By Teresa Chan, MD | Peer-reviewed by Brent Thoma, MD Dr. Christopher Labos (@drlabos) has confessed his hate for Twitter. I would like to confess that I have fallen in love with it. Once again I find myself with a contrary opinion – I think tweeting and medicine go hand in hand – and thus, I have published my second BoringEM.org Counterpoint (see the first one here). Twitter is the Message The great Canadian Media …
The Social Media Index (SM-Index): A Pilot Project
As promised last week, I have put together a pilot Social Media Index (SM-Index) for free open-access medical education (FOAM) websites. There were 25 sites included within this analysis. They were selected from the sites that I frequent as well as anyone that volunteered their site when I asked on twitter. This article discusses the thinking behind the creation of the SM-Index and the methods used to calculate it. The index itself is …
Educational Scholarship: Measuring the Impact of FOAM
I recently asked a prominent EM researcher “Does FOAM (Free Open Access Meducation) have academic value?” I don’t need to paraphrase his answer as it was quite concise: “No.” While he was elegant in his bluntness, you will probably not be surprised to hear that I disagree. This response led thinking and discussion that culminated at CAEP13 after I attended the Consensus Conference on Educational Scholarship. What is Educational Scholarship? The Consensus Conference was …
CAEP13: A BoringEM Review
I just returned from a marathon week at CAEP13 (the Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians Annual Conference). While it was my 5th consecutive year of attendance, it was the first time that medical social media was on the radar with a twitter hashtag designated and presentations by at least one FOAMite (Ken Milne). I was excited to see how this would affect the conference as compared to the previous 4 CAEP’s that I …
CAEP13 and Social Media
The Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians (CAEP) will be holding its annual conference from June 1st-5th in Vancouver. As far as I know, CAEP13 will be the first Canadian emergency conference that has put effort into establishing a social media presence. CAEP_docs has promised some live-tweets and the #CAEP13 hash-tag has been set up with twubs.com. However, I think the success or failure of CAEP’s first venture into the world of social media will …
AnkiEM Evolution – Flashcard Exchange & Flashcards Deluxe
For the background on this project check out my post The AnkiEM Project. Basically, when I started making cards to review for my board exams I knew that I wanted to use a spaced-repetition flashcard tool (thanks to Chris Nickson‘s from Life in the Fast Lane for exposing me to this concept) and Anki seemed like the best bet. However, as I collected feedback from Eve Purdy, Andrew Tagg, Joshua Power and Reuben Strayer I began to consider other alternatives. Specifically, I agreed with Joshua Power that it would …