From Labs to Laptops to Carts at Las Montanas: A Story of Principals at Work

He pointed out to me how similar teachers experiencing failures with students is to physicians erring in diagnoses or treatments (or both) of their patients.

In the other book, surgeon Atul Gawande described how he almost lost an Emergency Room patient who had crashed her car when he fumbled a tracheotomy only for patient to be saved by another surgeon who successfully got the breathing tube inserted. Gawande also has a chapter on doctors’ errors. His point, documented by a paper in the New England Journal of Medicine (1991) and subsequent reports  is that nearly all physicians err. If nearly all doctors make mistakes, do they talk about them? Privately  with people they trust, yes. In public, that is, with other doctors in academic hospitals, the answer is also yes. There is an institutional mechanism where hospital doctors meet weekly called Morbidity and Mortality Conferences (M & M for short) where, in Gawande’s words, doctors “gather behind closed doors to review the mistakes, untoward events, and deaths that occurred on their watch, determine responsibility, and figure out what to do differently (p. 58).” He describes an M & M (pp.58-64) at his hospital and concludes: “The M & M sees avoiding error as largely a matter of will–staying sufficiently informed and alert to anticipate the myriad ways that things can go wrong and then trying to head off each potential problem before it happens” (p. 62). Protected by law, physicians air their mistakes without fear of malpractice suits.

Nothing like that for teachers in U.S. schools. Sure, privately, teachers tell one another how they goofed with a student, misfired on a lesson, realized that they had provided the wrong information, or fumbled the teaching of a concept in a class. Of course,  there are scattered, well-crafted professional learning communities in elementary and secondary schools where teachers feel it is OK to admit they make mistakes and not fear retaliation. They can admit error and learn to do better the next time. In the vast majority of schools, however, no analogous M & M exists (at least as far as I know).

That ability—created by manipulations of virtual reality—is one of many virtual-teaching applications being developed and tested by the Stanford University cognitive psychologist.

Car travel is getting more dangerous and expensive, and university classrooms are often crowded and uncomfortable," he says. "Yet because video conferencing and other types of media fall far short of face-to-face interaction, we still burden ourselves with physical commutes to classrooms."

n a range of studies, Bailenson's team is showing that manipulating virtual versions of the teacher and classroom environment can help students pay attention and perform better. In related research, changing the form of avatars—virtual versions of the self—can motivate people to exercise, and even teach them dance steps and tai chi poses.

With the incorporation of nursing informatics into the curriculum, faculty must be creative in devising methods that include a global perspective on the use of available resources. Added to this changing dynamic is the lack of clinical space for students, while at the same time, nursing professors are being challenged to develop new methods for providing real-life clinical experiences for students.

Most students have a desire to expand their universe and use virtual learning.

Baker, Wentz, and Woods (2009) investigated the use of SL using a qualitative method with a cohort of students (n = 9) in a psychology class. Results showed that students were generally positive about the experience. Considerations for further implementation would include the fact that these students mentioned convenience of attending class in SL, having the text version of the lecture available, and being able to interact with the instructor and other students in real time. Barriers included a slow response time from their computers, needing time to practice navigating and using the tools in SL, and technical difficulties. Research in this area remains scant and it is an area which needs active investigation.

ClassDojo makes it easy to keep my students alert and on-task.”