Dear Alison,
Thank you so much for sharing about Teach-a-Phone! I did not know about this history of remote teaching and it is encouraging to read that the phone was effective and restored some peer-group camaraderie for learners. There is hope!
On a related note, while we do not have an actual telepresence robot, we have taken a low-cost approach of attaching an iPad to a rolling cart that we fondly call our "ZotBot" (after our UCI Anteater mascot who "Zot Zots") for COVID rounds. It has been working out very well for us! Here is a short write-up of the very first experience with this:
Virtual Bedside Teaching Rounds.
Thank you again!
Julie
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Julie Youm, PhD
Assistant Dean, Education Compliance and Quality; Director, Educational Technology
University of California, Irvine School of Medicine
jyoum@uci.edu------------------------------
Original Message:
Sent: 07-31-2020 10:07
From: Alison Whelan
Subject: Heard of the teach-a-phone? America's previous pandemic spurred innovation in remote learning too
Use of the telephone as a way to connect teachers and students-referred to as the "Teach-a-
Phone"-has its roots in the 1918 Spanish Flu. But the remote learning technology really came into its own about 20 years later as an alternative to home-visits. As an educator, I found this article to be both fascinating and relevant: Before Zoom and Coronavirus, How the Telephone Became the 20th Century's Most Successful Remote-Learning Technology for Homebound Students
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Alison Whelan
Chief Medical Education Officer
Association of American Medical Colleges
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