Era of Efficiency: New teaching models in a self-directed learning environment (Preprint)

UNSTRUCTURED During the COVID-19 lockdown, medical schools in the United Kingdom withdrew their students from clinical placements and delivered education and examinations via online platforms. The logistical difficulty of timetabling a multitude of clinicians, with many working busier rotas on the front lines, to give one-hour lectures delayed the delivery of medical education. During this delay, the United Hospitals (UH) Medgroup set up an online platform called TeachtoLondon that recruited doctors and senior students to deliver 10-minute tutorials. Even with medical school teaching having resumed, TeachtoLondon remains popular due to its efficient and bespoke model. The short tutorials made the content more accessible and, more importantly, more useful as a revision tool. Compared to a one-hour online lecture that lacks ‘virtual bookmarks’, a playlist of tutorials allows easy navigation for students to revisit difficult topics, a pivotal part of learning. Teachtolondon is also popular with tutors, as it facilitates participation in teaching despite reduced availability due to COVID redeployment. It also allowed recruitment of doctors internationally, who would have been prevented by time zone differences from giving live lectures. Lastly, the UH network allowed students from any of the London medical schools to request a tutorial topic. Topics were allocated to the large database of tutors, providing an efficient turnaround, which is flexibility that a medical school’s rigid curriculum does not allow. The TeachtoLondon project could be adapted as an effective teaching model that promotes digestible, bite-sized learning and provides uniform teaching to students, whilst simultaneously acting as a revision tool.

Acoustic Coupled Disaster & Remote Communications Systems

Following disasters, and in other infrastructure-deprived settings, such as remote areas, the need for communications is profound. However, the ability to provide communications solutions in such situations is extremely difficult because of the lack of functional infrastructure, and the logistical difficulty or impossibility of bringing in additional hardware. Therefore it is important to create communications solutions that can operate using existing locally available hardware. In this paper we describe one possible solution based on acoustic coupling of mobile telephones with existing two-way radios, such as are often carried in remote areas of Australia, and are fitted to many vehicles that are used in such areas. We describe a number of related software systems and some simple experiments that demonstrate the feasibility of the general concept, before describing a possible integration of such technologies with the secure digital communications capabilities offered by the open-source Serval Mesh software. We argue that such an integration is not only possible, but also has the potential to allow secure digital communications in a variety of scenarios, without the need for any new or additional hardware.

Military threat in Krasnodar. 1942-1943

The Article is devoted to the significant date, the 75th anniversary of the liberation ofKrasnodarfrom the German-fascist invaders. Immediately after the outbreak of war with fascist invaders inKrasnodarstarted to prepare for it. Since the early days, in particular, was organized by the city destroyer battalion. In parallel, the organization of the assault battalions in four inner-city areas,Krasnodar. Was created regiment of militia. Built a defensive perimeter around the city.Krasnodarcity Committee of the CPSU (b), from 07. 07. 1942 informed that the date of completion of the defensive line of the city defense Committee of the city appointed on 10 August 1942 the measures Taken have led to the fact that as a result, on July 20 the construction of the defensive alignment (of the turn) and setting her weapon emplacements, there are 8 thousand people. The route passes through the settlements adjacent to the city. Each local district was assigned areas battery manned by gunners and cadets of theKrasnodarmortar school. Since the beginning of August 1942 for the construction of theKrasnodardefensive bypass (internal and external) daily had uvlekalas to 30 thousand civilians. But unfortunately, despite the measures taken, the city fell. Six months of the occupation had been the most terrible ordeal for the residents of the city, maybe in its history. In the historical memory of our people deposited the traces of the brutal cruelty by the Nazi occupiers. Moreover, the historical memory of the population passed, and the events leading up to the occupation associated with severe logistical difficulty.