Wikis, blogs and podcasts: a new generation of Web-based tools for virtual collaborative clinical practice and education

Abstract

Background: We have witnessed a rapid increase in the use of Web-based 'collaborationware' in recent years. These Web 2.0 applications, particularly wikis, blogs and podcasts, have been increasingly adopted by many online health-related professional and educational services. Because of their ease of use and rapidity of deployment, they offer the opportunity for powerful information sharing and ease of collaboration. Wikis are Web sites that can be edited by anyone who has access to them. The word 'blog' is a contraction of 'Web Log' -an online Web journal that can offer a resource rich multimedia environment. Podcasts are repositories of audio and video materials that can be "pushed" to subscribers, even without user intervention. These audio and video files can be downloaded to portable media players that can be taken anywhere, providing the potential for "anytime, anywhere" learning experiences (mobile learning).

Manual therapy education. Does e-learning have a place?

“…The word 'wiki' comes from the Hawaiian meaning 'swift' or 'to hurry' (Boulos et al, 2006). The most well-known example of the wiki is Wikipedia -The Free Encyclopedia.…”

“…However, Boulos et al (2006) The ease with which the podcast can be created and distributed is one of its key features. An inexpensive microphone, a personal computer and some free, open-source recording software will suffice (Tavales and Skevoulis, 2006).…”

Dynamic “Inline” Images: Context-Sensitive Retrieval and Integration of Images into Web Documents

“…Many of the recent innovationstermed "Web 2.0"-seek to integrate existing web resources and make them more dynamic, collaborative, and interactive [1][2][3] . Integrating relevant images into web-based information resources adds value for research and education.…”

“…The present work tested the feasibility of a simple, automated, context-sensitive platform to integrate relevant radiology images into a target web page's content. There were two specific aims: (1) to automatically integrate relevant images based on the content of the target document, and (2) to make the process virtually transparent from the standpoint of the web site developer.…”

Making journal articles ‘live’: turning academic writing into scientific dialog

“…There are publications about the potential of Web 2.0 for research and education in academia (c.f. Boulos et al 2006;Greenhow et al 2009;Lankshear and Knobel 2007;Ullrich et al 2008). But, there are only a limited number of works that deal with 'live' paper-writing that fully consider the potential of Web 2.0 technologies (Stuart 2009) for spatial data sharing, editing, and analyzing to merge research and publication to revitalize scientific interactions.…”