When I stop and think about it, I guess there are a lot of ways this experience at the hospital will connect to my curriculum, the students in my Biology class and even students at my school who are not in that class. Spending half a day shadowing healthcare professionals in almost ever clinical area and eating lunch in the hospital cafeteria has given me an opportunity to talk with many different people. So many of my students want to go into healthcare professions and now I will be better able to advise them about different careers, training, volunteer opportunities, internships, and graduation project advisors. I hope to have my mentor and the Nutritionist speak to my class and I will pass on information to my guidance counselor about people who may be potential community partners. The Latino Access Coordinator volunteered to check community education displays my students prepare in Spanish.

I hope that the Project Based Learning (PBL) lesson I am working on will make a big difference in my Biology students’ learning next semester and that they will make a big difference in the community as a result of the community education component of the project. I asked my mentor what were the biggest health problems in Duplin County and one of them was diabetes. I learned that so many problems are linked to diabetes: obesity, kidney damage, eye damage and blindness, nerve damage and amputations, heart disease and strokes, peripheral artery disease, and more. So we will do a PBL unit the extends over the course of the whole semester and connect what we are learning in Biology to diabetes whenever possible. (I’ve never created such a big PBL before, so I’m a little nervous about this.) There will be a number of major projects including presentations at an elementary school and displays that could be put in the hospital lobby, doctor’s offices, an optometrist’s office, the library, or other community education venues. Hopefully my students will be engaged and empowered by these projects.

I realized another connection between my externship and my classroom while I was trying to learn background information about diabetes. My mentor lent me a couple very thick textbooks on pathophysiology and pharmacotherapy that were way over my head. I spent a day and a half struggling through pafter page of fine print with each sentence containing 3 or 4 vocabulary words like diabetic ketoacidosis. It was so frustrating, overwhelming and tiring. I wondered if this is what it’s like for ESL students in my science classes where the academic vocabulary has so many words you don’t come across in everyday life. I have been thinking about what I need to do differently for those students and if any of you have suggestions, please let me know!!

My guess is that everyone else’s greatest challenge for leveraging technology to empower learning in their classroom is that they don’t have enough devices available at their school. Well that is not my problem. We have enough devices. My biggest challenge for leveraging technology is me. I am not as young and tech-savvy as the rest of you. I lag behind the other teachers at my school at incorporating technology into my lessons. Tech workshops strike fear into my heart under the best of conditions and after the WI-fi connectivity issues and my own information overload on Tuesday at NCCAT, I didn’t even want to do my online time log. But I guess yesterday I had a breakthrough. I spent almost all day looking at the software and apps mentioned at the NCCAT workshop…calmly! I have never in my life spent most of a day exploring new technology anxiety-free and actually “getting it”. I’m old school and my learning style isn’t to “just play with it” like younger people do. But I discovered I could watch videos and read directions and descriptions (I guess even teachers need differentiated learning) and understand it. I looked at 11 different types of software or apps and took notes on 7 of them. Now I’m thinking about asking my Principal if she would like me to share this info with the other teachers either during a meeting or as a handout or email. I think what gave me the push to overcome the challenge is the supportive atmosphere created by Craig, Lisa, the Duplin County teachers, and all the rest of you during our week at NCCAT coupled with the expectation that we would use more technology in our lessons and in our classrooms.

Now I have a question for all of you about online note-taking. When I read one of the blogposts on the Evernote site, I got the impression that you couldn’t have a team of students working on the same document at the same time – they each would have to email documents to each other. Do you have any thoughts on what is the best way for a group to take notes at the same time from different sources on a single master document which could be shared on different computers/devices after they leave school?

So did all of us pick the raft trip on the Nantahala as the highlight of our week at NCCAT? I’m sure this is the experience I will remember the best years from now. It was exciting and educational, the scenery was beautiful, it was a bonding experience, and I enjoyed the physical activity. Before the trip I wasn’t sure if I was up to the physical challenge. It has been a long time since I went on a couple of raft trips in Arizona. Those were unguided trips through wilder rapids and I fell out of the raft twice, nearly drowned, and got hypothermia. So it was kind of hard to get up the nerve to sit in the front of the raft while going over Nantahala Falls. But it felt so good to work together as a team with the other folks on my raft and come through the falls successfully. It has been wonderful getting to know the other teachers from Duplin and Jennifer better this way! The scenery was so beautiful. I have missed the mountains since I moved to the Coastal Plain. I especially liked the mist that we rowed through. And it was so great to get outside and move our muscles after suiting for so long the previous day.

I am doing an externship at Vidant Duplin Hospital that will help me teach Biology differently next year.  My mentor, Krista Horne, is awesome. She arranged for me to spend half a day shadowing staff members in the following areas: ICU, OR, Women’s Center, Respiratory, Laboratory, Infection Control, Case Management, Diabetes Education, Nutrition, Dietary, and Quality Control. It has been fascinating and exciting. I plan to do a PBL lesson on diabetes that will incorporate a community education component.. Teams of students will do research on diabetes, write it up, create an educational product, and give an oral presentation.

I hope that doing an externship at Vidant Duplin Hospital will help me to upgrade my Honors Biology course. I want to find ways to make more real-world connections to health and health care and ways to make class more engaging. I plan to find ways my students can give back to the community through community service projects. And I hope the externship enables me to link some of our students with internships, graduation projects, or volunteer opportunities. I hope that I come away from the professional development able to successfully use some of the technology presented in the sessions.