Innovative Use of Technology to Facilitate Nutrition Practice and Education: a View from the Age of the Internet and Global Telecommunications
Chief Innovator and Founder, Centre for Global eHealth Innovation; Canada Research Chair in eHealth Innovation; Rose Family Chair in Supportive Care; Professor, Departments of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation, and Anesthesia; Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University Health Network and University of Toronto
At the dawn of the 21st century, the rapid evolution of the Internet and mobile telecommunication devices is giving humans, perhaps for the first time in their history, the speed and efficiency they need to connect with each other, to learn from each other, and to transmit and disseminate knowledge across the world.
New and emerging online tools are ushering a second wave in the evolution of the Web, known as ‘online social networking’, which is gathering power at an unprecedented speed. Very rapidly, social networking applications such as Wikipedia, FaceBook, YouTube and MySpace, have risen to be among the top 10 most used sites on the Web, re-shaping how we communicate, learn and live. Mobile communication devices, also known as “smart phones”, are penetrating every region of the world at a speed that substantially outpaces the adoption of personal computers, ushering in the era of the “Mobile Web”.
Participants in this session will join a discussion of how this technological renaissance could transform nutrition practice and education in the 21st century, in Canada and beyond.
In particular, they will:
- Become aware of emerging technologies that are forcing a re-definition of the roles of practitioners, educators and learners
- Appreciate the need to re-think the way in which practitioners, educators and learners are evaluated and rewarded
- Be exposed to large collaborative initiatives pursuing global (dis)economies of scale to promote optimal levels of performance, learning and efficient use of resources, and
- Realize the importance of the untapped power of students and members of the public to become reverse mentors, able to shape and promote the development of innovative nutrition practice and educational programs.
