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December 21, 2007

Scientists Weigh Stem Cells' Role in Cancer

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/21/science/21stem.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

Posted by schnitzr at 10:35 AM | Comments (0)

December 20, 2007

Gov't Report on Medical Treatments

The Congressional Budget Office on Tuesday issued a new report, "Research on Comparative Effectiveness of Medical Treatments: Issues and Options for an Expanded Federal Role."
http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/88xx/doc8891/12-18-ComparativeEffectiveness.pdf

Posted by schnitzr at 11:19 AM | Comments (0)

December 18, 2007

Evidence-Based Medicine vs. Patients

Controversial but interesting article about evidence based medicine. Author wonders whether physicians are relying too much on EBM and perhaps too little on the integration of additional information and his or her own judgment.
http://tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=120407A

Posted by schnitzr at 02:27 PM | Comments (0)

December 09, 2007

HSL Hosts Brown Bags in Second Life

Second Life is one of several virtual worlds or MUVEs (multi-user virtual environments). Second Life (SL) in particular has become prominent in educational circles over the past couple years, with established presences from many universities. More background information about Second Life is available from this slidecast.

SlideShare | View | Upload your own

The University of Michigan opened Wolverine Island for use by the UM Community this term (Fall 2007). Since then, Wolverine has continued to rapidly evolve and change, with more interesting and dynamic spaces. The first course to be taught at Wolverine was an elective for the M1 students (more on that later). The first community social event, a brown bag to discuss future needs and plans for the UM SL community, happened this past Friday. It was hosted by a team of staff from the Health Sciences Libraries, Patricia Anderson, Mark MacEachern, Gillian Mayman, and Carol Shannon. This event was planned and organized collaboratively with the Medical School (Ted Hanss and Marc Stephens), the School of Dentistry (Sharon Grayden), and the School of Public Health (who provided the meeting location).

We'd been asked to have a series of events for people new to Second Life where they could come to a campus location and practice their skills with more expert people available to help. With that in mind, this was a combined real world / virtual world event. The real world location was the new Crossroads computer classroom at the School of Public Health.

Regarding the location in Second Life, here are some images of both Wolverine Island and the people (avatars) who came to the Brown Bag.

Around 20 people attended the session*. 7 came to the real world location, and almost all of those were our team of designated helpers. So where were people coming from?
- 7 = Public Health classroom
- 2 = working from home
- 2 = Med School
- 2 = own office
- 1 = Dearborn campus
- the rest = unspecified
* 17 verified, but I didn't catch all of the names, so there were more.

Not everyone identified their departments, but those that did included people from the libraries, Medical School, Department of Kinesiology, School of Dentistry, School of Public Health, School of Information, LS&A, and Dearborn Campus.

At one point, we were talking about the potential of SL for distance education, but this illustrates real utility for just regular meetings! Think of all those meetings you go to all around campus and the travel time you plan, and then imagine going to a meeting by popping onto your computer, with your office around you and your desk and files and favorite beverage ready to hand. With this Brown Bag, at the end, about half the people leaving on time said they had real world meetings they needed to get to, making for a bit of contrast.

The group discussed a variety of ideas for future events, so stay tuned. For the short-term, please feel free to join us at more brown bags in Second Life. They are Fridays, noon Michigan time or 9-10 SLT (Second Life Time) at the campfire on Wolverine Island (unless otherwise specified).

December 14, noon
TOPIC: prioritizing future brown bag topics, what is most important to the UM Second Life community

December 21, noon
TOPIC: A tour of Wolverine Island

For more information, ontact Patricia Anderson, pfa at umich dot edu, or IM Perplexity Peccable in Second Life. For more details about this event, see our other blog entry on this topic.

Posted by pfa at 09:12 AM | Comments (1)

Intensive Care Checklist from the "New Yorker"

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/12/10/071210fa_fact_gawande

Posted by schnitzr at 05:17 AM | Comments (0)

December 05, 2007

Another Way to Keep Track of Our News - Dentistry Library Now on Twitter!

The Dentistry Library is now expanding our outreach with an easy way to keep track of what is new in the field and at the library. You may have heard of Twitter, which is described as a microblogging tool. Basically, instead of the long articles you have seen here in our blog, in Twitter the entries are 140 characters -- or less!

We hope to have the Twitter entries display on our home page when it is revised (process to begin later this month). In the meantime, we will occasionally list our recent Twitter entries in a blog post, for you to explore as you wish. So, you can either check out our "Twitterstream" or just keep watching our blog. Sooner or later, the information will come to you.

Here is the link to our Twitter account:
http://twitter.com/dentlib

Here are our first 20 tweets (another word for a Twitter post) in reverse chronological order:

Posted by pfa at 11:23 AM | Comments (1)

December 02, 2007

Second Life Brown Bags at Wolverine Island

The Health Science Libraries, in partnership with the schools of dentistry, medicine and public health (and with the gracious permission of our local SL landlord!), hopes to host a regular series of brown bag gatherings at Wolverine Island in Second Life on Fridays at noon. Persons attending will be able to join the meeting either or both inworld (in Second Life) or come to a previously announced real world location, where we will have people available to help persons who want to become more comfortable working in Second Life.

The first meeting will be the first Friday in December:

DATE/TIME:
Friday
December 7, 2007
12 noon to 1pm

LOCATION:
Real Life:
Meet in CAIDENT (School of Dentistry Basement
Second Life:
Meet at the campfire in the center of the Arb (NW corner of the island). [SLURL to teleport to the location]

Here is a map of Wolverine Island.

Second Life: Wolverine Island: Map

Here is an overhead view of the area around the campfire.

Second Life: Wolverine Island: The Arb

NOTE: If there is too large of a crowd for the campfire (right center of the image, under the largest tree), we will relocate to one of the nearby mini-auditorium spaces that show as round areas to either side of the trees.

Here is a picture of the campfire proper.

Second Life: Wolverine Island: Campfire


The purpose of the brown bags are partly to encourage sharing and skills building opportunities among our local Second Life community, and also to encourage and facilitate discussion of topics of interest to University of Michigan educators. This first meeting will be a chance to meet and greet and talk about possible concepts for future discussions. Some example discussion topics could include:

- Issues: Teaching with Voice in Second Life: Yes or No?
- Sharing Session: Find Great Freebies
- Lessons Learned: Tips and Tricks for Moving Your Class from Place to Place
- Skills Building: How do I change clothes fast and build a core collection of outfits?

Come with ideas, come to meet other UM folk, come to explore Wolverine Island. Open to all UM folk with Second Life avatars!

Posted by pfa at 12:41 PM | Comments (1)