User:SarahStewart

=Who I am= My name is Sarah Stewart. I wear many hats: educator, facilitator, project manager, staff developer, consultant, midwife and researcher.

Currently I am an educational facilitator at Otago Polytechnic in the Educational Development Centre. I am also a self-employed educational consultant and facilitator. Until recently, I was also the also lead educator in the Second Life Education New Zealand midwifery project which involves designing, implementing and evaluating a virtual birth unit for educating students midwives.


 * My blog
 * My ePortfolio
 * My Delicious
 * Second Life : Petal Stransky
 * Twitter: SarahStewart
 * Facebook: Sarah Stewart

=Professional Interests= My passion is supporting people as they explore how to network and develop personal learning environments online. I am especially interested in supporting health professionals to communicate and collaborate in online environments using open and free tools and methodology. I love to try out new technology and think how it can be incorporated into teaching and learning. I am a Twitter addict.

=Non-Professional Interests= My main off-line life is focused around my family.
 * I love reading trashy historical novels.
 * I love reality TV like "So you think you can dance' and 'Australia/America/UK has talent'. One day I want to be in a reality TV show.
 * I am a proud supporter of the Otago and Highlanders rugby teams and love watching rugby at Carisbrook, in Dunedin.

=Work in education= For nearly 10 years I was a midwifery educator at Otago Polytechnic working with undergraduate and postgraduate students. Initially, the context was face-to-face but as time went by, I became more and more involved with designing and implementing online courses. So as my interest in eLearning developed I moved away from teaching midwifery students into supporting staff in their teaching practice, professional development and education research.

In 2009 I left my job at the Otago Polytechnic School of Midwifery to become involved with various other projects:
 * designing and creating a virtual teaching resource for midwifery education in Second Life,
 * designing and implementing an eMentoring program for Aged Care Queensland,
 * developing eLearning guidelines for the School of Business at Charles Darwin University,
 * a symposium about eMentoring for indigenous and Torres Strait people in Cairns.

In 2010 I will be working part time in the Educational Development Centre of Otago Polytechnic as an educational programmer/facilitator. For the rest of my time I will be developing my practice as an educational consultant and facilitator specializing in eLearning development and research, focusing on health. I will also will organising and facilitating the online international midwifery conference: The Virtual International Day of the Midwife

For more information, please go to my blog or ePortfolio.

=Work in Wikieducator= I started to develop my skills in Wikieducator when I was working on the Second Life Education New Zealand project. I developed all the resources and lesson plans for the virtual birthing unit on Wikieducator because I believed it was really important to share the research outputs and outcomes with people beyond the immediate project team.

Currently, my job is to organise the Otago Polytechnic page and develop resources for the Educational page - this includes information on how to use web conferencing and information about creative commons license for staff.

=Contact= If you'd like to leave a message, ask a question or contact me for whatever reason, please go to My Talk page.