About Slice of Life

What is "Slice of Life"?

Tfhis is the 19th annual conference at which medical and health science educators and developers gather from around the world to explore and share the uses of multimedia and information technology in education.  The focus is on cutting edge developments, implementation and evaluation of courseware, eLearning, distance learning, web enhanced curricula, wireless mobile computing, graphic design, animation and digital video.  Curricular integration, sharing and evaluation are central themes. 

JOIN THE OFFICIAL SLICE OF LIFE EMAIL LIST! This list is moderated and sends only the most important announcements. You will not get spammed by joining the list, you will get all the important announcements. There is NO printed information about this meeting, only electronic information.

The 19th annual Slice of Life Workshop is hosted by the University of Utah School of Medicine and will be held in the new state-of-the-art Health Sciences Education Building .

The program has two major parts: 

 
PRE-MEETING WORKSHOPS:

Optional hands-on and/or lecture/demonstration pre-workshop tutorials for a half or full day , Tuesday, June 26 and Wednesday, June 27, 2007. There is an additional fee for these. Here you can learn in depth about new technology and its implementation from an international group of experts. Workshops range from introductory to advanced. The user audience is listed for each.

MAIN MEETING:

Two and one-half days of auditorium presentations, electronic demonstrations and posters, breakout sessions, panels and special interest groups on June 28-30, 2007.

AUDITORIUM PRESENTATIONS - THURSDAY, FRIDAY AND SATURDAY MORNINGS:  Featuring a daily invited keynote speaker and selected 20 minutes presentations, where you can benefit from the view points of experienced specialists in a cooperative atmosphere. Presentations are brief so that you can identify individuals you want to speak to in depth at another time. There are NO concurrent auditorium presentations, to maximize interactivity.

SHOW AND TELL ELECTRONIC DEMONSTRATIONS and ELECTRONIC POSTERS, PAPER POSTERS:  Meet the creators of innovative software solutions and courseware and sample their work or discuss it in depth. There is a 3 hour block each afternoon where there is ample opportunity to sample, digest, share and brainstorm.

BREAKOUT SESSIONS: These noon discussions with lunch permit continued discussion of controversial or breaking new topics. Morning speakers often continue to answer questions and debate issues. In other sessions, topics of more technical interest can be focused on.

SOCIAL EVENTS: Great company, lots of coffee, lunches with colleagues and free hospitality in the suite on top the Unviversity Park Marriott Hotel with snacks and drink are daily events. Plan to attend our traditional Welcome Dinner on Thursday evening ($15 fee) as well as the Grand Extravaganza from noon until late Saturday night where we continue networking and enjoy the outdoors in one of the Wasatch Mountain (western part of Rocky Mountains) many resort areas.

The Slice of Life Workshop began at the Eccles Health Sciences Library at the University of Utah in 1988.  It has traveled annually to locations around the world. We are delighted to return to Salt Lake City and our wonderful new Education Building for the final traditional Slice of Life Meeting before we morph into another format for our 20th anniversary in 2008 together with the International Association of Medical Science Educators.

The Archives of past programs and topics can be accessed for a sample of topics and projects. From 1998-2001, the Slice of Life Workshop combined with the Computers in Healthcare Education Symposium (CHES) at Thomas Jefferson University.  Click here for earlier history of the Slice of Life Project and early meetings (preweb!). 

• WHAT IS THE "SLICE OF LIFE" WORKSHOP?
• WHAT IS HEAL?
• Program Committee
• Logistics
• Local Host Committee

What is the "Slice of Life" Workshop?

The group began as contributors and users of the "Slice of Life" videodisc!!  (For more history and information see the Slice of Life videodisc web site.) We liked the name and kept it long after we stopped using videodiscs.  Our logo is the modified Vesalius drawing from the cover of the seven editions of the videodisc.   For more than eighteen years, developers of medical multimedia and interested new-comers have gathered together internationally at the Slice of Life Workshop to share ideas and:

• Hear and see new technology for medical/health applications.
• Demo new multimedia teaching programs or tools they've made/bought/sold.
• Share innovations for the world wide web, distance education and asynchronous learning.
• Attend in-depth demonstrations or hands-on "Pre-Conference" Workshops.
• Demonstrate the tools, programs and projects they have been working on.
• Discuss strategies for getting new technologies incorporated into the curriculum.
• Share software and ideas as well as problems and solutions.
• Promote and Share evaluation data.
• Meet others with similar interests with whom they can network throughout the year.
• Contribute shareable materials to HEAL (Health Education Assets Library)

Who were the Knowledge Weavers? Who are the Slicers and HEALers?

The Knowledge Weavers team included information management specialists, Web programmers and designers, and multimedia production artists.  Their goal was to provide health sciences educators with high quality, Web-based multimedia resources that can be used for a variety of educational purposes.  With grants from NLM, many projects have been undertaken for educational use by anyone.  While the funding is over, the created resources continue to be available. Sharon Dennis (former PI) at the University of Utah Eccles Health Sciences Library has for the past several years continued the tradition of producing some of the pre-conference workshops. Learn more about them at the Knowledge Weavers Website. Sharon Dennis went on to be one of the co-founders of HEAL, a continuation of the Slice of Life and Knowledge Weavers focus on shared resources.  HEAL is a collborative project among universities to create an open and free web site for the cataloging and retrieval of multimedia for health education. Many of the contributors and collaborators of HEAL came from friendships and collaborations conceived at Slice of Life Workshops.

In 1997, Suzanne Stensaas was about to say "no more Slices of Life". It took too much time and energy. Marianne Messer and others from Gold Standard Multimedia were at the 1997 Chicago meeting and found it so exciting that they said, "we could help you do this in Tampa in 1998". The 1998 Slice of Life-Gold Standard collaboration was so successful that we decided to let the "pros" continue to design the web site and handle the registration, credit cards, accounting and many of the logistics through 2004. We feel very fortunate to have had collaborators who, incidentally, also happened to be vendors of multimedia medical education products! Currently, Gold Standard Multimedia has moved in the direction of Pharmacology and we needed another partner.

Program Committee

• Suzanne Stensaas, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT
• Paul Burrows, Media Solutions, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT
• Sharon Dennis, HEAL and Eccles Health Sciences Lib., University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT
• Sebastian Uijtdehaage, HEAL, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA
• Julie Hewett, IAMSE, Huntington, WV
• Vernoica Michaelsen, IAMSE 2008 Program Chair, University of Virginia School of Medicine
• Peter G.M. deJong, Leids Universitair Medisch Centrum (LUMC), Leiden, The Netherlands
• Dr. Richard März, Medical University of Vienna, Austria

Photos: Top Left Suzanne Stensaas, Program Chair, after the Lausanne 2005 meeting, Top Right Sharon and Bill Dennis.  Sharon leads workshops and is a major force in HEAL.  Bottom Left: Peter de Jong, Coordinator of the Leiden 2003 meeting.  Bottom Right: Paul Burrows after the Lausanne 2005 meeting, Logistics and Workshop Leader at every single (18) Slice Workshop!

Local Host Committee