Welcome to the first edition of the CITES e-Newsletter! We hope to publish on a semi-regular basis to keep the School of Nursing aware of our activities. If you'd like to read our newsletter on the web, visit the online archive. Eventually, we will create a blog where you can view articles on a single topic simply by searching or by clicking a link.

Searching for an interesting speaker for your online class, an image to illustrate a common dermatologic finding, or a website to teach about heart and lung sounds? Open access to digital resources is increasing. Although the amount of information can be overwhelming, they are being catalogued.

CITES is beginning to search and catalogue these resources. Below are some sites you might want to visit just to see what is available. If you’d like our help to locate resources, please fill out a Request Form.

Merlot (http://www.merlot.org) is a free and open resource designed primarily for faculty and students of higher education. Links to online learning materials are collected here along with annotations such as peer reviews and assignments.

For example, to study and hear heart or lung sounds, visit the Auscultation Assistant developed at UCLA.

Or, the McGill University Virtual Stethoscope. Instructions: If you already have RealPlayer installed, set the drop down menus on the left navigation bar to “Virtual Stethoscope”, then to “Respiratory”, then click “Go there.” Set the breath sound you want to hear and hit “Go.” When you get to the next screen, read the description of the sound and then “Click for sound” at the top of the page to hear the breath sounds.

Or, a beautiful animation of the heart.

And, perhaps you'd like to review the Native American Elders Health Care Series.

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Course Development Guidelines and Tips is a resource created by CITES to help you develop your courses. Topics included here are: Setting Up Your Blackboard Course, Creating Learning Objectives, Suggestions for Online Modules & Courses, E-Reserves, and Copyright issues. We will be adding resources to “Ideas for Activities”; if you have any, please send them to us.

CITES is available to support you from initial course development to posting content in Blackboard. Please do not hesitate to contact us by filling out a Request Form.

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Captivate is a software program that allows you to easily create professional quality interactive simulations and demonstrations in Flash format. Without any programming or multimedia skills, you can automatically record all onscreen actions, including editable mouse movements, and add text captions and audio narration. CITES is using this software to create online tutorials on how to use various tools of Blackboard. See this one on Adding an Announcement. If there is a specific task that you’d like us to develop a tutorial on, please fill out a Request Form.

Faculty can also use Captivate to create online lecture presentations. You can import your lecture PowerPoint slides into Captivate and record the lecture audio narration over it. Captivate also allows you to later edit the narration and slides. You can also control time frames for slides. Captivate instantly generates a Flash file that can be posted as a link in Blackboard or a web page. Captivate also has quizzing and scoring features. If you are interested in developing a presentation, please fill out a Request Form.

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