October 29, 2024 • 27 mins
Some teachers who teach Health Education also teach Health Science. Today’s guests are educators who explain a free resource titled “uBEATS” offered by the University of Nebraska Medical Center. This resource is for 6th to 12th grade teachers and offers 90 elearning modules (15 minutes or less) that can be used by students as an additional tool. Module topics include genetics, pathology and microbiology, pharmacology, public health, careers in health care, and academic success.
To find out more about uBEATS, including how to contact today’s guests, go to their website at: https://www.unmc.edu/elearning/ubeats/index.html Contact Deanna Ingram at deingram@unmc.edu Contact Zuzi Greiner at zgreiner@unmc.edu Twitter/X and Instagram: uBEATS_Stem
Remember to watch this episode on the School Health Educator’s YouTube channel at: https://youtu.be/9Hl4l9Hl8ks
Contact the host of the School Health Educators Podcast, Lori Reichel, by emailing her at schoolhealtheducators@gmail.com or check out her websites at: www.schoolhealtheducators.org and www.lorireichel.com. Also, check out her products at this link: https://www.lorireichel.com/books-cards/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Hi, and welcome to the School Health educators
podcast
where we discuss health education and how to
best teach Health ed in the K 12
setting.
(00:24):
Hi. Welcome to the School Health educators podcast.
I'm your host, Lori R.
Today's episode is focusing on a resource that
I just found out about within the past
couple of months, and it's called U beats.
To help explain what this resource is,
I've invited 2 people
Zeus G and Dean Ingram to talk about
(00:46):
You beats.
So before we talk about what U beats
is about
doo, would you mind saying hide to our
audience and introducing yourself to us and tell
us a little bit about your background?
For sure.
Hi, everyone. My name is Susie G, and
I am the instructional Technologist for the U
beats program at the University of Nebraska Medical
(01:07):
Center.
And basically, my job is to create the
el learning modules that we'll discuss
throughout this interview.
And my background is actually also in education.
I was a science education teacher for 4
years.
And so this job is perfect for me
because I get to continue to apply my
(01:27):
science education skills,
but just in a different format. So
I love all the work that we do
here, and I'm so excited to share it
with, all of the listeners.
Thank you so much, Susie, and thanks for
your time today.
Dean. Jan Ingram, would you mind saying hello
and telling us a little bit about yourself?
Of course. Hello. I'll listeners,
(01:49):
so glad you're tuning in to data hear
about eb beats.
So my background, I'm also a educator.
I come from a little bit of the
elementary world, which is different,
but I taught for 5 years,
an elementary fourth grade, all 5 years, So
I taught all the subjects, and that was
(02:10):
really fun at that level,
and then took a little bit of a
turn in transitioned into...
High school Esl, specifically life
education for students.
And so in that content area, I taught,
also science and
literacy. You wouldn't think that they go together,
(02:30):
but they do really well. And so did
that for a few years before this opportunity
at the University of Nebraska Medical Center
became available?
And so now, I... My official title is
curriculum and education specialist again for the U
beats program.
And so I get to do a lot
(02:51):
of the people,
interactions and conferencing,
and
consultations with our teachers. I also I'm really
proud of, a lot of the curriculum alignment
work that we've done both for
Department of Ed throughout the country as well
as
individual teachers, and we can discuss that more
(03:12):
as we go on, but really proud of
that work. And then I still teach just
in higher education, and so I'm an adjunct
professor at Bellevue University where I teach.
In their education department. So super excited to
be here and can't wait to share more
with you all.
I'll thank you for being here. The both
(03:33):
of you Thank you so much.
And
I I wanna share with the audience that
how we got connected was I had posted
on the Health science Facebook page because I
recognized that some people that teach health science
also teach health education,
more of the life skills,
and
(03:54):
Then all of a sudden, y'all reached out
to me and stuff, and I'm grateful for
that.
So would you mind
telling us
what is the you beats that you've referred
to? And I'm curious too. I looked it
up online and I'll put the link for
how people can explore the resource.
In today's description, but what is you beats?
(04:14):
Yeah. I can start. And then I feel
like Suzie will do a great job of
explaining our content. So I'll give you the
overview of who we are.
And that is, I love to share this
word first. We are 100
percent free. Free for educators, free for students,
we all know if we hear that word,
it makes us very happy as teachers and
(04:36):
educators so
we are 100 percent free. Thanks to generous
donors
that have helped in making you beats what
it is.
And so we are a e learning
e module program in both the science,
foundational science, content and also health science
(04:56):
educational content.
We offer over 90 modules right now in
our Canvas library,
And so I did just mention Canvas. I
don't want that to scare anybody that might
be listening,
because we will have a lot of teachers
that don't use Canvas. And our Google classrooms
or what other whatever learning management
(05:18):
tools that they use
But we do we do house our material
in Canvas,
but there's no problem if you're not a
Canvas user. We,
will provide you the link, to the course.
It almost acts like you would a website.
You click on that link, and then we
provide
our
our teachers with...
(05:39):
Individual logins and passwords for their students.
And the reason we do that is because
we are Hipaa compliant, which means we don't
receive any student
information.
Everything that is student related
names, emails, that's days between the teacher and
the student. So Cobra compliant in all states,
(06:00):
anywhere you register from
you don't have to worry about those student
privacy laws.
I'm trying to think what else, Doo, would
you wanna take over and talk about what
content we offer
For sure. So we currently offer over 90
el learning modules
And those el learning modules are designed to
(06:21):
be 15 minutes or less.
We know as educators that that tends to
be the, the attention span on students that
we tend to work with. And so they're
very focused on very small topics.
And teachers can utilize these e modules wherever
they see fit within their curriculum.
We've had teachers say that they use it
(06:43):
as a review activity or sometimes as a
homework activity, to sometimes as an extension activity.
We offer such a broad range of topics
that it's hard for us to say, specifically
where you should use it. It's wherever,
you think is the most appropriate for where
you are in your curriculum.
So the
(07:04):
modules that we currently offer fall into 7
categories
those being cancer,
genetics,
pathology and microbiology,
pharmacology,
public health, careers in health care and academic
success. So like we said, it's a broad
range of science and health science topics,
so we have teachers from all different content
(07:27):
areas use us from science
teachers to health science teachers.
To... I'm sure health teacher educators will
love to utilize this resource as well.
The nice thing about these modules
is they are all
audio recorded, so students can listen to the,
module
while looking at the visuals so they have
(07:49):
video components as well, and they're also interactive.
So there's going to be interactive review questions
so that the students as they're going through
and learning, the topic, they can review that
information. And then in the end, they have
a sum assessment. As well. So they have
the option to the teachers want. They can
use that as a grade or they just
(08:10):
use it as a,
you know, however they see fit within their
classroom.
So a lot of options, a lot of
different ways to utilize this resource,
And I did wanna ab. I know I
think we mentioned this, but our target audience
is for 6 through twelfth graders.
We've had
quite a bit of request from even higher
(08:31):
ed,
community colleges,
universities
that really see the use for this for
their foundational
education pieces as students are coming in to
maybe pharmacy
technician programs, things like that. But our target
audience definitely would be for those sick through
twelfth graders,
and those educators that would be the gatekeepers
(08:52):
for those students
to utilize the beats
I wanna ask what's the background of this
program? Like, why was it even put together?
Yeah. That's a great question.
So here in
Omaha on our campus, we have...
A program, which is called the high school
(09:13):
alliance program.
And what this is is, it's a program
that is open to 90 students in the
metro area of Omaha that actually get to
come in everyday, Monday through... Friday in the
afternoons
and receive content and hands on
education by Un mc faculty and staff.
(09:34):
So,
these are all students. They have to go
through a pretty rigorous
interview process.
They have to do the whole application thing.
They go through.
Interviews Susie and I get to sit in
on those and meet some of the students.
And then if they're accepted, they can pick
whatever courses are off through the high school
(09:54):
alliance program. And this is really to help
with that bridge between high school and Neck
steps in that career pathway in health science,
for our students.
And so with only 90 students,
being able to be accepted into the program
due to space and funding and all those
pieces.
(10:14):
There was a conversation that happened about, well,
what about everyone else?
What about the other students, even in Omaha,
and then especially here in Nebraska ruled Nebraska
that may live,
8 hours on the other other side of
the state and then unfortunately, don't have that
same opportunity. And that's where this,
digital piece came in. So all of our
(10:36):
modules are based off of content that is
that is taught at the high school alliance
program.
A lot of the same faculty members that
teach those courses in the high school alliance,
have actually been our subject matter experts for
the content and the modules that you be
has created.
(10:57):
Now with that,
he beats has
taken off,
especially this year. And so what has happened
is it started to spread just through our
own
advocacy through our partners,
things like that of this resource that we
offer, and we had no
no boundaries that it had to maintain just
(11:19):
within Nebraska. And so we would see
a teacher maybe in south c start using
it, and then maybe 1 in Missouri.
And then it kinda just took off from
there because
this content we're realizing is extremely needed and
our health science, health courses, things like that.
And because we are a free resource, then
(11:41):
we're able to share this amazing content that
we have housed here in Omaha to the
rest of the country. So that's kinda how
it got started, and then it just continues
to grow and develop, both in what we
are...
Publishing for content? Because now we're having
subject matter experts come to us, asking, hey,
(12:02):
can we partner? Can we do a module
in this or this.
So those those roles have changed a little
bit from us having to ask to people
coming to us. So it's really exciting to
see that girls
just in the content that we offer and
the users that we are able to provide
this to.
(12:24):
And
your program is endorsed
by the national consortium for school science education
and it's an approved resource of the O
omaha
ecosystem approved program.
I'm looking at your website right now. This
is where I'm
I'm getting this information from, and it's,
(12:45):
NUNMC
dot EDU.
Slash el learning slash u beats. And again,
I'll put the link into today's description.
Where did the phrase u beats come from?
Yeah. So that was before Suzie and nice
time.
But what that stands for is we are
(13:06):
actually a
coop up with the our the University of
Nebraska, Omaha so that little u stands for
Uni c and U o
building,
I have to think through this every time
building
excellence and academics through stem.
And so that stem piece clearly, very heavily
(13:28):
on that science piece.
And so again, before we came on board,
that was the that was decided and and
given, but, yes, that's what it stands for.
Excellent. Name And of curiosity,
do families that homeschool their children also use
your resource.
(13:49):
Yeah. What we have
anyone who is in the education space can
utilize our resource when teachers or families or
students
on their own sign up through a registration
form. There's options to select which category they
fall into.
So,
mostly, it's going to be teachers in
(14:10):
schools who register
their students, but we also have parents who
are homeschooling, register their students.
We've also had parents
who are looking for extra resources for their
students who might be interested, in going into
some sort of health care career,
they find us and they register their students
(14:31):
just to have an extra resource to look
at. We had students who individually sign up,
who are, again, just looking for something ex
stress some more information or just extra resources
to see what's out there, sign up on
their own. So it's really open to anybody
It's a free resource for anyone who chooses
to register.
(14:52):
And as a reminder, to listeners, we've heard
it from both people. This is a free
resource,
And although a lot of us in school
health education, we teach to standards which are
based on life skills.
The decision making, planning and goal settings, self
management,
advocacy, etcetera, some of the topics that are
(15:12):
offered here
I would see, say some students are really
interested in, and it would be meat to
see students go explore things more or even
for us, school health educators to connect with
a science educators in our buildings
to say, hey, there's this rate bunch of
modules on cancer and genetics etcetera, and I
(15:33):
love the link with public health.
Because eventually, I'm going to have some people
on the podcast to talk about public health
and school health are not the same thing.
And there's so many different types of careers
out there in health? I think that's really
neat.
Is there anything that you would like to
add
to talk about you beats or yourself
(15:55):
or anything too you wanna show on the
website or from
presentation because this episode will also be available
on the Youtube channel.
Is there anything you'd like to share?
Yeah. I also wanted to share that,
you know, right now, we have 90 modules
that we offer, but very soon, we have
(16:15):
ones that are coming out. And so
some of those that would be coming out
here soon would be another careers module, which
would be careers in nursing.
And so that... That's really... We... I think
a lot of our development will eventually go
there because we really want to bring medics
exposure to students,
(16:36):
both in that science health science,
health field that they might not
no is available to them beyond doctor and
nurses and think. Even within the nursing field.
I learned there were sp pathways you could
take.
So that module will be coming out soon.
We also will have
a 3 series of 3 modules.
(16:58):
On resiliency
and stress management training.
Susie did that work with our,
group by U un mc that specializes in
behavior health, and it's really unique,
in that it actually offers
exercises within the module that you can do.
You can practice. And so I'm really excited
(17:20):
for that 1. And then Susie also, I'm
just speaking for suzie, but
there is also... There a lot of material
coming out. But she's also working on a
middle for school and high school, dragon alcohol
prevention modules. So 2 separate modules,
that will come out again, 1 for middle
school, 1 for high school. So we're always
(17:41):
developing.
We also in the back for our health
science teachers have medical terminology, that will hopefully
be
coming out soon. And then, of course, as
we expand our careers modules,
we would love
any suggestions or anything like that. But just
for for the listeners to know that we
(18:02):
are always working on something, Zoo, especially. It's
always working on something.
And more, new content is is coming out
soon.
Wonderful.
And I guess another, big air that we...
Has become extremely popular is our academic success
modules.
We currently have, I think it's a series
(18:24):
of about Sci 7 or eat academic success
modules.
And out of all of them, out of
all of our 90 modules,
this academic success are our most popular.
And I think that has to do with,
you know, as speaking as a former educator.
Those skills are really hard to...
Teach to students or even like, find time
(18:44):
to
integrate to teaching these skills into your curriculum.
And so I think a lot of teachers
find this
these modules to be, really engaging.
And in just an interesting way to teach
these skills that you might not have, either
the time or the space in your curriculum
to be able to teach these specific skills.
(19:06):
And we are actually going to be expanding
this
module topic as well, we have some new
topics coming as well in this specific space.
So definitely something to check out is the
academic success modules.
I love that you have 2 parts for
the growth mindset.
In the academic success area.
(19:28):
As a way of building,
obviously, our whole goal here is to have
a pipeline just to get it students interested
in health and health science careers in general.
And a part of that is being able
to to have these skills such as growth
mindset and having these
tangible skills of how to prepare for a
test or how to
(19:49):
prepare for class. And so this is 1
of the ways that we are trying to
help build that skill for students,
and kind of have a holistic
perspective, on how to help students,
throughout their journey hopefully into some sort of
health or health careers.
D
Wonderful.
Thank you. And I also... I I have
(20:10):
on my screen, I have an overview of
the modules, and I see that there's some
modules in here for vaping prevention, which I
know a lot of us in the health
education classroom. We do spend time on that
as well as there might be reminders for
the sexual reproductive health area.
I know we don't do so much signs
(20:30):
of that in health be class maybe a
review. Yet, it seems like you have a
lot of great resources here for students.
Yeah. And also with he beats, we always...
Try to have,
content to back up other content. So, you
know, our hope would be that if you
are
(20:50):
doing
a certain module in public health that maybe
you'll hear something that then would spark you
to go into our path,
pathology, microbiology,
content area and find a a, module to
use there. So We do try to, especially
with those career ones as well. We always
try to have that
(21:12):
that content to really support. Those careers and
things like that that we offer as well.
So that's the hope is that you'll cycle
back around,
here's something that interests you, and then
have students, teachers,
do those first or do it as a
whole group all different kinds of ways you
can use you beats there.
(21:34):
And 1 thing that I'd like to mention,
so we do have 90 modules, and that
can be very overwhelming for a teacher.
Especially if you're looking for something
specific,
or you just don't have time to look
through all of these modules,
so 1 thing that, has really gotten very
popular.
Is Diana has been offering that curriculum alignment
(21:54):
piece.
So teachers or school districts or even state
Department of Education have reached out to her
and basically said, here's what our teachers are
teaching?
Can you
tell us which modules would fit in where?
And she will actually provide that service to
those teachers or school,
or the departments of ed. And that is
(22:16):
a huge time saver for
teachers, just being able to look at okay
Here's what I'm teaching and here's exactly the
modules that fit in there. And then again,
teachers can
figure out where exactly within that lesson.
That module fits, but that is a huge,
huge help that, Dia is able to provide
to teachers.
I can also talk about that just a
(22:37):
little bit, you had mentioned Lori, that we
are endorsed by the National Consortium for health
science Education.
And the reason that we we received that
indoors, is actually because of the alignment work
that u beats and in C
did together to cross all of the national
how science standards to you beads. So this
(23:00):
was a really great starting point for us
through
how these requests that have come in to
have those all verified, all of those to...
On Nc
side to say yes.
Exactly spot on this module covers this.
We also do that here within our state
in Nebraska.
(23:21):
We recently did this with
the pharmacy tech technician
certification board. And so what that looked like
is I got all of those pharmacy tech
standards and their is a lot of them.
But happy to do that work if they're
listening, but
all of those pharmacy
technician standards, and then just took the time
(23:42):
to go through as Susie said and align
what module fits where. So
in the health
education world, I know there's health education standards
and things like that. Always happy to do
that if teachers would find that helpful.
For
implementation of u beats in their classroom.
Wonderful. And what a great time for me
(24:04):
to ask
How can people get in contact with you?
And again, I can put information in today's
description, but would you tell us, please?
Now. So we have a couple different outlets
that listeners can find us. The first 1
you've already mentioned Lori, which is our website.
And so there's multiple links throughout the website
(24:24):
of where you can email us,
and that email would be, u beats UBEATS
at u un m c dot EDU.
Again, if you visit the website, you'll find
multiple
link
throughout the website for email.
We also are on social media, so you
can follow us on Twitter
(24:46):
you can also follow us on
Instagram, and we are u beats
underscore stem.
So... And you'll see we have our logo.
We're have a pretty pretty decent amount of,
posts that we have. So you'll know it's
us when we get there.
And then, of course, as we mentioned, the
website is always a great place to find
(25:09):
answers to questions, if you need us,
in email, our contacts are there as well
and also where you would go to register.
Susie, did you wanna add anything?
No, I guess the only thing with the
registration form, that registration form is on our
website. So if you are interested and would
like to register either
(25:31):
yourself, your students or if you are a
homeschooling,
registering your children,
that is where you would find the form.
So on our web, site. There is a
section that says sign up for you beats.
And all you have to do is fill
out that form,
fill out all of that information, and then
you will receive an email from Diana
with instructions on how to get locked in.
(25:51):
It's a very, very simple process.
Wonderful. Wonderful. Wonderful. Thank you so much. The
both of you, dean and
Bo going over you beats today. I thank
you so much for being here and explaining
about this wonderful resource. I'm actually thinking of
people I wanna connect with to tell them,
(26:12):
check this out. I'm thinking of somebody that
works at a Charter school and a couple
of science educators, I know.
So thanks for providing this wonderful resource. And
again, for the listeners, if you'd like to
find out more. Please go to the U
beats
website as well as the Twitter or x
and Instagram, social media
(26:33):
sites.
And a reminder for you, our listeners, I
remember to follow this podcast on your favorite
podcast platform.
And to check out the school health educators
dot org website. I have to make sure
I link in some
stuff for u beats. I have to do
that. That's a project up. I'll be working
on this summer.
(26:54):
And remember folks that you make a difference
you matter. Thank you for doing what you
do stay well. And would you like to
say goodbye our listeners,
Diana and Susie. Boris, thank you all so
much for listening.
We really hope to see your name come
through,
our our web... Our website our registration site,
and can't wait to learn and grow with
(27:15):
you all. Thanks so much.
Thank you so much, laurie. Thank you for
having us on.
Thank you both very much and enjoy your
day. Thank you.
Hi, and welcome to the School Health educators
podcast
where we discuss health education and how to
best teach Health ed in the K 12
setting.
(00:24):
Hi. Welcome to the School Health educators podcast.
I'm your host, Lori R.
Today's episode is focusing on a resource that
I just found out about within the past
couple of months, and it's called U beats.
To help explain what this resource is,
I've invited 2 people
Zeus G and Dean Ingram to talk about
(00:46):
You beats.
So before we talk about what U beats
is about
doo, would you mind saying hide to our
audience and introducing yourself to us and tell
us a little bit about your background?
For sure.
Hi, everyone. My name is Susie G, and
I am the instructional Technologist for the U
beats program at the University of Nebraska Medical
(01:07):
Center.
And basically, my job is to create the
el learning modules that we'll discuss
throughout this interview.
And my background is actually also in education.
I was a science education teacher for 4
years.
And so this job is perfect for me
because I get to continue to apply my
(01:27):
science education skills,
but just in a different format. So
I love all the work that we do
here, and I'm so excited to share it
with, all of the listeners.
Thank you so much, Susie, and thanks for
your time today.
Dean. Jan Ingram, would you mind saying hello
and telling us a little bit about yourself?
Of course. Hello. I'll listeners,
(01:49):
so glad you're tuning in to data hear
about eb beats.
So my background, I'm also a educator.
I come from a little bit of the
elementary world, which is different,
but I taught for 5 years,
an elementary fourth grade, all 5 years, So
I taught all the subjects, and that was
(02:10):
really fun at that level,
and then took a little bit of a
turn in transitioned into...
High school Esl, specifically life
education for students.
And so in that content area, I taught,
also science and
literacy. You wouldn't think that they go together,
(02:30):
but they do really well. And so did
that for a few years before this opportunity
at the University of Nebraska Medical Center
became available?
And so now, I... My official title is
curriculum and education specialist again for the U
beats program.
And so I get to do a lot
(02:51):
of the people,
interactions and conferencing,
and
consultations with our teachers. I also I'm really
proud of, a lot of the curriculum alignment
work that we've done both for
Department of Ed throughout the country as well
as
individual teachers, and we can discuss that more
(03:12):
as we go on, but really proud of
that work. And then I still teach just
in higher education, and so I'm an adjunct
professor at Bellevue University where I teach.
In their education department. So super excited to
be here and can't wait to share more
with you all.
I'll thank you for being here. The both
(03:33):
of you Thank you so much.
And
I I wanna share with the audience that
how we got connected was I had posted
on the Health science Facebook page because I
recognized that some people that teach health science
also teach health education,
more of the life skills,
and
(03:54):
Then all of a sudden, y'all reached out
to me and stuff, and I'm grateful for
that.
So would you mind
telling us
what is the you beats that you've referred
to? And I'm curious too. I looked it
up online and I'll put the link for
how people can explore the resource.
In today's description, but what is you beats?
(04:14):
Yeah. I can start. And then I feel
like Suzie will do a great job of
explaining our content. So I'll give you the
overview of who we are.
And that is, I love to share this
word first. We are 100
percent free. Free for educators, free for students,
we all know if we hear that word,
it makes us very happy as teachers and
(04:36):
educators so
we are 100 percent free. Thanks to generous
donors
that have helped in making you beats what
it is.
And so we are a e learning
e module program in both the science,
foundational science, content and also health science
(04:56):
educational content.
We offer over 90 modules right now in
our Canvas library,
And so I did just mention Canvas. I
don't want that to scare anybody that might
be listening,
because we will have a lot of teachers
that don't use Canvas. And our Google classrooms
or what other whatever learning management
(05:18):
tools that they use
But we do we do house our material
in Canvas,
but there's no problem if you're not a
Canvas user. We,
will provide you the link, to the course.
It almost acts like you would a website.
You click on that link, and then we
provide
our
our teachers with...
(05:39):
Individual logins and passwords for their students.
And the reason we do that is because
we are Hipaa compliant, which means we don't
receive any student
information.
Everything that is student related
names, emails, that's days between the teacher and
the student. So Cobra compliant in all states,
(06:00):
anywhere you register from
you don't have to worry about those student
privacy laws.
I'm trying to think what else, Doo, would
you wanna take over and talk about what
content we offer
For sure. So we currently offer over 90
el learning modules
And those el learning modules are designed to
(06:21):
be 15 minutes or less.
We know as educators that that tends to
be the, the attention span on students that
we tend to work with. And so they're
very focused on very small topics.
And teachers can utilize these e modules wherever
they see fit within their curriculum.
We've had teachers say that they use it
(06:43):
as a review activity or sometimes as a
homework activity, to sometimes as an extension activity.
We offer such a broad range of topics
that it's hard for us to say, specifically
where you should use it. It's wherever,
you think is the most appropriate for where
you are in your curriculum.
So the
(07:04):
modules that we currently offer fall into 7
categories
those being cancer,
genetics,
pathology and microbiology,
pharmacology,
public health, careers in health care and academic
success. So like we said, it's a broad
range of science and health science topics,
so we have teachers from all different content
(07:27):
areas use us from science
teachers to health science teachers.
To... I'm sure health teacher educators will
love to utilize this resource as well.
The nice thing about these modules
is they are all
audio recorded, so students can listen to the,
module
while looking at the visuals so they have
(07:49):
video components as well, and they're also interactive.
So there's going to be interactive review questions
so that the students as they're going through
and learning, the topic, they can review that
information. And then in the end, they have
a sum assessment. As well. So they have
the option to the teachers want. They can
use that as a grade or they just
(08:10):
use it as a,
you know, however they see fit within their
classroom.
So a lot of options, a lot of
different ways to utilize this resource,
And I did wanna ab. I know I
think we mentioned this, but our target audience
is for 6 through twelfth graders.
We've had
quite a bit of request from even higher
(08:31):
ed,
community colleges,
universities
that really see the use for this for
their foundational
education pieces as students are coming in to
maybe pharmacy
technician programs, things like that. But our target
audience definitely would be for those sick through
twelfth graders,
and those educators that would be the gatekeepers
(08:52):
for those students
to utilize the beats
I wanna ask what's the background of this
program? Like, why was it even put together?
Yeah. That's a great question.
So here in
Omaha on our campus, we have...
A program, which is called the high school
(09:13):
alliance program.
And what this is is, it's a program
that is open to 90 students in the
metro area of Omaha that actually get to
come in everyday, Monday through... Friday in the
afternoons
and receive content and hands on
education by Un mc faculty and staff.
(09:34):
So,
these are all students. They have to go
through a pretty rigorous
interview process.
They have to do the whole application thing.
They go through.
Interviews Susie and I get to sit in
on those and meet some of the students.
And then if they're accepted, they can pick
whatever courses are off through the high school
(09:54):
alliance program. And this is really to help
with that bridge between high school and Neck
steps in that career pathway in health science,
for our students.
And so with only 90 students,
being able to be accepted into the program
due to space and funding and all those
pieces.
(10:14):
There was a conversation that happened about, well,
what about everyone else?
What about the other students, even in Omaha,
and then especially here in Nebraska ruled Nebraska
that may live,
8 hours on the other other side of
the state and then unfortunately, don't have that
same opportunity. And that's where this,
digital piece came in. So all of our
(10:36):
modules are based off of content that is
that is taught at the high school alliance
program.
A lot of the same faculty members that
teach those courses in the high school alliance,
have actually been our subject matter experts for
the content and the modules that you be
has created.
(10:57):
Now with that,
he beats has
taken off,
especially this year. And so what has happened
is it started to spread just through our
own
advocacy through our partners,
things like that of this resource that we
offer, and we had no
no boundaries that it had to maintain just
(11:19):
within Nebraska. And so we would see
a teacher maybe in south c start using
it, and then maybe 1 in Missouri.
And then it kinda just took off from
there because
this content we're realizing is extremely needed and
our health science, health courses, things like that.
And because we are a free resource, then
(11:41):
we're able to share this amazing content that
we have housed here in Omaha to the
rest of the country. So that's kinda how
it got started, and then it just continues
to grow and develop, both in what we
are...
Publishing for content? Because now we're having
subject matter experts come to us, asking, hey,
(12:02):
can we partner? Can we do a module
in this or this.
So those those roles have changed a little
bit from us having to ask to people
coming to us. So it's really exciting to
see that girls
just in the content that we offer and
the users that we are able to provide
this to.
(12:24):
And
your program is endorsed
by the national consortium for school science education
and it's an approved resource of the O
omaha
ecosystem approved program.
I'm looking at your website right now. This
is where I'm
I'm getting this information from, and it's,
(12:45):
NUNMC
dot EDU.
Slash el learning slash u beats. And again,
I'll put the link into today's description.
Where did the phrase u beats come from?
Yeah. So that was before Suzie and nice
time.
But what that stands for is we are
(13:06):
actually a
coop up with the our the University of
Nebraska, Omaha so that little u stands for
Uni c and U o
building,
I have to think through this every time
building
excellence and academics through stem.
And so that stem piece clearly, very heavily
(13:28):
on that science piece.
And so again, before we came on board,
that was the that was decided and and
given, but, yes, that's what it stands for.
Excellent. Name And of curiosity,
do families that homeschool their children also use
your resource.
(13:49):
Yeah. What we have
anyone who is in the education space can
utilize our resource when teachers or families or
students
on their own sign up through a registration
form. There's options to select which category they
fall into.
So,
mostly, it's going to be teachers in
(14:10):
schools who register
their students, but we also have parents who
are homeschooling, register their students.
We've also had parents
who are looking for extra resources for their
students who might be interested, in going into
some sort of health care career,
they find us and they register their students
(14:31):
just to have an extra resource to look
at. We had students who individually sign up,
who are, again, just looking for something ex
stress some more information or just extra resources
to see what's out there, sign up on
their own. So it's really open to anybody
It's a free resource for anyone who chooses
to register.
(14:52):
And as a reminder, to listeners, we've heard
it from both people. This is a free
resource,
And although a lot of us in school
health education, we teach to standards which are
based on life skills.
The decision making, planning and goal settings, self
management,
advocacy, etcetera, some of the topics that are
(15:12):
offered here
I would see, say some students are really
interested in, and it would be meat to
see students go explore things more or even
for us, school health educators to connect with
a science educators in our buildings
to say, hey, there's this rate bunch of
modules on cancer and genetics etcetera, and I
(15:33):
love the link with public health.
Because eventually, I'm going to have some people
on the podcast to talk about public health
and school health are not the same thing.
And there's so many different types of careers
out there in health? I think that's really
neat.
Is there anything that you would like to
add
to talk about you beats or yourself
(15:55):
or anything too you wanna show on the
website or from
presentation because this episode will also be available
on the Youtube channel.
Is there anything you'd like to share?
Yeah. I also wanted to share that,
you know, right now, we have 90 modules
that we offer, but very soon, we have
(16:15):
ones that are coming out. And so
some of those that would be coming out
here soon would be another careers module, which
would be careers in nursing.
And so that... That's really... We... I think
a lot of our development will eventually go
there because we really want to bring medics
exposure to students,
(16:36):
both in that science health science,
health field that they might not
no is available to them beyond doctor and
nurses and think. Even within the nursing field.
I learned there were sp pathways you could
take.
So that module will be coming out soon.
We also will have
a 3 series of 3 modules.
(16:58):
On resiliency
and stress management training.
Susie did that work with our,
group by U un mc that specializes in
behavior health, and it's really unique,
in that it actually offers
exercises within the module that you can do.
You can practice. And so I'm really excited
(17:20):
for that 1. And then Susie also, I'm
just speaking for suzie, but
there is also... There a lot of material
coming out. But she's also working on a
middle for school and high school, dragon alcohol
prevention modules. So 2 separate modules,
that will come out again, 1 for middle
school, 1 for high school. So we're always
(17:41):
developing.
We also in the back for our health
science teachers have medical terminology, that will hopefully
be
coming out soon. And then, of course, as
we expand our careers modules,
we would love
any suggestions or anything like that. But just
for for the listeners to know that we
(18:02):
are always working on something, Zoo, especially. It's
always working on something.
And more, new content is is coming out
soon.
Wonderful.
And I guess another, big air that we...
Has become extremely popular is our academic success
modules.
We currently have, I think it's a series
(18:24):
of about Sci 7 or eat academic success
modules.
And out of all of them, out of
all of our 90 modules,
this academic success are our most popular.
And I think that has to do with,
you know, as speaking as a former educator.
Those skills are really hard to...
Teach to students or even like, find time
(18:44):
to
integrate to teaching these skills into your curriculum.
And so I think a lot of teachers
find this
these modules to be, really engaging.
And in just an interesting way to teach
these skills that you might not have, either
the time or the space in your curriculum
to be able to teach these specific skills.
(19:06):
And we are actually going to be expanding
this
module topic as well, we have some new
topics coming as well in this specific space.
So definitely something to check out is the
academic success modules.
I love that you have 2 parts for
the growth mindset.
In the academic success area.
(19:28):
As a way of building,
obviously, our whole goal here is to have
a pipeline just to get it students interested
in health and health science careers in general.
And a part of that is being able
to to have these skills such as growth
mindset and having these
tangible skills of how to prepare for a
test or how to
(19:49):
prepare for class. And so this is 1
of the ways that we are trying to
help build that skill for students,
and kind of have a holistic
perspective, on how to help students,
throughout their journey hopefully into some sort of
health or health careers.
D
Wonderful.
Thank you. And I also... I I have
(20:10):
on my screen, I have an overview of
the modules, and I see that there's some
modules in here for vaping prevention, which I
know a lot of us in the health
education classroom. We do spend time on that
as well as there might be reminders for
the sexual reproductive health area.
I know we don't do so much signs
(20:30):
of that in health be class maybe a
review. Yet, it seems like you have a
lot of great resources here for students.
Yeah. And also with he beats, we always...
Try to have,
content to back up other content. So, you
know, our hope would be that if you
are
(20:50):
doing
a certain module in public health that maybe
you'll hear something that then would spark you
to go into our path,
pathology, microbiology,
content area and find a a, module to
use there. So We do try to, especially
with those career ones as well. We always
try to have that
(21:12):
that content to really support. Those careers and
things like that that we offer as well.
So that's the hope is that you'll cycle
back around,
here's something that interests you, and then
have students, teachers,
do those first or do it as a
whole group all different kinds of ways you
can use you beats there.
(21:34):
And 1 thing that I'd like to mention,
so we do have 90 modules, and that
can be very overwhelming for a teacher.
Especially if you're looking for something
specific,
or you just don't have time to look
through all of these modules,
so 1 thing that, has really gotten very
popular.
Is Diana has been offering that curriculum alignment
(21:54):
piece.
So teachers or school districts or even state
Department of Education have reached out to her
and basically said, here's what our teachers are
teaching?
Can you
tell us which modules would fit in where?
And she will actually provide that service to
those teachers or school,
or the departments of ed. And that is
(22:16):
a huge time saver for
teachers, just being able to look at okay
Here's what I'm teaching and here's exactly the
modules that fit in there. And then again,
teachers can
figure out where exactly within that lesson.
That module fits, but that is a huge,
huge help that, Dia is able to provide
to teachers.
I can also talk about that just a
(22:37):
little bit, you had mentioned Lori, that we
are endorsed by the National Consortium for health
science Education.
And the reason that we we received that
indoors, is actually because of the alignment work
that u beats and in C
did together to cross all of the national
how science standards to you beads. So this
(23:00):
was a really great starting point for us
through
how these requests that have come in to
have those all verified, all of those to...
On Nc
side to say yes.
Exactly spot on this module covers this.
We also do that here within our state
in Nebraska.
(23:21):
We recently did this with
the pharmacy tech technician
certification board. And so what that looked like
is I got all of those pharmacy tech
standards and their is a lot of them.
But happy to do that work if they're
listening, but
all of those pharmacy
technician standards, and then just took the time
(23:42):
to go through as Susie said and align
what module fits where. So
in the health
education world, I know there's health education standards
and things like that. Always happy to do
that if teachers would find that helpful.
For
implementation of u beats in their classroom.
Wonderful. And what a great time for me
(24:04):
to ask
How can people get in contact with you?
And again, I can put information in today's
description, but would you tell us, please?
Now. So we have a couple different outlets
that listeners can find us. The first 1
you've already mentioned Lori, which is our website.
And so there's multiple links throughout the website
(24:24):
of where you can email us,
and that email would be, u beats UBEATS
at u un m c dot EDU.
Again, if you visit the website, you'll find
multiple
link
throughout the website for email.
We also are on social media, so you
can follow us on Twitter
(24:46):
you can also follow us on
Instagram, and we are u beats
underscore stem.
So... And you'll see we have our logo.
We're have a pretty pretty decent amount of,
posts that we have. So you'll know it's
us when we get there.
And then, of course, as we mentioned, the
website is always a great place to find
(25:09):
answers to questions, if you need us,
in email, our contacts are there as well
and also where you would go to register.
Susie, did you wanna add anything?
No, I guess the only thing with the
registration form, that registration form is on our
website. So if you are interested and would
like to register either
(25:31):
yourself, your students or if you are a
homeschooling,
registering your children,
that is where you would find the form.
So on our web, site. There is a
section that says sign up for you beats.
And all you have to do is fill
out that form,
fill out all of that information, and then
you will receive an email from Diana
with instructions on how to get locked in.
(25:51):
It's a very, very simple process.
Wonderful. Wonderful. Wonderful. Thank you so much. The
both of you, dean and
Bo going over you beats today. I thank
you so much for being here and explaining
about this wonderful resource. I'm actually thinking of
people I wanna connect with to tell them,
(26:12):
check this out. I'm thinking of somebody that
works at a Charter school and a couple
of science educators, I know.
So thanks for providing this wonderful resource. And
again, for the listeners, if you'd like to
find out more. Please go to the U
beats
website as well as the Twitter or x
and Instagram, social media
(26:33):
sites.
And a reminder for you, our listeners, I
remember to follow this podcast on your favorite
podcast platform.
And to check out the school health educators
dot org website. I have to make sure
I link in some
stuff for u beats. I have to do
that. That's a project up. I'll be working
on this summer.
(26:54):
And remember folks that you make a difference
you matter. Thank you for doing what you
do stay well. And would you like to
say goodbye our listeners,
Diana and Susie. Boris, thank you all so
much for listening.
We really hope to see your name come
through,
our our web... Our website our registration site,
and can't wait to learn and grow with
(27:15):
you all. Thanks so much.
Thank you so much, laurie. Thank you for
having us on.
Thank you both very much and enjoy your
day. Thank you.
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