Unit 1 Reflection

Through the completion of my curated source collection I had many ups and downs in the research process but none I was not able to overcome or figure out a way to improve, I’ll explain later in this reflection. That being said, I feel pretty good about the quality of the sources I found overall. My claim on this is to demonstrate how technology has ultimately advanced the potential of medical findings and procedures with a relationship in literacy as it is used in analysis. I was interested in this topic due to my background and interest in pursuing a career in surgery, which gave me even more of a drive to find out more about how in 10 years the future of medicine may be turned around with the use of technology. At the beginning it was hard to find sources on medicine and technology that did not veer towards the business financial aspect of medical technology. 

One of my favorite sources I found was the TED talk on A Universal Translator for Surgeons the universal translator by Steven Schwaitzberg. This source was not only a medical example of technology being used in the medical field. Instead what intrigued me most was the program invented that consisted of not only one technological platform but four technologies to produce the FLS (Fundamentals of Laparoscopic Surgery) program. As I say in my curated source collection in the words of Schwaitzberg, “string together technologies to work towards the universal translator”. This quote is my favorite because it shows the future of technology as a whole which needs to collaborate with many other forms of technology in order to produce a final project.

To be honest, I have never been so keen on the use of technology in the classroom, so I was intimidated at the beginning of this assignment worried that I’d need to be skillful in technology. Then I said to myself what’s that saying everyone says, “you have to start somewhere if you want to succeed”. I was determined to get over my fear. I decided to make a Prezi to present my claim and ideas. To enhance the use of technology in my project I thought this word processing tool would be a good way to present my claim. The Prezi format I used was intentionally set in a track kind of way to mirror the idea of how technology itself has gone through phases of development alongside medicine. This medium also let me place images to represent the topic or speaker of each source I analyzed. I used the image of the rat limb to give my audience a preview of what the scientists had found in their research that way they not only have the wordy article but also a visual to help them understand this new discovery. 

Looking over the assignment sheet for the unit 2 and 3 I believe the sources I’ve used in this unit are going to be valuable for the next. Reading the description for unit 2 and 3 the research I did will be useful if I choose to continue with my current project topic. However, I think I will not need to use the last source I found because I think it is not as viable or relatable to the next unit. This is because my source from NCBI is from an older journal and if I want to talk about technology advancing the potential of medicine I will need more recent journals than the one I had from 2002. 

I am happy with the sources I found however as I said before I think my fourth source could have been replaced or improved with a different source because it wasn’t a “great” source. As for the possibility of there being a gap in my research up until now I do believe there is space for improvement. I found that the main problem I was facing was the keywords that I used when searching on the internet and I think in the future I have to narrow my goal more. Such that I should not be looking for just “technology and medicine advancement”, but rather “the evolution of medicine through a technological lens” or “information technology influence on medical advancement”. These words would possibly bring more in-depth articles with a direct perspective on technological influence rather than just the things that pop up when I initially looked at this topic such as, “6 new ways medicine has changed”, “top 5 medical improvements” or” medicine in the future”. I did not care of the number of advancements in medicine due to technology, I wanted results and lab write ups on successful findings with technology in the medical field. In conclusion, I am generally happy with the outcome of my curated source selection. Below are images of my brainstorming notes in producing this final project.

This is part of my notes while reading the NCBI article which I later compiled into my Prezi. 

Here are some notes at the end on a couple ideas that came from listening to two TED talks and choosing which one to analyze. 

This writing is some of the ideas I had in order to come up with my topic of interest regarding our inquiry of literacy and technology.