. Go down your list of Favorites; click Add to Course for any module that fit into the course.
5. When done return to the course.

For more details on creating a Course watch the following video.

This completes the basic process of selecting modules for your course.

Download your Free PowerPoint lesson on the History of Health Care now and start using in your classroom today!

As a member of NCHSE’s “Publishers Coalition,” Applied Educational Systems is invited each year to participate with the full members of the Board.  This year the meeting was held during the last week of January, 2012, in sunny Savannah, Georgia.  (Nice location, NCHSE!)

Forsyth Park in Savannah, Georgia

Here are three important things I learned from sitting in on member updates, committee meetings, and guest speaker presentations:

1. Health Information Technology vs. Health Information Management

As health educators, we are familiar with Health Informatics as a career pathway for our students.  But with all the attention and publicity surrounding electronic medical records and “H.I.T.” these days, it’s easy to confuse “Health Information Technology” with “Health Information Management.”  (There’s a difference???  Yes!)

In short, Health Information Technology (HIT) deals with the computer hardware and software used for storing, retrieving and sharing healthcare information, while Health Information Management (HIM) is concerned with managing healthcare data and information resources.  HIT professionals are often engineers, technicians and programmers, while HIM professionals are the business managers and custodians of data and information in health care.

Look here for an NCHSE presentation on the subject if you want to learn more.

IMPORTANT:  Watch for NCHSE to update their Foundation Skills Standards for Health Informatics by June 2012.

2. Common Core Standards for CTE?

A frequent issue discussed by NCHSE board members at the meeting was how they are working to align health science education with the new Common Core State Standards (CCSS).  But as Dr. Dean Folkers of the National Association of State Directors of Career Technical Education Consortium (NASDCTEc) explained during his presentation, career and technical educators will soon have their own common standards:  The Common Career Technical Core (CCTC).

The Common Career Technical Core initiative is a state-led effort to ensure rigorous, high-quality career technical education (CTE) programs through a set of common standards.  These standards are built from industry-validated Career Cluster™ Knowledge and Skills statements that will include:

• Standards for Career Ready Practice,
• Career Cluster™ Anchor Standards, applicable to each of the 16 Career Clusters™, and
• Career Pathway Anchor Standards, linked to specific Career Pathways and industry benchmarked when possible.

Like the updated NCHSE standards, the Common Core Technical Core standards will be released by June of 2012.  To learn more about the CCTC initiative, look here.

3. National Consortium for Health Science Education has lots of great tools and resources for teachers… Some of them are FREE!

For more than twenty years, NCHSE has been providing passionate and energetic leadership and professional development for health science educators.  And they also provide some really cool “stuff!”

The NCHSE Online Resources Store has guides and lesson plans for health science cluster instruction, service learning, as well as interdisciplinary units.  And their “Health Science Instructional Supplements” help teachers align classroom instruction with the National Healthcare Foundations Standards.

Start by checking out the list of FREE “Links and Resources” on NCHSE’s Website here.

Is your state a member of the National Consortium for Health Science Education?  Are you familiar with all of the things NCHSE is doing for you and your students?  If not, you should check them out!

Download your Free PowerPoint lesson on the History of Health Care now and start using in your classroom today!

Which of the following statements are TRUE regarding quizzes in HealthCenter21 and Business&ITCenter21 online?

• Every quiz contains the same set of 10 – 20 questions.
• Questions are presented in a random order.
• Answer choices for questions are presented in random order.
• All of the above                  <Correct!>

How do tests compare to the quizzes in the online curriculum?

They are similar in that the two elements of randomization are used in the exact same way. However, there are some differences in the content of the tests.

First of all, students take a test at the end of each module, after completing a series of units.  Because a test covers more material than a unit quiz, it contains more questions—typically 20 – 40 of them. The size of the test will vary based on the number of units in the module. Questions may draw on content both from within individual units and across multiple units in the module.

Another question you might ask is, “Does every module test contain the same set of questions?” And the answer to that is “It depends.”

• Yes, for modules from the Health Care Foundations, Patient Care Technician, and Business and Information Technology course templates.
• No, for modules from the Medical Office Assistant and Emergency Medical Services course templates. In these cases, some portion of the questions is always included on the test while another portion is drawn randomly from a pool of questions.  You can find this information at the top of the Module Test Answer Key.

We continually strive to improve our automatic assessments, and we know that a number of our customers would like to have more features, such as question pools to create additional tests. We are considering this as well as other upgrades, and we will certainly let you know when new features are available. In the meantime, here is a quick summary chart for how quizzes and tests currently work in our curriculum:

	Unit Quiz	Module Test
Number of Questions	10-20	20-40
Same Questions	Yes, every time	Same questions every time for Health Care Foundations, Patient Care Technician, and Business&IT Fixed AND random questions for Medical Office Assistant and Emergency Medical Services
Order of Questions	Random	Random
Order of Answer Options	Random	Random