Medicine 2.0 Workshop – Group 1 (Difficult)
For the next 40 minutes or so, I’d like you to do two things:
1. Learn a web 2.0 ‘competency’
2. Report back to the group on this experience and how useful you think the skill
is, personally and professionally
1. Competency 1 – Create a medical / F2 Weblog
You don’t need Elsevier, the BMJ, or a hospital journal club to publish your thoughts
on medicine, research, or being a junior doctor – you can do it yourself in a matter of
minutes. So take half an hour, in pairs or 3s, to create a blog. We’ll use Google’s
blogging tool – Blogger.
1. Familiarise yourself with what a blog should look like – take a look at
nhsblogdoc.blogspot.com, www.nhs.uk/News/Pages/NewsArticles.aspx, or
www.neatorama.com. If you’re really stuck try colinsmededblog.blogspot.com
Note that most blog posts contain at least one link word that, if you click on it,
takes you to a primary or related source.
2. Go to www.blogger.com
3. Click on Create your blog now
4. Create a Google account if you don’t have one already
5. Create your blog – enter a name and web address then click on Continue
6. Choose a design you like, then click on Continue
7. Start blogging
Step 6 is obviously a little more complicated than that. But it isn’t too tricky. To create
a new post, just type in some text in the Posting box, then try to include a link to
something.
To create a link:
1. Select the word in your post that you want to turn into a link
2. Click the Link button in the Posting box (a little world with a chain on top)
3. Enter the web address you want that word to link to (eg www.google.com)
4. Don’t worry about posting something earth-shattering – Group 2 will provide
you with a god topic and some learned opinion.
Now post your comment to your blog by clicking on Publish Post.
To view your blog at any time, click on the View Blog link at the top right of blogger.
You can change the way it looks by using the Layout tab.
2. What did you do, and could it be useful?
In the remaining time, get together as a group and compare your experiences and
thoughts about creating a weblog. Choose one or more people to present a 5 minute
feedback session explaining roughly what you did, and what your group thought of
the process and its potential value. Don’t be afraid to be controversial – if someone
in the group thinks blogs are pointless, explain why.

Medicine 2.0 Workshop – Group 2 (Easy)
For the next 40 minutes or so, I’d like you to do two things:
1. Learn a web 2.0 ‘competency’
2. Report back to the group on this experience and how useful you think the skill
is, personally and professionally
1. Competency 2 – Find a medical hot-topic and post it on Group 1’s blog
If we’re lucky, some of the folk in group 1 should be able to set up a new blog. But
they don’t have anything to post on it, yet. Your task is to find something up-to-the-
minute, newsworthy, and controversial enough to warrant an interesting comment.
Try to restrict it to something related to medicine – but that doesn’t mean it has to be
a clinical topic – politics, ethics, education, IT… as long as it relates to medicine and
is interesting.
1. Start off by looking at some blogs to get an idea what medical bloggers are
talking about. Try nhsblogdoc.blogspot.com, www.badscience.net,
scienceblogs.com/insolence or casesblog.blogspot.com. If you’re really stuck
try colinsmededblog.blogspot.com
2. Read the comments blog readers have made to see what controversies have
been raised
3. Click on the links from any story that interests you to explore the subject
further and go back to the primary sources.
4. See what people are bookmarking at the social bookmarking sites -
digg.com/health, www.reddit.com/r/medicine are good places to start.
5. Choose a story you think is interesting, discuss it between you and work out
what your comment on the story should be. Note down the web address
(URL) of the page you’re commenting on.
6. Find someone with a blog in group 1 and get them to publish your comment
and a link to the related webpage on their new blog.
2. What did you do, and could it be useful?
In the remaining time, get together as a group and compare your experiences and
thoughts about blogs and social bookmarking. Choose one or more people to
present a 5 minute feedback session explaining roughly what you did, and what your
group thought of the process and its potential value. Don’t be afraid to be
controversial – if someone in the group thinks blogs are pointless, explain why.

Medicine 2.0 Workshop – Group 3 (Moderate)
For the next 40 minutes or so, I’d like you to do two things:
1. Learn a web 2.0 ‘competency’
2. Report back to the group on this experience and how useful you think the skill
is, personally and professionally
1. Competency 3 – RSS Feeds and Google Reader
The old way of getting information from the web was to search for it, or go to sites
you were familiar with. The new way is to make the information come to you, already
filtered to ensure it’s relevant and interesting. The main way of doing this is with RSS
(Really Simple Syndication). You can think of your RSS feed as your inbox for the
web. Websites, blogs, news, Twitters and search engines can all pipe results directly
to your RSS feed – you can then skim over them and read the things that interest
you most.
1. Set up a web-based RSS inbox, using Google Reader. Start by going to
www.google.com/reader
2. If you don’t already have a Google account, create one (the button is at the
bottom right – fill in your details then click on I accept. Create my account
3. You’re now in Google Reader, but you don’t have any RSS subscriptions to
look at. Click on Add a Subscription
4. Enter a web address – some examples you can try are
nhsblogdoc.blogspot.com, www.nhs.uk/News/Pages/NewsArticles.aspx,
www.neatorama.com, or www.badscience.net. If you’re really stuck try
colinsmededblog.blogspot.com
5. You could even see if anyone in group 1 has created a blog yet that you can
subscribe to.
The most recent posts in the feeds you’ve subscribed too will appear in Google
Reader. Read a few, but your main task is now to find new RSS feeds that
are interesting to you. If you find a site that’s relevant, look for the RSS logo:
You may be able to find a button that automatically adds a feed to your
Google Reader account. Or you can just copy and paste the web address.
Advanced users only: If you want to see the real power of RSS, see if you can do a
Pubmed search for something interesting (ideally quite specific with only a few
results) – you can get the result list as an RSS feed, and any new article published
that fits that Pubmed search will automatically arrive in your RSS inbox – so you
never have to look through journals, relevant stuff comes to you.
2. What did you do, and could it be useful?
In the remaining time, get together as a group and compare your experiences and
thoughts about blogs, newsfeeds and RSS. Choose one or more people to present a
5 minute feedback session explaining roughly what you did, and what your group
thought of the process and its potential value. Don’t be afraid to be controversial – if
someone in the group thinks all this is pointless, explain why.