The earliest conceptual foundation for freenursetutor.com was begun years ago when Diane first started to incorporate computer technology into her teaching. She started by using the educational software provided by her school during computer lab time. She soon expanded the use of technology to her classroom by using her classroom computer with a projector. Next she started to take advantage of the tremendous educational resources freely available on the Internet. These unlimited resources could be brought into the classroom through the school’s Internet connection. Gradually Diane became aware of software that would allow her to add nursing content to engaging learning activities and even help her to create her own computer based activities. The response from her students was overwhelmingly positive. Self-directed interactive learning seemed to fill a real need by some students for an alternative to classroom lecture and studying from textbooks.
Now if the students benefited from computer activities at school, why not at home as well? Diane began to research LMSs (Learning Management Systems) that would allow her to provide educational resources and activities to her students over the Internet. She eventually chose to use Moodle, a powerful open source LMS. Students could sign on with their own password and their individual progress could be tracked by an instructor. After spending considerable time and effort expanding her own technical knowledge, and with some help from others, Diane succeeded at launching a learning website for her own students. Once again, the feedback from students was terrific. Students not only used this new resource at school, but now it was available to them anytime and anywhere they had access to the Internet. It was exciting and gratifying for Diane to see that many of her students were enthusiastically spending more time away from school on self-directed educational activities. Most importantly, Diane found that her students had a better understanding of topics covered in class after using the computer activities. It was as if each of her students had been given a full time personal tutor to help them study the nursing curriculum.
Naturally, this remarkable use of technology in teaching did not go unnoticed by other nursing instructors in the building. Soon they and their students were also using the new website as a supplement to their already established teaching methods. Administrators at her school also took notice. When the position of Technology Coordinator became available, Diane was offered and accepted this supplemental position in addition to her teaching position.
But Diane was still not finished. If the nursing students at her school could benefit from computer based learning, why not students all across the country? Diane found that the LMS that she had used for her own students was not particularly well suited for a learning website that is freely accessible to an unlimited number of students and instructors. She started reviewing and testing various software applications. Over time, she selected several that were affordable and, when used together, would be effective for her purposes. (At the same time, Diane continued developing new learning activities for her students.) Finally she combined her technical knowledge, her educational insight, and all of her accumulated resources to create a website dedicated to nursing and healthcare education, available to everyone everywhere totally for free. FreeNurseTutor at freenursetutor.com was born!
We believe freenursetutor.com is already one of the most useful educational websites for nursing and healthcare students and instructors available. But stay posted, you can be sure Diane isn’t finished yet.