Winding Down to Start Again

Thursday, Dec 6th 11 PM

I am at home writing the final blog assignment because I cannot recall the password and it is at my office. The office is lonely and quiet after dark, and I thought I would just do it at home, but that did not work.  I just emailed the blog I wrote to myself...

Tomorrow is the day of our presentations and all the AIL 600 students are coming to town. There will be a small celebration with food as the semester winds down.

Friday , Dec 7(continued)

I am really winding down for 2012 too. I got registered for AIL 602 in the Spring. My nursing license is renewed for the 40^th year and it will soon be time for the rest and renewal of the holiday season. As I reflect on my time in AIL 600, I realize I am still learning new ways to teach nursing. That is after all, why I am enrolled in the doctoral program, but it is good to find that my mind can still practice and learn things which are difficult and new. One new tool I will use to teach selected content will be he online delegation game I developed in this course to use with my Leadership class next semester. I felt proud when I added it to the list of “readings” in that course for undergraduate nursing students. It is such a difficult class: senior nursing students are psyched about taking their critical care course concurrently and Leadership is just not as glamorous or pumped full of adrenalin-rich experiences.

But the BSN job IS management; the glitz of critical care will fade after a few years. Management of people, patient care, crucial conversations about life and death, schedules, policies, and difficult decisions in general. Meanwhile, in their Leadership course, they can learn a bit about how a manager and leader handles quality measurement through gaming, and frankly, through any other learning method which might capture their interest!

A always enjoy the "beginning again and making it better" part of teaching each semester. Groups of students can be so different. I look forward to enhanced use of technology with the skills I have gained this next semester.  In order to achive the right balance of teaching methods between low tech and high tech,faculty really needs to understand the application of many methods enough to carefully target the learning objective for a particular group. That  insight is what I have really gained professionally this semester.

Linda