NerdNurse

Social Media Rationale for the Anti-Social

2011-11-03T21:29:44Z

This week I spoke briefly at a symposium on social media during the biennial convention of Sigma Theta Tau International, the Honor Society of Nursing. The symposium was pulled together by Rob Fraser, a well-connected Canadian nurse and the author of The Nurse's Social Media Advantage: How Making Connections and Sharing Ideas Can Enhance Your Nursing Practice (available on Amazon). You can read more about the symposium, and get the handouts, at Dr. Terri Schmitt's blog, here: http://nursestory.com/ Dr. Schmitt also presented at the Sigma Theta Tau symposium on social media.

The reason I mention this is because Dr. Schmitt and I are anti-social. We don't like parties, we don't like anything we have to dress up for, we don't like talking on the phone, and we REALLY don't like meetings. So why in the world would a couple of anti-social nurses be so interested and involved in social media?

Good question. Here is my simple answer: knowledge is power, and disseminated knowledge means power to the people. Social media is a near-miraculous way to disseminate knowledge. Since my job as an educator is to empower others and to distribute knowledge as widely as possible, social media is an invaluable tool, my best friend in my efforts to teach, train, and inspire.

Dr. Schmitt was recently interviewed by Adam Sanford, and the result is here:
http://www.nursing-school-degrees.com/Nursing-Articles-Interviews/terri-schmitt-students-educators.html. Read it and be inspired by her passionate answer to why an anti-social nurse educator would so ardently love social media.

Favorite Free Online Resources for College and Online Teachers

2010-04-03T01:48:55Z

Free resources I return to over and over again for ideas, information, and inspiration about college teaching and online education:

1. Faculty Focus
This site has dozens of free reports and articles about practical topics like educational assessment, online teaching, learning styles, academic leadership, and teaching strategies. The materials are written by teachers in the trenches, making the information relevant and useful.

2. The Sloan Consortium
"A Consortium of Institutions and Organizations Committed to Quality Online Education." Not everything is free,but their Effective Practices are very good and many articles are freely available.

3. Faculty Development Teaching Tips Index
From Honolulu Community College, a site with links to learning style inventories, articles on teaching, and academic policies.

4. Classroom 2.0
"The social network for those interested in Web 2.0 and Social Media in education." The newsletter helps me keep up with the latest Web tools for teaching.

5. A Brief Summary of the Best Practices in College Teaching, by Tom Drummond (2001)
Instructional practices are organized under twelve headings:

Lecture Practices
Group Discussion Triggers
Thoughtful Questions
Reflective Responses to Learner Contributions
Rewarding Learner Participation
Active Learning Strategies
Cooperative Group Assignments
Goals to Grades Connections
Modeling
Double Loop Feedback
Climate Setting
Fostering Learner Self-Responsibility.

6. Penn State's Schreyer Institute for Teaching Excellence: Tools and Tips for Teaching and Learning

This site has links to information about course design and planning, teaching and assessment strategies, course evaluation, and scholarship of teaching and learning. It's a rich source for any educator.

7. A Berkeley Compendium of Suggestions for Teaching with Excellence, by Barbara Gross Davis, Lynn Wood, and Robert C. Wilson

This site contains general teaching tips for the university classroom and is organized by techniques. OK, it's dated (1983)---oldies but goodies that have mostly withstood the test of time and need to be remembered.

8. eLearn Magazine: Education and Technology in Perspective

Best Practices for eLearning, with articles, interviews, and ideas.

9. eCampus News

Connects you to news, information, and resources on how today's colleges and universities are using technology to advance learning.

10. eSchool News

Technology news for K-20 educators. The same people put out #9 and #10, so some of the articles are repetitious.

I get email newsletters from many of these sites, and it takes only a few minutes to scan the headlines and see if anything grabs me. Just reading the headlines helps me stay somewhat literate about what's going on in the field.

Change of Focus

2009-10-31T14:09:00Z

The American Psychological Association has come out with the 6th edition of their style manual, and it is easier to understand and use. Full of errors, too, but they're going to fix that with a second printing and a free supplement for those who purchased the first printing. You can even turn your error-filled book in and get a copy of the second printing free. The supplement that fixes the errors is available here:

http://apastyle.apa.org/

Although my students tell me they still refer to this blog for APA and Word information, I'm bored with those topics. I'll leave the old entries up, but I'm moving on to other things. In fact, I've moved on to the MacBook Pro, which I passionately adore, and I'm using Microsoft Office for Mac, and my interest in troubleshooting everyone's Word and Windows problems has waned.

Right now I spend my limited blog time doing updates to my college blog: http://www.sjcsbu.us

I probably will start using this blog for health care postings and maybe some personal stuff. We'll see.

What Section Are You In?

2006-07-11T14:14:00Z

This crazy friend of mine is always volunteering to do things that are, as she puts it, "outside my comfort zone." She loves a challenge, and not knowing how to do something is no excuse, in her mind, for not doing it--one must learn new things to stay sharp, and sharp she is. Here's the question she presented me with while working on a Word document the other day: How do I begin numbering pages starting with number 1 on the fourth page instead of on the first page? This is a not-uncommon dilemma, so here's the answer.

The key to having different formatting in different parts of a document is to use sections. To quote Microsoft Office Word Help, you "insert section breaks to divide the document into sections, and then format each section the way you want." To solve my friend's problem, we inserted a section break beginning on the fourth page, then started the automatic page numbering feature in that new section. We severed the links between the headers on the third and fourth pages, and formatted the page number to start with the number 1. We ended up with no page numbers on the first three pages, and page numbers beginning with 1 on the fourth page and following--just what she wanted.

The trick to sections, for me anyway, is understanding the goofy names the delightful programmers at Microsoft assigned to the different type of section breaks. To insert a section, put your cursor where you want the section to begin. From the toolbar, click on Insert, then click on Break. A box will pop up giving you several options. You can insert a page break from this box as well, but we'll ignore that for now. Under Section, you'll see these choices: next page, continuous, odd page, and even page. If those make intuitive sense to you, then you should go write code for Microsoft.

I suppose "next page" is logical enough. If you select "next page," the new section will start on the next page--ta-da!! This would be useful if you have come to the end of a page and know that you want a new type of formatting to begin on, ummm, the next page.

"Continuous" makes no sense to me at all. It should be called "here." When you choose "continuous," a section break is inserted at the spot where your cursor is at that moment. This is what we used in my friend's document, at the top of the fourth page, although "next page" would have worked if we put our cursor at the end of the third page. I suppose they use the word "continuous" because you can stay on the same page without an obvious break and yet still have an invisible section break that separates the formatting. Who knows? Furthermore, who cares?

To quote Microsoft Office Word Help again, "Odd page or Even page inserts a section break and starts the new section on the next odd-numbered or even-numbered page."

Here's one more bit of advice from Microsoft Office Help: "Keep in mind that a section break controls the section formatting of the text that precedes it. For example, if you delete a section break, the preceding text becomes part of the following section and assumes its section formatting."

To my friend Lee, who inspires me daily, and to everyone who struggles with Word on a daily basis--be careful when playing with sections, because you can get burned. But remember that wonderful Undo button and keep on typing.

Surrender Your Will to AutoCorrect--or Else

2006-03-25T14:01:00Z

Or else what? Well, you can always permanently or temporarily disable the automatic correction feature in Word, and I'll show you how. But once you understand it, it's more efficient to surrender your will to Word. AutoCorrect is a great help if it is set correctly.

The best way to understand AutoCorrect in Word is to look at the possibilities. In Word, go to Tools and select AutoCorrect Options in the pull-down Tools menu. There are five tabs: AutoCorrect, AutoText, AutoFormat, AutoFormat As You Type, and Smart Tags. We'll tackle AutoFormat As You Type first, because it seems to be the one that usually drives people crazy.

Click on AutoFormat As You Type. Read all the lovely possibilities for Word to make you nuts--everything in the list that is checked is something that Word will do for you without asking your permission first. If Automatic Bulleted Lists and/or Automatic Numbered Lists are checked, then whenever you insert a bullet or type a number that looks to Word like you want to start a list, Word will automatically assume you want a bulleted or numbered list and will format it as such. This is a feature that I happen to like, because I know I can easily alter the style of the bulleted or numbered list (more on that later) when I want. It bothers a lot of people, though, especially those who aren't familiar with Word's list formatting options. If you're one of those, you can easily turn this feature off by unchecking those boxes. Ta-da!! No more aggravating changes made by Word behind your back.

Word does have a mind of its own, sort of, but you are the one who decides whether or not to let Word use its full brain power, or whether to put yourself fully in control (in all your smarter-than-Word glory). Check out the other things in the AutoFormat As You Type list and you'll begin to see why Word does some of the things it does. Feel free to check or uncheck according to your preferences. You can easily change whatever you choose later.

Wrestling with Word

2006-03-06T00:07:00Z

Stop fighting with Microsoft Word! You know who you are. You wrangle with Word, undoing the automatic corrections it makes, cussing at its formatting changes, and painstakingly counting spaces and measuring inches so you can get margins, indentations, spacing, and the like to conform to APA. You can quit now, because I'm going to show you a better way. Relax.

Repeat after me: Word is my friend. Word can help me and save me time. The trick is to learn the ways of Word and figure out what you need to change and what you need to accept. It's like the Serenity Prayer: accept the things you cannot change, change the things you can, and be wise enough to know the difference.

Let's tackle those red and green squiggly lines that keep appearing underneath your brilliant prose. DO NOT IGNORE those colorful lines! They are trying to tell you something significant. A red line under a word means that the word does not exist in that form in the Microsoft Word dictionary. In other words, it might be misspelled. Notice I said might. Since nurses and nursing students usually write papers that contain medical language, many of the words we commonly use are not in the Microsoft Word dictionary. Also, many names, like those of authors you might be referencing, are not in the dictionary.

Here's how to handle a red squiggly line. Right-click on the underlined word. A menu will appear that gives you several options. Probably Word will suggest a word that it thinks you might have meant--if you typed the word "gynoplasty," for example, Word might suggest "cytoplast." If you typed the word "totol," Word might guess that you meant to type "total."

If you misspelled the word, and Word correctly guesses the word you meant to type, select that word and left-click on it. The right word will magically appear in place of the misspelled word. Wonderful.

However, if you know for sure that you did NOT misspell the word, then you should choose the option in the menu that says "Add to Dictionary." This will make the red squiggly line disappear, and Word won't bother you about this word in the future. It will know that when you type "gynoplasty," that's what you mean. There's nothing worse than software that nags you incessantly about something that you know is correct, so this will effectively stop the nagging. Over time you will build up a nice little customized dictionary in Word that contains lots of medical terminology that Word recognizes. Just be sure you are filling this dictionary full of correctly spelled words!! You are setting yourself up for problems if you add misspelled words to the Word dictionary.

Sometimes Word doesn't recognize a word, and it also doesn't have any suggestions to make. You'll have to figure out for yourself if the word is misspelled or if it is correctly spelled and you want to add it to the dictionary. If you're not sure, select "Look up" in the menu. A Research Pane will come up in the Task Pane, with the word in question and the results of a search through Microsoft's reference books. Pretty nifty.

You can also choose to "Ignore All," which means Word will overlook this particular word, thereby causing the red squiggly lines to disappear. You can select "AutoCorrect," which means Word will fix the word for you--the AutoCorrect features are a whole 'nother blog unto themselves. If you have somehow wandered into using the wrong language in Word, you'll get lots of red squiggly lines under words that you know are correct--check to be sure you are using English by choosing "Language" in the right-click menu.

Enough for now. We'll tackle the green squiggly lines later.

General APA Style Basics

2006-02-16T19:25:00Z

Contrary to popular opinion, APA style does not apply only to reference citations. There are some basic formatting rules that accompany APA style, and they are:

1. Use Times Roman or Courier font, 12-point size, for everything.

2. Double space everything, and I do mean everything: all content, tables, references, block quotes: everything.

3. Keep 1-inch margins on the top, bottom, and both sides of the paper (excluding the headers and footers).

4. Do not underline anything. Use italics for most things you used to underline, such as for emphasis or book and journal titles.

5. Do not use bold type for anything. Again, you will use italics when needed.

6. Did I mention that you should double space everything?

7. Indent all paragraphs 1/2 inch. The only exception is the paragraph on the Abstract page.

8. APA has defined the type of headings you should use to organize your paper. That's a complicated subject, so we'll tackle it separately later. Just know that there are rules for headings.

9. Always include a title page with an APA-style document. We'll discuss the format of the title page another time.

10. Double space everything. No exceptions.

These are good, basic formatting rules that should apply to every paper you produce for school or business. Using these rules enhances readability and improves the appearance of your documents.

Why Use APA?

2006-02-14T16:29:00Z

Here's a philosophical (sort of, in a nerdy kind of way) question I get asked a lot: Why use APA in schools of nursing? My answer: Because I said so.

Just kidding. Believe it or not, there are some good reasons to insist that professional nurses learn to use the APA style of writing. First, when you communicate well in writing you signal the world that you are a professional. Conversely, when your written communication is sloppy you are telling the world that you are either not too bright or you just don't care. Is that the impression you want to give people as you try to enhance your career?

APA style is an excellent, clear, standardized way of writing, formatting, and referencing works. By having a standard that we all adhere to, we make things easier in the long run. I don't have to make decisions about how I will format my paper. Will I double space? What margins will I use? What information will I include in the references? All that has been decided by a panel of experts, all of us in the nursing profession have agreed to use it, and all I have to do is conform. Easy.

APA style greases the wheels of written communication in the educational and publishing worlds. You might not think that you will ever publish an article, but life is long and twisty, and many of you eventually will do exactly that. You have to submit articles for publication to professional nursing journals in APA format, and that's that. Anything less will not be accepted. Just as in school, having a standard that we all agree to adhere to makes the expectations clear and smooths the path of communication.

Part of my job is to teach nurses how to be professionals. Professionals are supposed to communicate well when writing and speaking. I would be a very poor teacher if I didn't insist that you learn how to do APA style, when I know that it will help you sharpen your writing skills and learn how to present yourself in a professional manner in the world of work.

How to Use a Blog

2006-02-12T17:07:00Z

If you're new to blogging or reading blogs, there are a few things you should know. First, the goal of this blog is to provide information about computers, software, and APA style, and it is specifically written for nurses and nursing students. Second, it's not fascinating reading--think of it as more of a reference tool.

Look at the menu on the right-hand side of this blog. You'll see that the entries are categorized, so you can click on a category that interests you, say APA, and go directly to the entries that have to do with that subject. That's one handy way to skim through to find answers to questions or see what I'm emphasizing.

Another great tool is the Search feature, also on the right-hand sidebar. Let's say your teacher took off points on your last paper because your headers were done incorrectly. Type in "header" in the search box, and you'll see the blog entry or entries that give information about setting up your page headers in APA style. Easy and fast.

The calendar might be helpful, too, although I'm not sure why most of you would use it. The numbers on the calendar in bold type are days that I posted a new entry. I guess if someone told you to check out my entry on February 12 for instructions in using this blog, you could click on that date and go straight to the entry or entries I posted that day.

The right-hand sidebar also has links to the most recent postings, with titles displayed so you can see if something interests you or not.

Did you know that blogs are meant to be interactive? This is supposed to be you and me talking to each other about the subject of this blog, or about anything else you want to ask me (personal questions are OK, but I'm not very interesting--I'm married, have two dogs, two grown kids, and am working on my doctorate in nursing). To ask a question or make a comment, click on the underlined links at the end of each entry. You can also vote on how helpful a particular entry is by clicking "More," which will take you to a little one-button survey. Doing that helps other people know if an entry is any good or not. As you will see if you look at the links at the bottom of this entry, you can easily post a comment and also read other people's comments.

I promise to answer any questions as soon as I can, which usually means within 48 hours. If you need a faster answer, send me an email at sbucarole@sbcglobal.net.

Creating Adobe PDF Files From Word Documents

2006-02-12T16:46:00Z

There's a great little free program that will turn your Word documents into pdf (portable document format) files, available at: http://www.primopdf.com/.

Why would you want to do such a thing, you ask? One reason is to preserve the formatting of your Word document when you send it somewhere else by email, CD, the Web, or whatever. When you put a document into pdf, there's no danger of moved margins, altered fonts, or skewed headings when someone else opens the document on their computer. Also, it prevents people from copying, changing, or otherwise messing with your work--well, they can still do that, but you make it a lot harder for them.

The PrimoPDF program, although free, doesn't come with any ads or aggravating pop-ups, and no registration is required. Cool stuff.

Free Virus Protection

2006-02-11T19:37:00Z

What!! You still aren't using updated virus protection?? What kind of nurse doesn't understand the need to protect oneself from bugs?! You simply must, must, must have virus protection software on your computer, and you must keep it constantly updated or it's useless against the new viruses that come out almost daily. If you're a poor student, or a poor teacher, or even if you're rich as Midas, this free program can be downloaded from the Web, updates itself daily, is easy to use, and provides absolutely excellent protection against viruses. It's called AVG Anti-Virus from Grisoft, and the free version for non-commercial home computer users can be downloaded from this link: http://www.grisoft.com/doc/289/lng/us/tpl/tpl01

Do it today!

Saving and Opening Files on the Web

2006-02-11T16:41:00Z

When you find a file on the Web that you want to use, I recommend that you save it to your computer so you can retrieve it easily later. Right-click on the link and choose "Save As" or "Save Target As" from the pull-down menu. Save it to your computer in a place you will remember. Then open the file from within your computer instead of from the Web site.

If you need to open documents that are in pdf, or portable document format, you will need the free Adobe Acrobat Reader. Go to http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html to download the free reader.

APA Resources

2006-02-11T15:38:00Z

Download a couple of free nifty little "down and dirty" handouts that summarize important elements of APA style: APA Quick Guide, APA Electronic Reference Guide, and Recognizing Scholarly Publications.

Also, try out http://citationmachine.net/. This free site lets you type in information about your reference (title, author, date of publication, and so forth), and then it gives you the correctly cited reference for your APA-style reference list and also for your in-text citation. All you do is cut and paste, being sure to format your reference list with double spacing and hanging indent, of course (more on that later). It's quite spiffy and super-easy to use. It does MLA style, too, if that's what you need.

About the Publication Manual of the APA

2006-02-11T14:52:00Z

Even if you find my APA tips helpful, you need to purchase your own copy of the Publication Manual if you plan to get a degree in nursing. Here's the reference information, done in APA style (without the hanging indent or double spacing, because that doesn't work in this format):

American Psychological Association. (2001). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (5th ed.). Washington, DC: Author.

You can order it from www.amazon.com, www.barnesandnoble.com, or at http://www.apa.org/Books/4200060.html, among other places. You can also get "help with APA style guidelines" at www.apastyle.org.

Running Heads and Headers in APA

2006-02-11T14:11:00Z

APA wants you to put a "running head" with an abbreviated title on the title page of manuscripts. That term confuses a lot of people, especially since you are also supposed to have an abbreviated title in the page headers. Those are two different things, and the running head doesn't "run" anywhere, but the page header does. While this may not be the only confusing thing about APA, it is certainly one that trips up students.

The running head appears only on the title page, not on any other pages in the document. It is a shortened version of the title, usually the first four or five words (but not always). The running head should not be longer than 50 characters, including spaces and punctuation. To check this, after you type the running head highlight it and click on Tools--Word Count. A box will pop up showing you the number of characters with and without spaces.

Type the running head on the top line of the title page, flush against the left margin, in all uppercase letters. When I say "the top line," I mean the first line below the 1" margin, which means it is below the page header that we will talk about later. Precede it with the words "Running head:" typed just like I did but without the quotation marks--capitalize the word Running, don't capitalize head, and follow it with a colon. Then type your shortened 50-characters-or-less title in all capital letters. This is the only place in your document that this will appear. If your article is published, the publisher will print this shortened title at the top of the printed article pages. See my example, which is the running head for an article entitled "Ten Reasons to Require APA Style in Baccalaureate Nursing Papers."

Running head: TEN REASONS TO REQUIRE APA STYLE

Now, on to page headers. APA even tells you, on page 288 of the Publication Manual, "The manuscript page headers should not be confused with the running head for publication, which goes only on the title page and appears on the published article." The purpose of the manuscript page headers is to identify each page of the document in case the pages get separated. A page header consists of the first two or three words of the title, followed by five spaces, and then the page number. This is typed into the header of the page, which is the top 1/2" of the paper. When done properly, you only type the page header one time. Microsoft Word's automatic header repeats the page header on every page in the document.

To type the page header using Word's automatic feature, go to View--Header and Footer. When you click on "Header and Footer," a dotted line will appear around a rectangle at both the top and the bottom of the page. Your cursor should automatically be set within the top dotted-line box. You are in the header. On your toolbar, click the icon to align your typing with the right margin, or hit the Control key plus the R key (Ctrl+R). Your cursor will go to the right side of the box. Start typing the first two or three words of your title, and don't worry if it doesn't make sense. In my example, I would type "Ten Reasons" (without the quotation marks). Type this shortened title in title case, which means you capitalize all words of four letters or more.

Next, hit the space bar five times. Now, hit the Alt key plus the Shift key plus the P key (Alt+Shift+P). This inserts an automatic page number in the header, which means the page number will now be automatically calculated correctly and inserted into the header of each page in the document. Another way to insert an automatic page number is to hit the page number icon, which looks like a page with a number sign on it (#), on the header/footer toolbar. So, now you have the first few words of the title, followed by five spaces, followed by the automatic page number, all located in the header and aligned on the right side of the page.

You're done with running heads and headers, thank goodness. APA style does not put anything in the page footers. To get out of the page header, double-click anywhere in the document outside the header. Now you're back to normal and can get on with writing your paper.

APA Style

2006-02-11T03:14:00Z

If you study or write in a scientific field, you probably have to use the 5th edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association. You don't need to buy templates to easily produce an APA-formatted paper. Set up Microsoft Word to conform to APA style, use a citation engine on the Web, and papers can be a piece of cake.

Let's change a few things that you can, to conform to APA style. You will fix these things one time and save them as the new default format that the Word program on your computer will continue to use forever and ever unless you change them again. The default format is the way Word automatically sets up your documents.

APA requires 1-inch margins all around the paper, right? Just nod your head and say yes. With MS Word 2002/XP or higher open, go to File--Page Setup. Click on the Margins tab. Change the numbers in the left and right margin boxes to 1 inch (the normal default is 1.25 inches). The top and bottom margins should already be set at 1 inch--if they aren't, change them. Be sure portrait orientation is selected, and under Preview it should say "whole document." Now, click on the button in the bottom left corner that says "Default." A pop-up box will ask if you want to change the default settings for page setup. It will inform you that this change will affect all new documents based on the NORMAL template. Since that's what you want (trust me on this), click "Yes." That's all there is to it--now all your documents will automatically have the requisite 1-inch margins all around.

Next, go to Tools--Options and click on the Spelling & Grammar tab. About halfway down you'll see a section dealing with Grammar. "Check grammar as you type" and "check grammar with spelling" should be checked. Under "Writing Style," select "Grammar & Style." Click the Settings button in this section. You will see a list of three things under "Require." The first one says "Comma required before last list item." In the pull-down menu beside this item, choose "Always." For the next one, "Punctuation required with quotes," choose "Inside." For the third one, "Spaces required between sentences," select "1." Click OK, and then OK again.

Now, you just have to pay attention to all the red and green squiggly lines and do something about them. We'll talk more about that later. Enough for now.

Tips, Hints, and Helps for Nurses Who Use Computers

2006-02-09T04:33:00Z

I teach nursing informatics in a college of nursing, and I started this blog to help my students, our faculty, and others who are always asking me questions about computers in health care. I will post whatever random tips, hints, and helps occur to me or that come up in the course of a day. I also teach online, and a lot of the questions I get have to do with online education, so you'll see topics about that as well. Feel free to post a question or a tip of your own that you think will help others.