CPDspot

This blog is moving!

CPDspot was where I started my professional blogging career and has served me very well in my own professional development from clinical physiotherapist into a health care e-learning specialist.  Progressively this site now seems to be too limiting to encompass all that I have to say and with future developments at CPDspot on the horizon I have decided to move this blog to a new site. www.rachaellowe.com will allow me to write about all my contemplations without boundaries and also provide an opportunity to keep you updated on current projects that I am involved in.  So if you wish to continue to read about what I have to say, which I am anticipating will be more exploratory and analytical with a constantly developing writing style, then please visit the new site and sign up to the new feed.

Thanks for following!

Online paediatric neurology course

We have been working with the BPNA for a couple of years now to provide the development expertise to turn their paper based distance learning course into a web based course. We are excited to say that it is now up and running with the first students well into the introductory module.  

This course offers a comprehensive theoretical background in paediatric neurology.  It is a huge and fascinating subject that has been divided into 12 units, each involving 48 hours study and has been designed to complement the clinical training provided. 

We are very impressed with the comprehensive nature and educational standard of this course.  But more so with the availabilty of reflective and problem based tasks, the use of case studies and imaging, and the incorporation of current evidence which has enabled us to create a varied plethora of additional learning activities which we hope the students will enjoy, oh yes.. and learn from!

A special reason to be involved in distance learning

As a huge advocate for empowering disadvantaged women through education I read this article with interest.

It's just great that women displaced and disadvantaged as a result of war have the opportunity to learn a professional skill to not only empower themselves, but also to help those around them in their community.  There is no doubt that this is what they will go on to do.  However I read with concern that the qualification, in this case,  as community rehabilitation worker after only four months will enable them to go out into to community armed with 'physiotherapy' skills to put into practice.  Just what physiotherapy skills are they being taught in only four months and with what kind of evidence base?  Please do correct me if I am wrong but infra red lamps?? 

As an e-learning specialist I see a role here for us very advantaged people to contribute to the physiotherapy education of people who are trying to make a difference in a disadvantaged community.  I would love the opportunity to get involved in creating distance learning materials for such a project, but in the mean time can only hope that I can reach these people with my Physiospot and Physiopedia projects.

Physiopedia vs Medpedia

A new wiki for health care was launched this week called Medpedia, take a look, it's incredibly impressive and comprehensive, and is likely to become the key reference for the public on medical matters.

You may be wondering why we need Physiopedia when Medpedia is available? Well these are my thoughts in this regard.  With Medpedia being driven by doctors it will not truly represent our profession. It is primarily focused on educating the general public with good quality information about conditions that affect them, also providing a place for professionals to publish their work and create a profile. Physiopedia also offers the opportunity for therapy professionals to publish their work and create a profile, however Physiopedia is also an educational resource aimed specifically at the physio/physical therapy profession. It will provide evidence based information for physiotherapists relating to common conditions, interventions and management options that we come across in our daily practice. With Physiopedia we aim to truly represent, promote, educate and develop the physio/physical therapy profession. So the emphasis of Physiopedia is on developing the profession which is significantly different to Medpedias' emphasis on informing the public.

So, while Medpedia may be getting all the press right now, Physiopedia maintains its awesome potential to be a great resource for physiotherapists. But, just as the Medpedia sites grows as more contributions by authors are made, Physiopedia needs your content. Come on physios! If the medical community can do it, then so can we. Let's show them just how valuable our profession is.

Join in the Physiopedia efforts and come collaborate with us!!  www.physio-pedia.com

Follow more of us on Twitter!!

Physiospot and Physiopedia now have their own personal Twitter accounts.

• If you would like to use Twitter to be updated with the recent changes, content additions and other news from Physiopedia, follow Physiopedia.
• If you would like to use twitter to keep up to date with all the clinically relevant journal articles that are published on Physiospot and other news from this site, follow Physiospot.

You will need to register for a Twitter account to follow either of these sites on Twitter. Once you have done that you can search for your friends, colleagues and others that interest you and follow them as well. You can also let people know what you are doing so that they can follow what you are up to as well. A few tips though if you are new to twitter:

• be selective in who you follow, too many tweets coming in can be overwhelming and confusing
• if you have a personal learning space, i.e. Google homepage, add a client that submits status updates to Twitter via this space. I use TwitterGadget 
• or use a desktop application that can organise your tweets and break them down into more manageable bite sized pieces. I use TweetDeck

Happy Tweeting!!

Updated Toolbar

All of our projects are constantly being updated by ourselves and other physio and physical therapists who contribute to each resource.  The CPDspot toolbar allows you to get our freshest content and all recent updates delivered directly to your browser, no matter where you are on the Web.  It has recently been updated to reflect developments in our current projects.  You are now able to see:

• recently published clinically relevant research highlighted on the new Physiopsot
• all recent updates to Physiopedia, THE on-line physiotherapy encyclopaedia
• the on-line courses that we have developed or highlighted
• useful resources and websites from our Delicious account
• what we are currently doing via Twitter
• news from CPDspot
• and direct links to all of our projects

Download the CPDspot toolbar.

Physiopedia for students

Tyler Shultz, a physical Therapy student from the Medical College of Georgia, has been using Physiopedia in a new and novel way.  He has been using it to study for his orthopaedic classes and in doing so, not only has it been a valuable learning and reference tool for him, but he has also helped to develop this resource for therapists worldwide.

Tyler explains his experiences with Physiopedia by saying "I have been using Physiopedia as a platform to review my anatomy and foundational physical therapy knowledge (like with the GH and AC joint pages) as well as a place to post information about the special tests I have learned more recently in my ortho class (see Hawkins/Kennedy Test).   I have quickly discovered that posting to Physiopedia has forced me to constantly review my notes from class, texts, and peer-reviewed articles for relevant information and data, and in doing so I am studying and more importantly, learning the information because I am reproducing, practicing, and constantly re-reading it. In addition, once the information I post to Physiopedia is live on the web, it is extremely easy and quick to reference during class or when I am studying (and I know it is correct!).  I have found the wiki-based style of Physiopedia easy to learn and understand, which makes posting to Physiopedia worth the time and effort to do so.  And because Physiopedia is evidence-based, it is forcing me to become more efficient (and effective) at finding evidence-based research studies and resources related to the topics I am learning about, which will be extremely beneficial for me in my future career as a physical therapist".

We are very grateful to Tyler for his contributions and hope that in time many more physical and physio therapists will join us in the creation of this great resource.  If there are any other students out there that would like to use Physiopedia, please mention where you are a student when registering for your account or you can contact me directly for further advice.

Follow me on Twitter

If you haven't already come across Twitter, it is a social networking and microblogging service.  It allows users to write and instantly publish on the web short text-based messages of up to 140 characters in length, called "tweets".  Each time a new tweet is written the updates are displayed on the user's profile page and delivered to other users who have signed up to receive them, your "followers."

The short format of the tweet is a defining characteristic of the service, allowing informal collaboration and quick information sharing.  It also means that you can share information with people that you wouldn't normally communicate with, opening up your circle of contacts to an ever-growing community of like-minded people. 

I have been tweeting away for a few months now and will continue to tweet about CPDspot, Physiopedia and Physiospot, as well as musing about physiotherapy matters, especially those relating to online learning. So, if you are interested, follow me on twitter and join our small community of physiotherapy twitterers.

Click here to follow my on Twitter

New Physiospot

With the expansion in the number of Physispot blogs available in 2007 it has become quite a large task to continually juggle them all and is not conducive to an effective service for our readers. We have therefore made the decision to amalgamate all the blogs into one place at www.physiospot.com.  Whilst you will be able to read all the  articles that have been selected as clinically relevant and posted we have developed separate areas of the site for research in different clinical areas. 

By making the management process more efficient not only will we be able to devote more time to actually posting articles but it will also provide a number of additional benefits:

• Each clinical area can be easily accessed from the navigation bar at the top of each page, no more flicking between different blogs.
• Articles can be tagged with more than one clinical area thereby adding more articles to each individual clinical area.
• The search function will search across all clinical areas so that you will be looking for what you need amongst all the articles posted.
• More easily keep up-to-date with recent additions in multiple clinicl areas by freely subscribing to one or more of our update options.
• Authors can easily work in more than one clinical area which may be useful for their own professional development and evidence based practice.

There is one small inconvenience to our readers which can be easily overcome.  As of today the email alerts and feeds for all the old physispot blogs will cease to function.  You will need to sign up again to receive the update alerts that you are interested in.  Go to the update options page to sign up now for your RSS feed and Email Alerts.  You can also download our toolbar to receive updates straight to your desktop and follow us on Twitter from this page.

We hope that all our readers are happy with the developments and that you enjoy the site and continue to find it useful, had we not done this we may not have been able to carry on with the juggling!  Visit the new site at www.physiospot.com

Taking a Break!

With a couple of e-learning projects that require some dedicated time, I will be taking a break from writing on the CPDspot and Physiospot blogs for the rest of November and December.  There may continue to be some posts from our other authors but I will be going quiet until the New Year.  When I return in 2009 I will be refreshed and ready to get writing again.  I will also have had some time to consider some of the ideas for new projects that have been mulling around for a while now, so you can expect some exciting developments next year.