Tutorial Eight- Assistive Technology

Assistive Technology is defined by Cook and Hussey (1995) on page 5 as being

“Any item or piece of equipment or product system whether acquired commercially off the shelf, modified, or customized that is used to increase or improve functional capabilities of individuals with disabilities.”

For me this means that assistive technology is any kind of device that helps someone to function better at any task. I think that this definition includes all technology, including electronics (e.g. a Jelly-Bean) and non-electronics (e.g. a shoe horn).

An example of a type of assistive technology is a Jelly-Bean Switch.

The above picture above shows the simplest version of a Jelly-Bean switch.

This switch can be used with almost any electronic device that has a simple on-off application.

This device can help people who have limited movement in their hands, they are able to just place their hand, elbow, arm or maybe even foot on the switch to turn the thing that it is connected to on or off.

I have seen a jelly-bean switch in use for a home phone. The man had a spinal cord injury and was in a wheelchair, he had limited movement of his arms and hands but was able to move them up and down onto the switch to answer the phone when no one else was home. The switch and the phone would be set up on his lap and when the phone rang he could just press the jelly-bean switch and the phone would be answered on speaker phone. When he wanted to hang up he would just press the switch again. This meant that he could  independantly use the phone while at home by himself.

Star Educational (2011) say that a jelly-bean switch can be used to operate battery operated games, computers and electrical appliances. These devices do however need to be modified to respond to the jelly-bean switch.

I think that the jelly-bean switch empowers clients to be independant in most areas of electronics.

I will not be advocatin the jelly-bean switch in my assignment because it can not be applied in the setting that I have had fieldwork experience in. Instead I have chosen a setting that I have had experience in and will be applying a piece of assistive technology that can be useful in that setting.

Reference List

Cook, A. M. & Hussey, S. M. (1996). Assistive technologies: Principles and practice. USA: Mosby

Star Educational (2011). Retrieved April 13th 2011, from http://www.star-educational.co.nz/view_details.php?detail=true&cat=4&subcat=15&id=13 

Tutorial Seven

Today in class we were taught how to add links ► on that side of the page. I then had to comment on the page of one of my classmates who I had linked with. If you go to the link that says Nancy Pants then you will see that I have commented on her Tutorial one post.
I am linked with five of my classmates and also to google, which is handy and to our YouTube video which you can also see ↓ down there somewhere.

Now we are going to play a little game... this game is see if you can guess what part of this page is shown in these pictures. These pictures were taken using the snipping tool on the computer. This tool is useful if there is something interesting online that you may want to refer to later, you can snip it to an image and save it to the computer.

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

If you are smart and can guess tham all then congratulations :)

Tutorial Six - The Internet and Online Communities

Over the last few weeks I have joined some online communities and here are some links to them:
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/anna_maree/5490916970/
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/EERAManna?feature=mhum
and Blogspot: http://www.annamareefa.blogspot.com/

The first online community is Flickr. This is an online community where people can share pictures with their friends and sometimes with all people involved with that site. Flickr provides a service to save digital images online so that they are stored somewhere. I think that this is a good idea for saving images, you can lose your memory card or your camera, you can even erase the hard drive of your computer, but once something is on the internet it is almost always on there forever. Anybody can contribute to Flickr as long as they sign up to the site. People contribute to Flickr so that they can save their digital images somewhere and also to show their friends the images. They can either set the images to private where only their friends can see them or they can set them to public where anyone who wants to can view the images. The ethical issues that arise when using Flickr are that anyone can post pictures that they have access to and these pictures could be of people who have not given permission for them to be put online. Below is an image, this is the type of material that is posted on Flickr.


The second in YouTube. This is where people share video clips with anyone who has access to the internet. YouTube provides us all with a wealth of information, sometimes useless and sometimes useful. It provides easy answers to most of our questions (as long as we put the right wording in the search box). Anyone can contribute to YouTube as long as they sign up to the site. When people use YouTube they are most likely seeking an answer to a question or they are seeking random entertainment.  Below is a link that shows an example of what is posted on YouTube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulDA6lkQitY

The third is Blogspot. which is where people can post blogs about their thoughts and opinions, this is where people can create a picture of their life or make an imaginary life where other people can read it. Blogspot provides an opportuniy for people to voice their opinions and to record there lives. It can be used as a diary or it can be used as a place to vent either anger or frustration, whatever you want to vent really. Anyone can contribute to YouTube as long as they sign up to the site. They can contirbute video, pictures, words, poetry, lyrics, music, what ever they want to contribute. Most people who contribute to Blogspot either do so because they have to (for this class), or because they want to be heard. My blog shows an example of what one might post if you had to create a blog.

Tutorial Five: Video Production Sessions

I think that YouTube is very fun and acctually wuite helpful. There is lots of different things that you can do with YouTube, mostly based around movie or video technology. There are alot of entertaining clips on YouTube and there is something for anyone. There is also alot of helpful things, if you are looking for a video guide on how to do something then YouTube is the place to look from cooking tips:

to how not to drive a truck

There is almost a video for everything on YouTube.

There is also a part of YouTube where user can make a profile and pick their favourite clips or upload their own clips. You can pick your favourite clips and post them on your page so that other people can see them and comment on them.

I think that YouTube is not only a great way to learn things and have fun but it is also a way to stay in touch with what your friends like.

My second fieldwork was in a home for people with Alzheimers and Dementia. Alzheimers is a very interesting disease and I am going to use YouTube to help explain it to you. :)

Alxheimers is a slow onset degenerative disease that involves foreign proteins in the brain that slowly destroy parts of the brain.

The above clip shows the important things that newly diagnosed patients need to do, in relation to occupation I think that joining a support group and also having family support are very important things.

The above video is so sad!! :(, This old lady is so gorgeous, she sings "Jesus Loves Me" so clear and she knows all the words the first time and in the last clip she does not even register to the man singing the song.

This shows the progression of Alzheimer's. With this lady she degenerated quite quickly with her not regitering to the song within three years of singing it totally clearly. It is different with every Alzheimer's patient, they can degenerate slowly or quickly.

These are three main points about Alzheimers.

Tutorial Three and Four: Movie Making

We were asked to do a video of a letter from the alphabet, see if you can guess what letter it is...

The Ultimate Awesomness!!!

This is the Video that we made in class...

Camera: Sarah 'Speilberg', Anna-Maree 'Kidman', Amanda 'Jolie-Pit' and Heather 'Barrymore'

Directors: Sarah, Anna-Maree, Amanda, Heather

Actors: Sarah, Anna-Maree, Amanda

Shadow Motivator: Heather

Editor: Sarah

Oh and incase you did not already guess our letter was 'A'

Class Two - Digital Imaging

This blog will talk about digital imaging. How photos are taken, stored and shared.

The ways that digital images can be taken are:

- Video Cameras

                                                 (Digital Video, Personal Video, 2011)

- Digital Cameras

                                               (Digital Camera Picture, personal image, 2011)

- Laptops

- Webcams

- Camera Phones

They can be manipulated by:

- Computer software

- Physical Hardware (e.g. printing a photo)

"A new technology is rarely superior to an old one in every feature"

I think that this statement is true in relation to digital imaging because it is better than the old technology of taking a photo on film and then printing it out, in the sense that you can take more images and can manipulate them easier. There are a lot of benefits to having new digital imaging technology over the old technology, but there are also things that are not as good as the old technology. We used to have to print photos to be able to keep them, we would have to go through the whole process of printing, then storing in a photo album and if anyone wanted to look at the photos we would have to pull out the photo album and show them the photos. Through this process we would build up an attachment to those photos and the memories that came with them. Now we can take as many photos as we want, upload them onto the internet in seconds and we know that they will always be there and we never really have to look at them again because our friends can look at them when ever they want to.

There are ethical issues that surround modern day digital imaging, while we are able to take hundreds of images at a time we can not always be sure who we are taking pictures of. We may get images of complete strangers and then upload them onto Facebook without that persons permission. A good example of this is when google maps took photos for their road side view to be put on the internet but they did not check if they had people in the photos before putting them on the net. They ended up having pictures of things that people might not like the world to see, as this clip shows someone involved in a car accident

I know that I would not like it if this was me being hit by a car, then being displayed for all to see.

Digital Imaging is a very useful tool for occupational therapists. It can help us to keep track of how our clients are developing (mostly in relation to the physical side of OT). Lets use someone who has bad grip in their hand (and can not hold a cup as a result of this) as an example, as OT's we can take a photo of how they hold a cup or try to hold the cup in our initial assessment stage, then after we have worked with the client on their grip on the cup we can take another photo of how far they have come. This can be used as evidence of improvement or even that they may no longer need occupational therapy. The OT could also take a video of an OT session to show the family of the client, with the client permission (Verdonck & Ryan, 2006).

Reference List

Verdonck, M. C. & Ryan, S. (2006) Mainstream technology as an occupational therapy tool: technophobe or technogeek.  British Journal of Occupational Therapy 71 (6).

Class One- Ethics and Technology

The focus of this post is to say what we talked about in our first Participation in Occupation 1 class, technology and ethics.

Information Technology refers to the use of all forms of technology to create, store, exchange and use information (Entrepreneur, 2011). This means that IT includes things like computers, mobile phones and anything else that can be used to make, hold, send or use information.

IT has become a thing of everyday life, it is definitely commonplace in our society

This YouTube Video shows the progression of technology, it is scary how fast technology is changing and how people had nothing to do with it 100 to 200 years ago but now it is an everyday part of our lives.

I am still figuring out how to post things on this blog, it is still rather confusing so if the clip did not show up I am sorry and will try to figure it out for the next post.

The main types of technology that I feel comfortable using are telephones, mobile phones and music devices. I am not that confident using the internet because I am one of those people who thinks that people can steal your ID over the internet and use it, not sure how, but it does kind of scare me that there could be someone out there signing up for things under my name or even using a fake passport or something. not meaning to scare everyone else out there but all those kind of things are made possible by IT.

I think that IT can be very useful for Occupational Therapist to use because it can give the OT many different ways in which to relate to clients. If they are young they might enjoy Facebook so it is important for the OT to know about Facebook so it can be a potential therapeutic tool. The client might enjoy music, so the OT might have to use music technology to relate to the client and, again, as a possible therapeutic tool. 

It is about taking the opportunities that IT gives us and using them for the benefit of the client.

There are also different programmes that can help clients with rehab or even to get back into occupations that they enjoy.

This clip shows how occupational therapist can adapt technology to suit the clients needs, to assist them in doing the occupations that they enjoy. Sorry that it is not in English.

The main thing that the OT has to watch out for when using IT devices and systems is client confidentiality. it is important that in any conversation with anyone related to the client, if it is online (e-mail) or over the phone, not to mention any personal information that may make someone be able to identify the person. 

It it also important that you have your clients consent to put anything about them online or share it with anyone in anyway.

Intellectual property refers to the number of laws and rights that there are around creativity of the mind (Wikipedia, 2011)

This means that there are many different laws relating to the ownership of ideas and creativity. This is all to ensure that people have the rights to their own creativity and their ideas stay original and can not be copied.

Social Justice can be defined in 11 different forms;  Equal Distribution, Tolerance, Equal Treatment, Criminal 

Justice, Equal Rights, Equal Opportunities, Legislative, Responsibility, Democratic, Collectivism and  Individualism (Friesen, 2011). All these things combined create a sense of social justice or stability within society.

Informed consent is the clients right to know what services they are being provided with and to know that the therapist is doing that best that can be done for them (Health Point, 2011). This means that whatever the OT does, the client must feel that it is the right thing and has the right to know exactly what is happening with his/her information that has been trusted to the OT.

References

Entrepreneur (2011). Information technology. Retrieved 19th February 2011, from              http://www.entrepreneur.com/encyclopedia/term/82268.html

Friesen, Dr M. (2011). Perceptions of social justice in new zealand. Retrieved 19th February 2011, from

http://www.socialjustice.co.nz/social_justice_excerpt.pdf

Health Point (2011). Informed consent. Retrieved 19th February 2011, from http://www.healthpoint.co.nz/default,6321.sm

Wikipedia (2011). Intellectual property. Retrieved 19th February 2011, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property

And that is the end of my first post....  I hope that i was not too boring.