It's that time of the semester when we're supposed to demonstrate to our professors all the information we've learned over the last four months...yup, that's right, its time for final papers/projects. I'm actually kind of excited about them. I get to apply what I've learned to things that are relevant to me. While at times this semester I've grown frustrated with the lack of relevance of what I'm learning to medical education (something I knew would happen going into the program, as I'm not what you would call a traditional GSE student), my final projects will all be medicine related. I'll be creating things that will potentially be publishable/applicable right now.
Before I tell about my final projects, I wanna go on self-indulgent rant about finals time though. For many of my classes I have to write a paper, and do a presentation on the paper topic. Seriously? Pick one. Personally, I prefer the paper (not because I have a fear of presentations or anything, but because everyone has such divergent interests that rarely are people's topics interesting to other people. My topics are no different - and perhaps even less relevant to my classmates interests given my own interests are pretty atypical for GSE), as I think you're better able to demonstrate the depth of your understanding.
Anywho, here's a little preview of a few of my topics (after I've said how little interest others will have in them...):
For my Foundations of Teaching and Learning class, I get to present my rock climbing experience. Here's a clip of me bouldering (videography courtesy of Christine) that will be the basis for that presentation. I am then tasked with describing the experience in terms of the theorists/pedagogues we read this semester. I chose Dewey and Progressive Education:
For my design of learning environments I'm proposing a simulation based accompanyment to the basic science curriculum at Perelman School of Medicine (a project I hope to pitch to the faculty in the near future).
For my evaluation class I'll be writing up a study I conducted the summer between my first and second year of medical school on how being out in nature affects kids attention span. Empirically I noticed that kids with ADHD I took backpacking stayed on task much better at the end of the summer than they did at the beginning. I wondered whether this was actually the case (or whether I got better at keeping these kids on task as I got to know them better/ I became less frustrated with them getting off task as I grew to expect it). My old summer camp director, Ben Swan, agreed to let me run a study at Pine Island Camp (PIC), an overnight camp for boys 9-14 on an island in the middle of a lake in Maine with no electricity or running water. The boys go on a series of 2-7 day canoeing, backpacking, kayaking and sailing trips throughout the summer (CLICK HERE for more info on the camp...especially if you have boys that age or teach boys that age, as its one of the best places on earth). The summer of 2009, I gave the boys a computer test at the beginning of the summer and at the end of the summer that tested their attention. I then divided the boys into two groups (high and low attention) based on a survey I had their parents fill out. I'll finally get around to writing it up and really analyzing the data for this final project.