Google+: "Connecting and Sharing among People with Common Interests

The last few months a lot has been written about Google+, comparing it to Facebook.  I have personally found myself using Google+ much more than Facebook and I was not sure exactly why.  It was only recently when I tried to explain Google+ to some people that I gained an insight about this.

I started using Google+ because I like to try out new things.  I enjoyed exploring its various features and how to apply them to my work.  As I used it, I realized I was not going back to FB as much as I used to.  Initially I wanted to try and get my "friends" from FB over to Google+ and it bothered me a bit that they did not.  Then one day I realized it did not bother me at all.  I realized something that I think I knew all along, that at a very fundamental level Google+ and FB are completely different. How so?

FB's tagline says "Connect and share with people in your life".

My interpretation of "people in your life" is people you know or have known.  Once you connect with them i.e. "friend" them on FB, by default everything you post is visible to ALL your "friends".  The Pew Research Center in its report in May 2012 found:

• On average, users make 7 new Facebook friends per month; they initiate 3 requests and accept 4.
• Women average 21 updates to their Facebook status per month while men average 6.
• In a month, about half of our sample made a comment on a friend's content, and about half received a comment.
• Fewer than 5% of users hid content from another user on their Facebook feed.

Another key difference is the reciprocal relationship with other FB users.  Thus only after both users have mutually agreed to be friends can one see the other person's posts.

What this means is that till you agree to be friends you see NOTHING of what the other person posts and after becoming friends you usually see EVERYTHING that the other person posts.

Google+ at its very foundation was built on the concept of Circles and also allows Public posting which is very similar to a blog.

Public posts can be seen by anyone who follows you and are searchable on Google. People can comment on them, share them or +1 them.  You can see who these people are and view their public posts and decide if there are enough common interests that you can follow them back.  This leads to finding people of similar interest across the whole world - most often people you DO NOT KNOW.
People posting publicly are aware that these are open to the world and thus will not post private information like photos of their kids or what they had for breakfast.

Circles allow you to target your posts to specific people, and these are not visible to anyone outside the group (Circle) you specify.  This may seem to be similar to FB but it is not.  The list of people in your circles is unique to you.  Thus you could have a circle called Close Friends and have 5 people in that circle.  One of those 5 people may also have a circle called Close Friends and it may have 15 people in it.  You may not be in that circle.  These asymmetric circles can be confusing but allow for great autonomy in targeting your posts and filtering your stream.  The ability to mention specific people in posts allows you to include them in the conversation in a granular manner.

Create Circles based on you interest or projects

Now you can target your posts to those circles or keep them Public

You can filter your information stream using your circles and notification settings

Google+ allows you to share a circle.  Thus if you have collected a group of people with interest in HDR photography from across the world you can share it with other users.

The consequence of these differences are:

1. You are more likely to connect with people you DO NOT KNOW on Google+ compared to FB.  In this way it is a bit like Twitter.  
2. You are more likely to connect with people with similar interests.  The shared circles feature is a bit like Twitter lists.  
3. You are less likely to see uninteresting or irrelevant content on Google+ especially things that you feel people should have shared with a fewer folks. 
4. Due to the ability to filter your feeds and adjust your notifications (in a very easy manner) you feel in control of your information stream.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Please Silence your Cameras!

We should have expected this, it was just bound to happen.  But when it came, it still took many aback.

I am talking about the use of smartphone cameras to capture speaker slides during presentations.  I recently attended the AMEE 2012 meeting and noticed a large segment of the audience taking endless photos during presentations.  They took multiple photos of one slide either because the shot was not focused or the speaker was building the sliding via animation and they missed some bullet points.

Personally I have no problem with this practice.  I have been doing this myself in a limited manner using my Motorola Xoom tablet and Evernote.  The problem is that people are forgetting to mute their cameras and can be irritating and distracting to the people around them.  When many people start taking multiple photos, the issue can be quite serious.

At one session one of the audience members got so upset that she got up and asked everyone to silence their cameras.  I expect that presenters will soon be adding something on their first slide to ask the audience to silence their cameras.

Hidden Curriculum in Medical Schools - Are we teaching what we want students to learn?

We all know that

• The amount of information is increasing rapidly
• The 1/2 life of knowledge is shrinking - what we knew few years back does not hold true anymore.

As Alvin Toffler said, 

“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn. ” 

Once our students leave the formal education settings of medical school, they will have to learn how to keep up with literature and new advances on their own.  Thus medical educators want to teach students how to become self-motivated self-directed lifelong learners.  

The hidden curriculum is the unintended lesson/s, usually about norms, values, beliefs or behaviors, learned during a learning experience.  Thus in medical schools students are taught a particular way to communicate with patients.  When students see health care practitioners interact with their patients differently, they get a different message.

One of the biggest hidden curricula is the way students are expected to learn in medical schools.  Traditionally, they are expected to attend lectures and seminar, show up in clinical rotations and have information delivered to them, drilled into their heads.  [A number of medical schools are trying to break out of this mold]. These students get the unintended message that someone else is taking the responsibility for their learning.   This hidden message is more powerful than the intended message for their need to be self-directed learners.  

To truly help students become the independent, self-directed learners we want them to be, schools need to reform the way they educate.  Instead of large lecture halls, early in the training the students need to learn how to look up and find information to solve problems.  Students can learn individually or in small groups (e.g. Problem based learning and Team based learning).Passive learning should be avoided.  This  will create a hidden curriculum that will help our students learn the only useful lesson we can teach!