Really Cool Websites for Faculty

Herewith a list of interesting, informative and unusal websites for your viewing pleasure:

1. Presentation Zen: http://www.presentationzen.com/
I’ve spoken often of this website, which was created by Garr Reynolds, a designer who is also associate professor of management at Kansai Gaidai University in Japan. This is the key website about presentation design and delivery on the internet. His goal is to change how we see and use slide technology, notably PowerPoint and Keynote. His focus is upon harmony of design, and is built around the basic ideas of Zen Buddhism. His ideas are simple yet profound and can be used to help remodel how you use slides in class, moving you away from heavily text-based slides to simpler and more illustrative slides. A visit to this site is like a visit to a peaceful garden; you have to think and consider issues here.

2. Seth’s Blog: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/
This is the website of noted business author Seth Godin, author of many books of which “Linchpin” is but the latest. He offers words of counterintuitive business wisdom that resonate in our academic culture and setting. He might suggest that not being in synch with your various digital technologies (Facebook, Twitter, and so on) is the sign of a leader, not a follower; maybe you would invite a passionate amateur to accomplish a task rather than an experienced professional, and so on. He is always engaging and will certainly get you thinking.

3. Pecha Kucha: http://pecha-kucha.org/
You will likely be unaware of the pecha kucha movement, but the basic goal of pecha kucha is to develop a slide presentation that uses 20 slides, each lasting 20 seconds. Why do so? Here, it is so that the presenter is forced to hone his or her ideas into its basic components and its most essential information. The wesite provides you examples of such presentations, drawn from actual pecha kucha night activities, and it also provides you a link of locations for upcoming pecha kucha. By the way, pecha kucha is a Japanese transliteration of the term “chit chat.”

4. Tom Peters: http://www.tompeters.com/
Most of us know of Mr. Peters from his earlier works on excellence, such as A Search for Excellence. His blog is dedicated to this as well, and it covers many aspects of management related to becoming excellent at what we do. He provides free slides for you to use, and offers a series of, well, excellent video clips one can view.

5. Center for Evidence-Based Medicine: http://www.cebm.net/?o=1011
Switching gears here, this site is dedicated to promoting EBM in healthcare education and it gives you a series of superb links to information and tools. For example, if you click on the “EBM Tools” at the top of the home page, it will then link you to a page that discusses the basic EBM approach known as the 5 A’s (which was the basis of a recent in-service at PCCD), and to online calculators for likelihood ratios, numbers needed to treat and more.

6. The Integrator Blog: http://theintegratorblog.com/site/
This site is maintained by John Weeks and is a leading site for information related to the business, policies and education of Cam and integrative medicine. Palmer’s own Dr. Christine Goertz is on their editorial board, and the blog does a great job at keeping up with news affecting the entire spectrum of the CAM community.

7. Slayage: http://www.slayageonline.com/
Of course, we all know of my love for Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but how many people know that there is an online academic journal dedicated to the show. Well, now you do and here it is, and I dare you to make sense of most of what you read. But hey, this is all about really cool websites, and this one surely is.

Enjoy the reading!