My personal life has taken a change for the better. Now that we survived the implementation of PowerChart Maternity, I am returning to my art. I am painting again on Tuesday nights and weaving baskets. I have a big delivery due to arrive from Dels Ivory and Basketry supplier. One of the molds they had on sale is a for a creel basket that will look fabulous on a bike. I have ridden a couple times in the last month.

Last Saturday, I rode in the 2012 Philadelphia Tweed ride that was so much fun. All the great things about being a couple came to the surface. I have researched a touring bike called a Pashley Princess Sovereign. It is a beauty!Next year I might dress up in a nurse's uniform for the ride. I found a great site that sells the perfect nurse's shoe. I would need a cape, too!

School has taken a back seat to my work project and will start up on January 8th. Gotta get er done!!! What problem to solve? Providing a better method of delivering nursing education? Competency demonstration! Using an audio graphic program maybe . . .

Last night I handed in my last paper for my last class! I still have one more PowerPoint due this weekend that pulls together my project proposal into a visual presentation. I need to write the abstract and then add the final section that describes the decision making process. This presentation will pull in all my thoughts and plans to implement video podcasting into a blended eLearning educational offering. 

As I have been writing this 20 page paper (in the middle of a total power outage from the derecho storm that blew through Friday night), I have been digging through all my work for my practicum. This is a really viable project proposal and I think worthy of pursuing and maybe getting published. 

At work, we are still overwhelmed with the amount of work we need to do to prepare for this go-live n October. It is barreling down on us. Classes have not been published and it is getting scary. The only thing I think is going to be great is 

Creatively, I have been slacking. I have not been to painting class or created anything new. The only thing I have done is read the Artist's magazine before going to sleep. And I found a pretty cool website that incorporates fashion, travel, home design, crafts, art, and so on. Very cool. It is called honestly wtf 

Two weeks to go and I will be done with my masters classes! I can't believe it! I still need to compile my journal for the first 30 hours -- which I have done. The rest of the summer, I need to complete the final 30 hours. I can do this! My current class is a nursing utilization project, which is research methodology. My instructor really feels that I have a great chance of getting my project published! I sincerely hope so . . . That would be such a feather under my cap in the informatics world.

As for my work project--I have never worked so hard. My head is reeling from the amount of information and types of workflows that I need to understand. PowerChart Maternity has so many moving parts and different workflows for the different areas that will be using the system. My design and project planning skills have really taken off. 

This past week at work, one of the corporate educators shared a very interesting video on the warp speed of changing technologies. Keeping up with these types of change is nearly impossible. Resistance is futile! :-)

It is past noon and I am supposed to be writing a paper on an interview that I conducted last week with one of our nursing leaders. I have all the reading and research done - I just need to write it. Why is it that when I have something due - such as 1700 word paper - I am consumed with creative ideas. Here are a few that my mind has been tossing around. After the show last night, I looked at the one very big - not quite finished basket - and came up with a copper background and then I want to paint a white shell and a blueberry. Maybe throw another marble in it to keep it working with my theme. 

Also, I really, really need to do some colored pencil drawings of my fruit series. I think they will sell and would have a quicker tun around time. My inspiration is the color wheel and I want to do a fruit for each of the colors of the color wheel - on a square. I want to work with mason board and oils, too. 

Back to last night, I loved seeing the young people at the beginning stages of their art journey. I love their abandon. That inspires me so much . . . and on the flip side of the spectrum, I had a women at least a generation older than me speak to me about my baskets and artwork. I could tell she is an art connoisseur and I really value her opinion. Is it because she had such style and grace? Why is it that children and older people that appreciate my art make me the happiest? Is it because they have less filters than people my age? Why am I so cautious with my art? With myself?

Maybe this exposure will get me out of my shell . . . I need to find a more public space to create. Or will I ever learn to create when I am alone and in peace?

What an extraordinary day today! My first art show at the Accnet Gallery and I received such great response. I need to really create more. Maybe smaller, less ambitious pieces to get started! I would love to do some smaller pieces using the ampersand art boards & Genesis paints. I know that basic landscapes would be great, too - smooth & realistic in nature. Rody & Kira were so great! I know I want to work with them again and soon. Karen Lewinski & Mary Ann from the Shore Pine Decorative painters came. I was so surprised and happy to see them. Susan & Sharon from worked stopped, too! Susan Gramham and her son - so nice of her! I really enjoyed talking about process, especially around the baskets. Steve was really glad that I did the show. He pushed me at just the right time. What was great was the variety of ages. Christine Loper's twin brother also had his very cool bright beach art in the show. She is such a cool girl!

In today's NY Times there is yet again another article on online courses. This method of learning - which references flipping the classroom - is the wave of education. I finally voiced to my team yesterday my education challenges as we roll out these huge projects (PowerChart Maternity & PowerChart Ambulatory). 

Only two more to go! I started another U of Phoenix classes last night on nursing leadership. This instructor requires all of our assignments to be handed in one day earlier. Essentially, rendering Monday's free from assignments. Good grief - the courses are jammed packed as it is. I can't wait until I am finished with school!

I think I can pull off my practicum this summer . . . I just need to refocus and get it done. If I am allowed to post the training videos to Screener with an encrypted account, then I should be able to share how to navigate our EMR with ease - especially if the students will only be taught how to navigate results and use the resource materials we provide.Providing the links as part of my journal entry should be evidence enough of what I have developed as a method of blended e-learning.

It was a quiet weekend - I slept decent and recharged. I plowed through a pile of magazines and finished reading Steve Jobs. What a brilliant jerk! What a study in ying and yang. My creativity would have suffered at his tantrums. That book is probably the last hard bound book I will ever read. I found myself wanting to look up words and did not bother with the hassle of booting up my computer. I much prefer reading an electronic book any day. I can look up words I do not know, highlight interesting passages, and book mark items for easy reference later. I love ebooks!! My iPad gives me so much more than just reading a book. Steve Jobs was right that schools need to ditch the paper texts and go digital!

I signed up for Lynda.com and discovered that their online training is excellent. I do not need the exercise files as I move along without referencing them any way. Right now I am learning about video editing using Adobe Premiere and it is pulling together so much as I have moved along this path for the last couple years. I have been thinking about videoing the maternity floor showing how everyone is shuffling papers around and then compare it to going to computer. There should be a significant difference in how the unit looks and feels - decreasing the chaotic look.

Wow - 2 months have gone by and have they been crazy busy. Especially the last couple - I am on the roller coaster for implementing the new Cerner solution called PowerChart maternity. The maternal child health department (MCH) will be going to the EMR in the beginning of October. My current busy work for this project is to compare what we have already built in our system with the new maternity content Cerner offers. This involves searching a huge data base and highlighting line items in different colors so that the analysts can build the content in our computer domains. 

The week of training for this project in Kansas City was very intense because I attended my sister's wedding in Dallas the weekend before. Getting up at 0400 is not my idea of a picnic! But everyone was in the same boat. 

In the creative realm, I have continued to learn so many new things related to using the graphic arts capability of PowerPoint. I purchased a program called Camtasia Studio which is fantastic for editing video. This software is so much easier to use than Adobe. I am getting down a pretty good process for formatting simple 2-4 minute job aides. Now I just need to find the time to complete my web pages for the staff to use for job aides.  


Last month I found a graphic artist, John McWade, who publishes an online and paper magazine called Before and After. He shares his design principles just like Bob Ross did on TV for painters. He is the Bob Ross of the print world! His videos are minimalist and project a clear purpose. I want to be like him when I grow up!

Long week! Last night I moved into a new office sharing space with two other teammates. The clinical analyst job has not panned out - I am told it is not a dead issue, but they want me to lead a big project for maternal child health. I am told I would still be able to learn the build skills that I want for my career development. To me, these skills are invaluable as an informaticist. 

This time of year is the return of the student nurses for their computer training. I incorporated the polling feature of the WebEx.My questions were harder than I expected for the students. They really struggled to find information. For the second class, I needed to provide some hints and some clues as how to navigate a web page using the control key + F to find key words. The majority did not finish the poll and I have to check the results to see if anyone got all the right answers. The survey I provided for the students to fill out at the end of the class actually was very good. I even received a few comments that they enjoyed the class. 

Using the polling feature in WebEx is a great skill to use when conducting an online class. I love learning how to use the electronic tools we have to improve how we train.

This morning I met with the pharmacist informaticist, who is so amazing with the system and medication complexity, and learned how to manage the I&O according to how the medications are ordered. The system is so logical that it only displays a medication based on its dose (units, mg, ML, or mcgs). The medications are then pushed to the I&O for documentation if it is a volume - MLs. All the other medications (titratable or not) go to the IV drip band in the EMR. Confusing to say the least, but at least I now have good grip on where to access the smart pump library of all the drugs and libraries for every nursing floor including critical care.

Our meeting this morning focused on the weight calculations needed for ordering and profiling IV drips in NICU. This is so complex since a neonate's weight changes drastically in the first few weeks of life and the dosing parameters must reflect this fluctuation. My contribution to this discussion includes researching if we can limit the neonatologist's access to the order catalog of medications to only include neonatal specific meds.

Creatively, I am heading to my weekly painting class . . .

Tired . . . is the word right now. I had a very busy day with meetings and wrapping up loose ends. My biggest hit today was sharing my challenges with trying to create electronic education for staff and providers. I asked for consideration of connecting the dots and getting the right players at the table to develop a process for designing asynchronous elearning. I need to meet the pharmacist informaticist in the morning to start discussions on medication calculations based on weights as we begin the kick off of the NICU & maternal child health department's EMR implementation.

Personal stuff today consisted of picking up groceries, fixing a mixed fruit salad, prepping my lunches, and making some homemade candy. It was a very full day.

This morning I tested the training session by signing in and exploring the tools available when conducting an online class. I need to practice more and upload some documents to WebEx so the students have them available. My first class with students is this Friday - I am not quite ready to roll this out! I think I will work on my agenda and story board for teaching. I started the poll in WebEx to test the students either as soon as they come in or at the end of class.

Exciting news! I managed to upload a video file to our hospital's WebEx site where I will be able to track student nurses accessing this information. I can zip the file so that I can at least decrease the size by quite a bit. And it worked!! I also can include a website to access additional information. Now I need to work on converting a Captivate file and upload that onto WebEx. If I can capture everyone's sign in and then give a post test . . . I will be so happy. This weekend I am going to get this posted and hopefully assigned to the students. Time tonight 1 hour.

Challenges at work today include getting involved in creating an assignment in Healthstream and assigning everything to the different providers at the last minute after lunch. I am not so sure about the assignments because I came in at the end to clean everything up. This ended up with me on the phone with Healthstream support people until 6:30 Pm on a Friday night . . . jeeze, but I need to make things work for the team.My take-aways from this experience is how to upload and create a course right in Healthstream bypassing the Contribute application. I also received access to the non hospital employee Healthstream portal. Now I can create courses for both attendings and the hospital staff.

Yeah - I am getting a reputation for being the WebEx queen since I know how to use the application to its fullest (well almost). After this weekend, I will be even better as I want to get the questions and polling done. One of the pharmacy informaticists asked me to teach him how to use the application and I would be glad to do it . . . this gives me great pleasure to teach others.

Check out this amazing method of viewing statistics  Hans Rosling brings data analysis to life or at least animates the information. I also found on uCern an Adobe resource that is only available to those who have created an account. The link provided contained numerous hour-long prerecorded presentations on Captivate. These videos are in depth and teach functionality that I can really use. But as an added bonus I discovered many blogs by elearning experts the relate education frameworks into their courses. For instance, courses are categorized on one blog according to the following headings: (a) elearning activity approach, (b) activity, (c) type {social, discourse, simulation, tell/didactic. query/ask/converse, sequencing, conversation}, (d) Bloom hierarchy, (e) examples, (f) comments {websites}, and (g) efficacy. This is so interesting and I bookmarked many new sites tonight. 

Today I want to work on the portal so that I finish the paper documents for ease in learning functionality of our EMR. Once I get this all done, I want to combine all the PDF's and make a manual. There will be one folder of all these files and documents so that we can make easy adjustments to any part. 

Well, as usual, best laid plans have a way of changing. My day was hijacked by a project that my coworkers have been working on and it became my issue to upload everything into the LMS (learning management system). The one I created yesterday was modified and I had to upload it again . . . this is where time gets lost when the project is not finalized. This becomes very labor intensive. 


In the afternoon, I needed to get my Training environment ready for nursing orientation tomorrow. All the medications had to be verified and I finally spent some time with the pharmacy informaticist and learned how to work the Med Manager. This should make my life a bit easier. But I still spent 3 hours getting this to progress, but I still have many meds to verify and finish profiling.


Good news on the clinical nurse analyst position that I applied to . . . seems my salary is more in line with the team than they suspected. Hmm . . . I am underpaid for sure. 


Creative work today occurred in my painting class. My canvas is making progress with the help of the instructor. Water is very difficult and watching him demonstrate tonight really helped.

I am at work during lunch and wanted to check in quickly. I received an email from my mentor as she came across a news byte about Finland and Korea using a new concept in teaching - which saves time. And guess what? It was based on the Khan Academy framework!  Way cool.

After my boss asked me to help my coworkers to upload their education material, I managed to whip a simplified eLearning course in just a few minutes. This course will teach the providers how to document on an electronic form in the EMR. I really need to upgrade Contribute 3 at work. My Captivate 5 version is causing conflicts when I go to upload the projects. We need to be on similar platforms since the file extensions are different. I am going to ask for an upgrade! I wish I could get the whole e-Learning suite from Adobe as it would give me all the tools to manage video, audio, and photos, too. Oh well, since my role will be changing, I will use those skills when I get a chance.

Oh and I did a video using my iMac and in about 10 minutes I had it uploaded and working on You Tube . . . the mac is great for ease of use. The heck with Debut Video!! 

This week I was scheduled to attend a few teleconferences on elearning and one was during the work day, so I could not attend live. I viewed the presentation after work and discovered a few neat websites. One is the 23 Things blog that was created about 5 years ago to get people to learn the technology tools on the computer and web. Very interesting , but the most disappointing aspect is that a few of the links are now broken. One is the presentation by a librarian that is called 23 Things. This is a great blog to follow and learn about those techno things we hear about - still - and do no know how to do.

So far, I have set up accounts with quite a few resources. First one is Flickr, so that I have photos to create graphics. There is a companion app that locates photos with the exact colors needed for matching text, etc. I started an assets folder on my iMac. Next, I finally am figuring out the RSS feeds. I am not sure if I will really use this effectively, but it is good to know. 

I activated my Video Debut professional account on this computer which gives me lots of editing possibilities, especially for creating podcasts. My whole point is to upload a general podcast that anyone can use when in a hospital and has access to the Internet. I want to provide this link to the clinical instructors for the students to review prior to attending class. Now, I need to creat ean account with You Tube so that I have a place to share my video.

My first test video on You Tube - http://youtu.be/1t6DFqfeD0s 

I spent all day today working on my practicum, but only about 4 hours can I count towards my journal. I worked on video issues that have me totally frustrated, so lots of "wasted" time there. One video has been uploaded that is working correctly, but the rest will not work. the speed is doubled and the audio is not in sync. What the heck? I think I need to go to the Mac side of things and see if I can get that to work. I made a great intro slide for my presentation in Captivate; I should make it a master slide so that I can reuse it. Then I will record the audio for the presentation. Maybe tomorrow I will have a good chunk of this project done. I want to upload to You Tube so that the students and instructors can access this information. 

test upload to blog

Liz wrote:

test upload to blog
test

Wow - I just typed a note into a Word doc and clicked on the Contribute button - it published my test blog!!!! I love it! I now learned how to use Contribute to upload content to a blog and I am sure a web page is not much different. So cool! 

Woke up  to a bit of snow!

In the mail last night was my Adobe e-learning 2.5 that contains Captivate! I bought this through Journey Ed for a great price because I am a student. I now have access to the same great tools at home that I have at work. I am hoping that I can download there, too. It would upgrade my version and give me Photoshop & Flash. 

Yesterday, I worked on the website and I am almost finished with the nursing web page, then onto the physicians. I also want to finish the nursing student page and the patient care tech's page. That class I am handing off to my coworker. 

School work - I am watching numerous videos on blended e-learning. Examples are Tom Khulman's blob, Cathy Moore's blog (excellent instructional design teacher), Adobe TV, You Tube , etc. On the Online Journal of Nursing I found a couple excellent articles on integrating technology into the classroom. 

Another couple busy days! Saturday , my niece delivered her first baby - a girl named Bella. She is beautiful! I am so tired right now and I am very glad that I do not have a newborn to handle . . . whew.

Yesterday was all travel, but Saturday I finally bit the bullet and got Comcast internet. It took me hours to get the modem, set it up, and then to find it only works on the cable line to my TV.  Then I found out it is not wireless! I had to go to Best Buy and pick up a wireless router. Once all that got hooked up, I had to program my printer onto the four different OS's - both Mac and Windows on my laptop and the iMac. Major pain, but I learned how to do it; that is the most important lesson.I also had to install numerous plugins for Firefox . . . endless tweaking of my computers. 


Right now, I am reviewing training bytes on MS Word. There are so many features that we never use that would save us time.