I created Freenursetutor.com about five years ago. During that time, I had many instructors send me encouraging emails. Some informed me of errors, some sent suggestions or thanks. My all time favorites were those from students that told me how Freenursetutor helped them in achieving their dream. It was those emails that really made me very happy and gave me the passion to create another site that allows instructors to create their own customized version of the activities on freenursetutor.com.

With that said...this is my new project: Try to offer the same services with no cost to the instructors or students. Now, as I write that I have to gasp. What am I thinking?

My new goal is to put all of my activities on a website and open them for use by others, while trying to create a community of nursing educators who can create, collaborate and share activities. I do not believe that there is anything like this already in existence and if there is it is not free.

As the word spreads, I am hoping that we can grow our numbers of site visits to a point that we can obtain sponsorship from larger institutions and collect donations. Up to this point, I have maintained the site financially with my own funds and with small amounts of time, here and there on a part-time basis. But to grow it with increased activities that are available to all students and to add the ability for others to create custom activities will require increased costs for maintenance, time and effort. I am taking a big breath and jumping in. I am excited and nervous.

Please subscribe to this blog. Keep informed of our progress. We will soon have the ability for instructors to begin creating and organizing activities. Spread the word and join our new movement for innovation in Nursing Education.

Saturday, July 31, 2010

Help your students learn!!

With the new school year approaching, this may be a good time to consider how you might be able to make your teaching more engaging and more effective for both you and your students. We are confident that if you try using FreeNurseTutor as a supplement to your teaching you will soon see the benefits. Students themselves will let you know that FreeNurseTutor's interactive computer based activities do improve learning.

Just letting your students know about freenursetutor.com can be a useful way to help stimulate interest and support learning. Students can access many interesting and useful nursing and healthcare learning activities with no login required. But the real power of FreeNurseTutor is the capability for instructors to customize or create your own interactive computer based learning activities to use with your students, year after year. It's not as hard as you problably think. Some of you have already started to use FreeNurseTutor by importing activities from the Library to modify or by creating activities starting with your own content. For the rest of you, this would be a great time to create your first interactive learning activity.

One of the easier activities to create is the BlankIt activity. (Many of you will recognize this as a type of CLOZE activity.) Don't underestimate the value of this type of activity. Students really like it and I actually had my own students asking me to create more. You should think of one difficult concept or critical teaching point that your students have a difficult time learning and remembering. Copy or create a short paragraph with the most important information included. To see some examples of the BlankIt learning activity from FreeNurseTutor, click this link-BlankIt To create your own BlankIts for your students, this is all you need to do:
1. You must have a MySchool Account. (It's free. Enroll from the front page of freenursetutor.com)
2. Click LOGIN-MySchool from freenursetutor.com to log into your instructor account
3. Click on My Activities from the top menu. Then click BlankIt from the dropdown menu.
4. Click on Create New BlankIt. Follow the instructions on the Create BlankIt page.
5. After clicking Save, the new activity will listed under My Activities > BlankIt.
6. Students can now play this activity anytime and any place with Internet access by logging into MySchool using your school's Student User ID and Password.
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