DundeeChest 3.0

We have discovered that the PCs in the first IT suite need to have their software upgraded to the latest version of Flash, to enable the ITA material to function correctly. The IT people are carrying out the upgrade tomorrow morning.

Sorry to those who have run into problems with the flash videos, you should be able to visit them after tomorrow morning, whenever you wish.

It’s been brought to my attention that there is yet more formative assessment for you all to get stuck into. The iCAST (interactive clinical anatomy and skills teaching) online modules are on blackboard now and there are 5 packages starting with the normal findings and examination. They are all designed to integrate the anatomy with the clinical examination in a normal or pathological chest. I’ve had a look at the first one on examination and normal function and it’s a really good package which goes into a bit more detail than we have time to cover in the clinical skill sessions. The other packages cover various disease processes and will come in handy in the coming weeks as we cover the system more fully. I can’t link them into DundeeChest directly because of password and coding malarky but I will give you a roadmap to find your way to them

Click on “Teaching Materials” on the left hand side

Then on “Formative Assessment” in the bottom left hand corner

Then on “Phase 2”

Then on “Year 2 Respiratory”

Then on “iCAST Normal 2010-11” (or whichever you fancy)

You will be greeted with a long page of confusing text but not far from the bottom is where you will find the first one on normal function and structure.

Simples eh?

Confused by the anatomy of the thorax? Professor of anatomy at Warwick University Peter Abrahams has made a nice series of videos for iTunes to explain the anatomy of the thorax, and more.

You can link to the iTunes movie here, and I’ll upload the file when I work out how to embed MP4 video into the site…..

Slightly late, I know, but here’s the study guide for week 1.

As I am away next week, Richard will work on the study guide for week 2, and get it out to you as soon as possible.

Cheers
Respiratory Study Guide 2010 Week 1

So, sorry about the pharmacology lecture. Dr Wilson assures us that he will fit everything in tomorrow, and I’m sure he’ll be available to answer questions in both real life, and on the blog.

The questions are starting to come into “Ask DundeeChest”. I can answer some of them, but as I’m not a respiratory physiologist, I will ask Dr Khogali to answer the more technical of questions, particularly as he wrote the lectures!

Dr Goudie has kindly pointed out that there are a couple of mistakes in the Week 1 “ITA” session material. A case of an arrow the wrong way around, two figures swapped around, and a typo. The material is created quite quickly, and despite proof reading, these mistakes do occasionally slip through. I can’t edit the changes from home, so I’ll try to sort it tomorrow, and get the corrected version up by Friday.

Many of you are asking for the study guide. Apparently you’ve been told that there isn’t one – this isn’t strictly true. There is one, but I am trying to make some changes to it to bring it up to date. I suspect I’m going to have to give you the week 1 part now, then the other weeks as we go along. I’d rather get you things that make sense, than last year’s materials, which are a little out of date.

I know that we are still waiting for a couple of the lectures to go online. We are aware, and we’re hunting down the culprits. They know who they are.

I hope you’re enjoying the course, and things are, apart from the above-noted, going smoothly. 1431 hits to the site today!

I’ve had a message from Dr Wilson who apologises for missing his lecture slot today, a simple case of it slipping the mind. He has assured me that he will be able to cover the material in the two remaining lecture slots on Thursday so you will not miss out on any of the teaching. Of course all the lecture material is available here on Dundeechest if you want to get off to a flying start for tomorrow……

Apologies that you all did not get the pharmacology lecture due at 12.00 today.  I am in the process of finding out why not, and what we can do about it. I appreciate that this was the first in a series of three lectures and will see how we can cover the material for you. More to follow when I know more……..

Some of you have been asking what an RSS is feed after yesterday’s introductory lecture when we suggested you might want to subscribe to Dundee Chest’s RSS feed. Hopefully this post will go some way to letting you now what this bit of techno babble is all about.

With so much information on the web and everyone seeming to be busier and busier RSS feeds are a way to help you manage and access the information you’re interested in.  So what is RSS?

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary.  It’s essentially a feed of information which may be a headline, a summary or full text of information published on the web.  Websites like BBC News, the Guardian, the BMJ, SIGN, blogs, video sharing sites and most academic journals now distribute their content via RSS feeds.   This is all good news because it means that we can subscribe to these RSS news feeds using an RSS newsreader. Whenever you see the RSS icon (shown here to the left) on a website or on the address bar in your web browser, this indicates that the site has an RSS feed that you can subscribe to.  If you subscribe to these feeds it means that you can retrieve all the latest information from the sites you’re interested in dynamically in one place rather than having to trudge from site to site to see if there’s any new content. This video video put together by Sarah Horrigan of Nottingham Trent University gives you a helpful overview of RSS.

There are different ways to subscribe to RSS feeds.  You can subscribe to them in your web browser, i.e. in Internet Explorer, Firefox, Flock, Safari etc.  This is fine but if you use different computers you might want to consider using a web-based news reader which you can access anytime you are on the web.  One option as outlined in Sarah’s video is Google Reader, another is Netvibes.  You can take a look at a Netvibes page that I’ve put together with some RSS feeds relating to some respiratory journals and organisations.  With Netvibes you can create your own personal pages of RSS feeds and also share pages publicly and embed images, and widgets for sites like Facebook, for searching sites like Google, PubMed etc.  The page I’ve linked to from this post includes a widget which allows you to search the BMJ (thanks to Anne Marie Cunningham at Cardiff for creating and sharing this).

I subscribe to well over 100 RSS feeds across a whole range of work and personal related interests.  Using an RSS reader saves me a lot of time, there’s no way I would have time to visit all these sites.  I check my reader and look at the headlines and can quite quickly see what looks interesting and what I want to take a closer look at.  Why not give RSS a try yourself and start start subscribing to some feeds from your favourite websites, including Dundee Chest!  If you need any help to get started post a comment and I’ll follow up with you.  If it would be helpful I could also record a short screencast tutorial showing some of the options re RSS readers and how to get started,

Hopefully the first day of second year went without too many glitches. I was certainly encouraged by the number of people who approached me at the end of the lectures to ask about SPSSCs, getting involved in e-learning opportunities, and more.

Apologies to group A4 who went without a tutor for their Practising Medicine session, but I understand that Dr Smith will try to see you all later in the week. Get back to me if you need another session.

A second year came to my clinic yesterday afternoon! Hopefully he found it useful, and will come again.

And finally, my hit counter says we had 1200 hits to the site yesterday. And they can’t *all* be Richard and me….?

2nd year group A4’s practising medicine session on Monday 13th September, with Miss J Smith, has had to be postponed – Miss Smith is not able to make this session due to clinical commitments. I am trying to organise an alternative session for group A4 later in the block.

Other things are available on Monday afternoon – see the timetable for further details, but you can always come along to:

Bronchoscopy List – East Block
Dr Fardon’s Clinic – East Block
Dr France’s Clinic – East block
Ward work – Ward 3
Pulmonary Function Suite – East Block

Feel free to come along to any of these things, and I will sort out an alternative practising medicine session for you.