Tutorial Six: the internet and online communities

This week we looked at a area of interest surrounding a personal occupation. We had to then search online for three communities that relate to this topic and and address questions and tasks.There is a huge range of online communities to cater for all sorts of people. No matter what your interest people use online communities to come together and share these interests and hobbies. I decided to look at online communities surronding people who love to travel. I looked primarily at travel blogs and reviews of places around the world. These websites are made by people who post blogs about different places so that people who are thinking about travelling there can go to these websites and find out information.
The three websites that I looked at were

http://www.travelblog.org/
http://www.travelpod.com/
http://www.igougo.com/

The travel blog is a collection of travel journals, diaries and photos from around the world. Anyone can start a free travel blog in which you can add unlimited photos, videos and blogs from around the world. You can also join up and participate in travel discussions by using the travelblog travel forum. The Travel Blog.

TravelPod is a free travel blog website that let's you chart your trips on a map, share unlimited photos and videos, and stay in touch while you travel. You can also participate in chat forums and exchange tips about travelling to certain places. You can explore travel destinations and take a guided tour of places via photos and what people have blogged. TravelPod 

IgoUgo Is a travel blog website that allows you to plan your next trip using their simple planning tool. You can browse reviews and photos from any destination and share travel reviews and photos of your own. You can also ask questions and talk with other travelers in their travel forums. The website also offers traveler's favourite journals, reviews and photos. You can also explore the IgoUgo community blog for the latest IgoUgo news and highlights. Another great thing about this website is that you can compare rates of flights, and hotels for your next trip. IgoUgo

The Travel blog: This website is very interactive. It is quite like Facebook in the way that it works as it enables people to add other members and share content with their contacts. The website is used in a way that people add information about themselves, such as interests and hobbies and they can share videos, photos, messages and comments with other members via their profile and network. Travel blog is a collection of tools so that travellers can write down a journal, send the address to family and friends, set up automatic mailing lists so that everytime you add a new entry to your list your friends get an automatic email. Also the theme is travel, the tools are designed to cope with you moving around, maps and flags are linked from each journal. Photos can be added to your blog if you have a digital camera. We encourage our members to link to useful sites about areas, to help out future travellers. Write reviews, guides, journals, add photos.

TravelPod: This website is also very interactive. This website lets you share your trips using your own online travel blog (also known as a travel diary, travel journal or travelogue). You can post travel blogs from previous trips or use TravelPod for your ongoing trips. By updating your travel blogs while you travel, you can share your adventures with everyone back home.  Everyone can also leave comments on your blog about their opinions surronding what you have posted.

IgoUgo: This website is also very interactive in my opinion. IgoUgo travel reviews and photos will spark your wanderlust and help you plan your next adventure and inspire you to share your own experiences. 540,000 travellers think IgoUgo is the best place to store and share their trip stories and pictures, building a library of honest opinions, tips, and experiences that you won’t find in any guidebook. To date, their travel community has contributed hundreds of thousands of reviews and photos of everything from cheap eats to luxury hotels in more than 9,000 destinations worldwide. You can also write reviews and upload photos so that you can share trip memories with friends, family and travel enthusiasts.


Because everyone can comment on these blogs there are some ethical issues that can arise. Lack of identity and accountability can arise because people can steal information from your blog and take it as their own. People may misuse the communities and post things that are offensive to other people. Other people may gain a delusional reliance on online communities and live their life online rather than in the 'real world.' Other people may be able to hack into your account and post items onto your blog so who is actually sustaining and managing the community.



Benefits from a geographical community allow people from your neighbourhood, suburb, village, town, city, nation or even the planet as a whole to come together and share ideas about their trips abroad. You are able to connect with people that you might not of known before and learn things about people that you previously did not know.

Online communities affect how we play, how we talk and how we interact with others. Because of this vitual world people sometimes forget how to interact in real life and become withdrawn and separate from people close to them. These communities lack face-to-face time with people, because they are communicating via the internet and a keyboard they are missing out on actually being able to see the person which typical communities in everyday life provide.

Tutorial five: Video Production Sessions

A brief summary the services offered by YouTube.

Youtube was created by three pals from PayPal - Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim - who raised $3.5 million in venture capital to debut their open exchange video site in November 2005. Less than a year later, Google bought YouTube for $1.65 billion. Can you say "cha ching?"
The concept is brilliantly simple. People post videos on YouTube and watch and comment on the videos others have posted. The videos can be anything from a simple rant into a cell phone camera by a frustrated teenager to a favorite sports clip Tivo'd off of ESPN - and everything in between. The numbers generated by YouTube are staggering. One hundred million videos are on the YouTube servers, with 65,000 new ones uploaded every day. They're watched by 20 million viewers a month.
The simplicity of the technology has aided its popularity. YouTube uses the popular Macromedia FlashPlayer 7 and the Sorenson Spark H.263 codec - which offers the combined quality of Windows Media Player and Apple's QuickTime without the need to download additional browser plug-ins. In simpler terms, you click and the video plays... period.

Understanding Occupational Therapy

This video shows an occupational therapy student explain what she thinks occupational therapy is. This video explains occupational therapy through the eyes of someone who is currently studying it. It breaks down what occupation is and how it can have different meanings depending on the individual

How occupational therapy can help people

This video describes what an occupational therapist does through the eyes of a consumer and using patients as examples of what an occupational therapist does

A Day in the Life - Occupational Therapist

This film shows what a typical day in the life of an occupational therapist is. It explains it through watching a therapist working with a patient; this video is what an occupational therapist does through the eyes of an occupational therapist

occupational therapy

This video was made by a student on their placement option. It explains what they did during their placement and explains what occupational therapy is through the eyes of a student

OT Rap

This is a video posted from you tube describing what occupational therapy is so that viewers of my blog can gain understanding about what occupational therapy actually is. This is helpful because generally people have very limited knowledge about occupational therapy unless they have had direct contact with one. The video, which takes the form of a rap provides a fun, easy to understand way to get to know what an occupational therapists role is.

We were given the task of making a movie which shows someone overcoming adversity. We had to create a creative short one minute film that we were to direct ourselves. We made a story board to start off with and designed each scene that was going to be in our movie. We chose to do someone who was having trouble logging on to a computer at polytechnic. We then overcame this by buying a new laptop. Once we had filmed the movie we then had to go onto the computer and edit our film, we added music into the background and deleted some of the excess material to cut down the time of the movie.

Tutorial Two: Digital Imaging

In tutorial one we looked at digital imaging and were asked to answer a few questions regarding this topic.

Here are some ways that digital images are stored, transferred and manipulated using information technology. I have also provided three examples of the use of digital imaging to provide information and recording. Video Cameras – professional, camcorder, webcams Live preview digital cameras, you can take photos to provide information for parents or loved ones of clients that you are working with so they can see what their loved one gets up to during your therapy practice.  Laptops, you can send photos or videos of clients to loved ones through blogs or emails so that they are able to see the progress that their loved one is making.  Hand helds - you are able to make videos of clients and then send the hand held home so that the family members can see a video of tasks that you have completed with clients. Camera phones- Camera phones are a useful alternative to hand helds or digital cameras. They are smaller and are easy to take photos or videos so that family members can observe what the client is getting up to during the sessions.  Kodak easyshare- You are able to store photos and videos so that family members can access them on a computer and observe photos and videos of their loved ones. Flicker- Family members of clients that you are working with are able to access photos and videos from home and leave comments on photos and videos of clients

“A new technology is rarely superior to an old one in every feature” Above is a statement which relates to digital camera technology. Below I have considered some pluses and minuses that digital camera technology holds in relation to the more traditional film based cameras.  Just because a company says that a digital camera is “new and improved” does not by any means mean it actually is highly superior to the older models. Companies bring out newer models of things to make more money. A plus of the new digital camera technology is that it provides the ability to delete pictures off the camera to save room. It also allows the owner to pick which photos to print out instead of having to print out the whole lot. It also allows the owner to print out the pictures themselves instead of having to wait a day until the shop prints them out for them. A film camera however is future proof. They are always bringing out new and improved camera’s and scanners. A scanner you brought 3 years ago for $1500 is now worse than a $500 scanner you find in a shop today. The technology is always upgrading.

Below I have explored two ethical issues that may arise through the prevalence of image capturing and distribution using IT.  Privacy- Taking pictures of someone that is in a non-public place without their permission is an offense and is actually illegal. Using photos that someone else has taken- It would be unethical and dishonest to use photos that another person has taken and pass them off as your own.

Below I have discussed a way in which digital images could be used during occupational therapy practice. To use in a progress diary. Take pictures of the client during the first session with you as the OT and then record their progress throughout the duration of their treatment with you. At the end of the treatment reflect on how far they have come and use the digital images as examples.

Tutorial One: Information Technology and Ethical Issues

The focus of the first posting is defining what technology is and providing definitions around the different terminology around this term.

The focus of my first posting is defining what technology is. Below is an explaination of what it is using a definition I located online. Then below that I have defined what I think information technology is.  ·            Information technology/ information communications technology definition: “the science and activity of using computers and other electronic equipment to store and send information” Cambridge University. (2011). Cambridge Dictionaries Online. Retrieved from http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/information-technology ·       Information technology n. The production, storage and communication of   information using computers and microelectronics. Hanks, P. (ed). (1989) Collins Concise Dictionary. Glasgow: Bath Press ·            In my own words: Information technology/information communications technology is being able to use a computer, cellphone, telephone or any other communication device to be able to send messages or any information to another person.

Below I have explained how the form of technology that I have provided in the explaination above has become prevalent in our society. There is also a link to a youtube clip surrounding this topic.  This form of technology has become very prevalent in our society. We simply have become so dependant on this information technology that as a society we could not function without it. When the network system goes down we go into a frenzy as we are unable to communicate via cellphones to our peers. Writers on Information technology and everyday life

Below I have given a list on different types of technology that I feel competent using. I feel comfortable using a computer (both desktop and portable). E-mail, Internet, Intranet (moodle) Radio, Telephones which include hard-wired desk telephones, cordless telephones and of course mobile telephones. I am also comfortable using a USB drive which is a small, portable flash memory stick.

Below are some answers that relate to fieldwork. I reflected on information I gained during my four week placement option during my first year of occupation therapy training. When the Occupational Therapists go out into the community to do a home visit they take a company cellphone so that the other Occupational Therapists can contact them if needed. They also each have a computer on their desks to do research and type up information. They have a hard-wired desk phone in the office to call the main hospital instead of walking over there. Not everyone knows how to use the IT systems and tools and successful use of mainstream technology lies with the occupational therapists ability to select and structure technologies to meet his or her client’s therapeutic needs and does not necessarily rely on the inherent qualities of the technology chosen. For children with cognitive and also physical disabilities a great technology use for them is computer games. By connecting a joy-stick to a computer the child is able to work on hand movement and gaining strength in their hand muscles by using the joy-stick. By getting them involved in cognitive based learning games they are able to increase their cognitive abilites while enjoying a fun learning based game on the computer. I think that it is very important to have a good understanding of the use of IT as it will help us in our practice as OT’s and in daily lives. This is because IT opens so many more doors for our clients and us in the way we provide our service. We are able to formulate new ideas for intervention that we not avaliable to us before. For example computer games as mentioned above.

Below are some ethical implications that can arise from the capturing,  sharing and transferring of information via IT devices (e.g. mobile phones) or systems (e.g. internet) Plagerism can occur when you are sending information via IT devices. If you cut and paste an article, picture or any type of information via an IT device or you fail to properly cite a sources, this results in plagerism. Another implication is internet privacy. When you are sharing and transfering information or placing photos on the internet anyone can get ahold of that information and misuse it.

Below is an definition of what intellectual property is. It was sourced from wikipedia  In law, intellectual property (IP) is an umbrella term for various legal entitlements which attach to certain types of information, ideas, or other intangibles in their expressed form. The holder of this legal entitlement is generally entitled to exercise various exclusive rights in relation to the subject matter of the IP. The term intellectual property reflects the idea that this subject matter is the product of the mind or the intellect, and that IP rights may be protected at law in the same way as any other form of property. However, the use of the term and the concepts it is said to embody are the subject of some controversy Retrieved February 14, 2007, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property

This is a definition on social justice that I located online Social justice mostly refers to an ideal of society, where "justice" refers to economic status rather than to the administration of laws. It is based on the idea of a society which gives individuals and groups fair treatment and a just share of the benefits of society, although what is "fair treatment" and a "just share" must remain unclear or subject to interpretation. Retreived Februry 14, 2007, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_justice

Below is a definition that was sourced from wikipedia. It provides a indepth look about what informed consent is. Informed consent is a legal condition whereby a person can be said to have given consent based upon an appreciation and understanding of the facts and iimplications of an action. Retrieved February 14, 2007, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informed_consent