Turns out New Orleans is a fantastic city, not just for the food and culture, but also as a setting for the 25th anniversary year of the Council of Residency Directors Academic Assembly conference (CORD). The ALiEM crew was on hand to help teach a pre-conference workshop called #DontGetLeftBehind: FOAMed and Social Media for EM Educators, dedicated to learning tricks of the trade of the different modalities of social media for medical education. Naturally we focused our section on blogging. Rather than let all that information go to waste, we have shared our work in this post in the true spirit of collaboration!
Our session was headlined with the sage and wise cracking Dr. Joe Lex (@JoeLex5) with the best quote of the session, “Hippocrates believed in #FOAMed even before it existed!” We paired with leading national experts on social media and education who taught various platforms: Twitter (@JohnGreenwoodMD), wiki (@EMEducation), podcasting (@EMSwami and @Embasic). Joining us in our blog session was Dr. Adaira Landry (@AllAroundDoc), one of the creators of emdocs.net.
Used a blog to teach and learn about blogging!
For the workshop, we created a “dummy” website using the free WordPress.com service. This site not only hosted brief instructor how-to guides but also provided an actual blog space for workshop participants to practice blogging with the assistance of established bloggers. After learning how to add images, embed video, creating hyperlinks, and building tables, the workshop attendees began to see the potential for this versatile communication medium especially in medical education. We hope to have sparked the imagination!
Blog site: Cord2014.wordpress.com
[slideshare id=33246223&doc=cordworkshop3-140407182844-phpapp02]
Instructional blog posts topics include:
- How to add a PDF and an image
- How to embed a YouTube video
- How to create a simple table
- How to create a Twitter widget in right column
- ALiEM’s working document on how to write a blog post
Of note, the information provided on this post refers to the free WordPress.com website. As such, many advanced and customized features are not available on the free site. For this reason, ALiEM uses a self-hosted WordPress.org site.
A recent post from emdocs.net goes through the pearls from the other sections of the workshop including Podcasting, Twitter, and Wikis.
Good luck, enjoy! Please contact us if you have any questions!
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