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Explore the World of Digital Communication

By Jessica Porter, NCSN, RN, BSN posted 04-20-2015 19:31

  

Explore the World of Digital Communication

It should come as no surprise that School Nurses are the Nursing specialty that has embraced digital communication, technology, and social media. After all, we work with 21st century students and we see the potential of digital communication every day in the classrooms and hallways.

School Nurses know that social media is a powerful tool but that digital communication encompasses a much broader toolbox than just Facebook and Twitter – it includes utilizing a variety of media ranging from websites, audio, video, graphics, and text media to communicate effectively with various audiences.

digital communications word cloud

When I talk with School Nurses in my school district and across the nation about how they incorporate technology into their practice, I have been struck how we nurses follow a predictable course of developmental milestones as we explore the world of digital communication and make decisions about how to incorporate it into our practice.

The first step in this development and exploration is resistance. Since most of us are digital immigrants rather than digital natives, we nurses can remember being resistant to technology and digital communication at first – worrying that email and text communication were going to take the place of face-to-face client interaction. We discovered that effective digital communication enhances one-on-one client interaction rather than replaces it.

The second step in our development towards becoming 21st century nurses is discovering the problem statement or impetus for change. For many school nurses the impetus for exploring digital communication was to keep up with their students, to keep up with their own children, or to keep on a par with teacher colleagues. Another frequently cited impetus to expanding communication technology skills is involvement with our professional organizations. One school nurse recounts how amazed her children were to see the website she built for her NASN affiliate school nurse organization. Other school nurse leaders learn to manage a Facebook page or promote a “Tweet the Conference” initiative for their school nurse organization.

Success with one form of digital communication opens the realm of possibilities and makes us willing to explore new platforms. This is the third stage in our digital development - exploration. We are not going to adopt every new digital platform that comes along but we are starting to understand the pros and cons of different technologies and social media platforms in both our professional and personal lives.

Learn one. Do one. Teach one. That model now applies to technology and digital communication. The fourth stage is sharing your skills and teaching other school nurses to explore the digital communication toolbox. That is the model of the NASN Twitter Mentors at #NASN2014 and #NASN2015. That is the model of School Nurse Blogs.

So this School Nurse Day - face the resistance, find your impetus to explore the world of digital communication and then, share your story.

I’d like to hear from you. How did you overcome your resistance to try new technology or Social Media? What led you to jump in anyway? How are you sharing what you’ve learned?

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I attended a Twitter campaign meeting that was held after school today to learn and share information about how to tweet. The stae education association is encouraging educators to tweet about local pension issues and my local educational assn. organized a learning session for anyone who wanted to attend. Many staff attended to learn about tweeting. After learning how to do this last year at NASN, I was able to help coach others in sending their 1st tweet. Truly I have graduated from the "learn one, do one" to the " teach one " stage. It was great to share some of the professional benefits of using Twitter to get current information for any professional. This social media is an efficient way to get up to date information that I can explore further when I find the time. Being open to digital technology is a good starting point for learning from students and staff who might be digital natives to enrich our practice. As I was helping with the Twitter campaign today, I thought " you've come a long way, baby!"
Thanks for sharing this blog Jessica. I enjoy exploring the world of digital technology and Facebook provided my first social networking site. Although, like Jody, once I discovered Twitter, I was hooked. I appreciate the ability to scroll through posts and if something catches my eye, I can explore the information further.
I have been inspired by several school nurses who are using twitter in the school community so I have just started my own School Nurse Twitter page. I can see that it is a great way to share health information, trends and advice from the nurse. So far I'm not making much of an impact because I haven't established my community yet, but I'm hopeful. It will happen.
Onward.

04-23-2015 21:40

I agree that I was resistant to Facebook, my first experience with social media. I do want to protect my privacy. I do very much like Twitter as a learning tool though, and when I have a bit more time will utilize it much more. I appreciate the NASN Twitter Mentors very much. I look forward to future Twitter Chats!
I see this as a tool for transformative leadership and collective leadership.
Being on Facebook has become very natural for me. I love being able to connect with family, friends from high school, college and fellow school nurses from Texas and the nation. TSNO did open a FB page years ago and we are becoming more active in utilizing it to share information with our members. FB's service of showing trends with visits and and how many people are being reached is great. We also have a Twitter account and a school nurse with expertise in this area that helps promote information. We have recently begun using SMORE for online newsletters and flyers that tabulate analytics to help us track use.
There are so many different types of social media, some are unknown to me and some I may hesitate looking at because I don't know anything about them. Overall, I do embrace the changes and realize that I need to dive in if we want to stay relevant.
This was definitely my trajectory. I have always been resistant to FaceBook - too personal and all encompassing. I felt there was too much connecting with it and being a very private person, the perception that I needed to reveal myself to way too many people! Most of all, I feared the time necessary to maintain a site and then - my fear of an adiction to social media, oh my! My experience was very different with Twitter. It fits me and my professional life - my need and desire to comment on issues to a larger audience but not involve my personal life. Perfectly suited to my needs and crazy schedule - I have, since last June, taught close to a dozen nurses to Tweet. Everyone at my table at NIWI opened an account - I felt a great sense of accomplishment bringing this huge world of information to busy professional nurses who all have an opportunity now to teach the specialty organization they represent to enter the Twitter world and talk nursing. In this way younger folks will hopefully see us as a forward moving professional organization they may want to enter and engage in.