Day: September 28, 2007

Engagement vs. PowerPoint

We finished our presentation at the NYSNA, and the same responses we received from the original work were the same ones our presentation attendees appeared to have:

People learn best when they are engaged and work in groups

and

People are most distanced when they are lectured at and overwhelmed with PowerPoint slides

Strange  how that is a lesson so many educators are afraid to believe and try. I suppose lecturing is much safer, since everything goes as prepared; everything except learning, that is.

Integrating critical thinking and EBP

I am co-presenting a session at the New York State Nurses’ Association convention in Atlantic City today entitled Integrating Critical Thinking and EBP into Novice Nurse Practice.

I am passionate about critical thinking (thank you, Stephen Brookfield), and with my colleague Rona Levin, we are speaking about some of the work we have done where we bring critical thinking and evidence-based practice together. We have some really interesting things to discuss and share, and I am looking forward to any insights we get from the audience.

Six Arkansas nuns excommunicated for heresy

I read this article in CNN yesterday about six nuns who were excommunicated, which in Catholicism means they are no longer able to officially receive the sacraments and have been declared to be so far outside of Catholic teachings and beliefs that they have separated themselves from the faith (even though the process of excommunication means the Vatican or church officials formally throw them out). 

Ready to read about nuns who run guns to fight against oppressive regimes or nuns who lie down in front of meetings of bishops to confront them about the inability of women to be ordained, I was not ready to read about nuns who believe Mary, the mother of Jesus, speaks through one of them (and may in fact be Mary’s reincarnation).

Ahh, the wonders of organized religion never cease. This is a breadth of fresh air compaired to homosexuality, abortion, masturbation, divorce, and other Catholic no-no’s.