I had an interesting experience recently while in the US. I was invited to give a lecture to the Norwegian Radiologic Society on (you guessed it!) teleradiology. It was specified that the lecture was to be delivered using teleconferencing. I knew I would be in the US on the day of the talk and agreed accordingly. Robin, my able assistant duly converted Norwegian Time into Indian Time into US Eastern time and informed me that the talk was scheduled for 9.20 AM EST. We did some testing with our Norwegian counterparts, and all was in place. Only glitch – the day before the lecture I realized that I didn’t have a formal shirt (being on vacation) and had to go out and buy one. Although all I really needed was the upper half of one, since that was the only part of me the audience could see!
The lecture went off very smoothly and the feedback was excellent. It was a little surreal doing this from the living room in the Philadelphia suburb where I was based. I have done several videoconference lectures at various meetings to date, but they have all been from my office. This was a first from a home setting and it was an interesting experience overall – for example I had to stick a note on the door to say “Do not ring the doorbell”.
Teleradiology, e-teaching and videoconferencing are all futuristic technologies that are geared towards saving the precious commodity that is time, while at the same time they reduce our carbon footprint (imaging my carbon footprint if I had to fly to Norway just to deliver this lecture!).
An exciting initiative in e-teaching is currently happening in Pediatric Cardiology (link) wherein Dr Sunita Maheshwari, a Yale trained Pediatric Cardiologist conducts e-lectures interactively using a Cisco webplatform that can be attended by post-graduate trainees in Pediatric Cardiology anywhere in the world. Like radiologists, Pediatric Cardiologists, especially those of academic ilk, are in short supply and great demand, and an initiative like hers goes a long way towards meeting critical training requirements.
Your computer is the classroom of the future.