This week I will be giving a lecture in the Scientific Inquiry course at the Physical Therapy Program of the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. Recently Mike Pascoe posted about Papers a Mac based application that allows for streamlined organization of PDF’s.
My talk will focus on how to utilize Real Simple Syndication (RSS) Feeds and Readers (such as Google Reader) to improve access and engagement of information. This includes information from journals, blogs, websites, and even pub-med searches pushed directly to you. I have written about this topic before at the AAOMPT Student Special Interest Group in a post entitled Information to You! RSS Feeds and RSS Readers. That post detailed how to set up Google Reader and gave a list of some blogs/journals.
Afterwards, I will also publish a series of posts about how to utilize various RSS tools. It will focus on RSS feeds and readers from set up through advanced use. I will also outline why you should be following and reading specific journals. Then, I will provide critiques of various blogs. Twitter and Physiopedia will be briefly discussed. Lastly, I will outline how we can improve our discussion and scientific debate through these tools with an eye towards the future. This is not a new topic, but I hope to bring a lot of information together to aid in how YOU leverage online tools for learning, debate, and collaboration. If you have any specific requests, please comment!
These tools allow individuals from around the world and across various disciplines/specialities to share information. Further, as Mike Pascoe mentioned in his recent talk regarding twitter, journal articles are being critiqued before the print version has even been released!
We are truly in an exciting time. Online tools and collaboration in medicine and health are approaching a tipping point. We can leverage these tools to improve physical therapy, medicine, and the entire health care system from education to research to patient care to patient education to documentation to inter-professional communication…
Very informative post, thank you for sharing this