C-Tines O.T blog

Technical description eight

2008-06-12T18:41:00.000-07:00

Tutorial Eight: Assistive technology

Provide a definition of Assistive technology (your Cook and Hussey reading may be helpful with this).

Assistive technology refers to a broad range of devices, services, strategies, and practices that are conceived and applied to ameliorate the problems faced by individuals who have disabilities (Cook and Hussey, 1995).

Describe one piece of equipment introduced in the assistive technology tutorial. Provide information on size, cost and functions.

Big Red Switch

• 12.7cm (5 inch) diameter surface makes it easy to see and activate
• Large bright red surface makes this switch ideal for users with visual, cognitive, or physical requirements
• Cord storage compartment in the base
• Easy to mount with standard flange base
• Audible click signals to the user that a cause-effect link has been made
• Equipped with 2m (6 ft) cord using 3.5 mm (1/8 inch) monoplug
• Mountable using Slim Armstrong Mounting System or Universal Switch Mounting System
• Designed to provide tactile and audible feedback to the user
• Designed for activation no matter where pressed

Specifications

• Diameter: 12.7cm (5")
• Activating Pressure: 85g (3oz)

Price – NZD $73.00 + GST $9.13

How does your chosen piece of equipment increased functional capacity for the user? Provide examples here from the tutorial and lecture.

The switch can be installed into a piece of technology through NeuroSwitch and provide a new way of controlling it. In class we used this and other switches to start and stop an electric beater to make pancakes. Having control over stopping and starting electrical devices, for example, gives the user a higher control over their situation and more independence.

Technical description seven

2008-06-12T18:33:00.000-07:00

Tutorial Seven: Posting You Tube Videos and Flickr Badges to Blogs: Explaining the process

Task One: Explain the step by step process required to embed You Tube videos into your Blog . Consider using screen captures to provide a visual representation of these steps.

Step 1. Open a new tab and in the link space at the top type in www.youtube.com

Step 2. Find a video you’d like to post on your blog page
Step 3. Highlight the link code next to the video
Step 4. Click ‘Copy’

Step 5. On your blog page click ‘New Post’ at the top right section
Step 6. Paste the copied code into the message box

Step 7. Pick a title
Step 8. Publish post
Step 9. Enjoy the video! =)

Task Two: Explain the step by step process required to embed a Flickr Badge into your Blog . Consider using screen captures to provide a visual representation of these steps.

Step 1. Open a new tab and in the link space at the top type in www.flickr.com

Step 2. Sign In or Create Your Account
Step 3. Click ‘Upload Photos’
Step 4. Pick the photos you want from your computer/USB/CD
Step 5. Click ‘Upload’ and wait...
Step 6. Once your photos are uploaded click ‘Tools’ at the bottom of the page
Step 7. Select ‘Build a Badge’ from options on the right hand side
Step 8. Choose between ‘Html’ and ‘Flash’ badge
Step 9. Choose the photos you would like to be displayed on your badge
Step 10. Pick a colour for your badge background
Step 11. Copy the code and paste it into the message box from ‘New Post’ on your blog page
Step 12. Pick a title
Step 13. Publish post

Technical description six

2008-06-12T18:32:00.000-07:00

Tutorial Six: The internet and online communities

Either search online for a community which interest you or choose one of the provided online communities to investigate. Make sure your selected a community that comprises some form of online forum, discussion page or chat room. You may also wish to see if your community has a Wikipedia entry.

Provide the web address and the name of the community you are investigating

www.facebook.com

What is the brief or focus of this community

To help it’s members keep in touch with their friends, or make new ones. Shows others their interests and what’s important to them, photos help old friends see what’s been happening since they last saw each other.

What services are provided? How interactive is this site? How can people contribute?

Members have a profile with optional information about them and their interests. Can make photo albums and ‘tag’ the people in them. ( If a friend is tagged, that picture is them put onto their page as photos of ___) There are many applications for music, picture grids for your friends, doing various quizzes. Friends can leave comments on your page and photos. Members can make new pages for groups and invite friends to join and or become moderators of the page for the group. Some primary applications are free gifs that you can send to friends such as hugs or flowers, and ‘superpokes’ where you can ‘dance, poke, hi-5, throw a sheep at’ etc with or at any of your friends making the connections more personal than just comments.

Consider material presented during the lecture and make comment on why people choose to contribute to this community. What is it they are seeking?

Facebook lets its members connect with old and new friends. Comments and gives them a sense of belonging.

Cut and paste an example of the type of topics being discussed (you may have to provide a context to your excerpt).

hellooo! thank you for your groovy birthday tune! tho you were a little out of tune... a ha ha ha... ok not funny... i see you have been enjoying some snow! looks like fun! make sure my sister behaves herself in chchchch! Xox – anon.

Considering material presented during the course and make comment on the potential ethical issues that may arise in this community e.g. lack of identity and accountability.

Privacy is better on facebook than say, bebo, as you can’t view someone’s profile unless they have accepted you as a friend. However, with the tagging of photos etc, they are being posted around on many peoples pages without their consent.

Putting information on your profile and accepting people you don’t know allows people to track you easily and communicate to you in other ways than facebook.

Consider material presented during the lecture and make comment on the benefits this community holds over traditional notions of community e.g. communities reliant on geographic proximity

-Members can talk to there friends all over the world so easily and keep in contact.

-Making friends from all over the world without leaving the house
- Ability to express yourself through personalising your page
- Excitement of getting new comments or ‘superpokes’ or gifts.

Consider material presented during the lecture and make comment what this community lacks or can not provide which traditional communities can.

-Members don’t have face to face contact unless they live in your area.
-Messages are often misinterpreted
-People often use these online communities instead of socialising within their own real community.

Technical description four and five

2008-06-12T18:31:00.000-07:00

Tutorial Four and Five: Video Production Sessions

Task One: Follow instructions and work in a small group to plan and produce and edit a 30 second short.

Task Two: Set up a U Tube account

Task Three: Follow instructions to posting your video on U Tube.

Task Four (Blog Posting): Provide a brief summary of the services offered by U Tube. Information can be drawn from the week five tutorial hand out.

YouTube is a video sharing website where users can upload, view and share video clips. Unregistered users can watch most videos on the site, while registered users are permitted to upload an unlimited number of videos. Related videos, determined by title and tags, appear onscreen to the right of a given video. Users can post video 'responses' and subscribe to content feeds (wikipedia, 2008).

Task Five (Blog Posting): Provide a brief account (1-2 paragraphs) on how the use of planning (storyboarding and scripting aided your groups short film.

As a group we sat down and brainstormed ideas of what we wanted in our film, and how we’d do it. We then chose what each shot would contain and in what order, and wrote it on our storyboard. We then went off to take the shots for our film, and the storyboard really helped us to keep focused on what we were doing and the overall goal, we could quickly get from place to place and get the photos/video’s we needed by checking the storyboard and what came next.

Technical description three

2008-06-12T18:29:00.000-07:00

Tutorial Three: Blog Creation Tasks

Task One: Follow instructions to set up a account with Blogger

This will involve setting up a Google account (make note of your user name and password)

Task Two: Follow instructions to complete the following Blog construction tasks

Choose a Blog Template (this can be changed later if you wish)
Provide a Blog title (this will need to incorporate your name and the course title Participation in Occupation 1)
Provide a Blog outline. This is a short statement outlining the purpose of the Blog (this information should come from the course outline and assessment guidelines for Participation in Occupation 1).
Complete your Blog profile (you need to include your age, gender, industry, occupation and location)
Up load a photo to your Blog profile

Task Three: Follow instructions to start posting content. Your first two post should be taken from the technical descriptions for tutorials one and two.

Task Four: Provide a brief summary of the services offered by Blogger (this will be your third posting. Information can be drawn from the attached hand out). In addition to this name one other Blog host.

A blog is a website where entries are made in journal style and displayed in a reverse chronological order.

Blogger provides personal online diary. It combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of Blogger. Blogger is primarily textual but also focuses on photographs (photoblog), sketchblog, videos (vlog), or audio (podcasting), and is part of a wider network of social media.

Another example of Blog host is Aeonity (http://www.aeonity.com/)

Task Five: Upload 5 photos from tutorial 5 onto your flickr account.

Any remaining time can be spent

· Exploring Blogs hosted by Blogger and other services (e.g.myspace)

· Setting up a personal Blog

· Organising your flickr account into groups

Technical description two

2008-06-12T18:28:00.000-07:00

Tutorial Two: Digital Camera use and applications

“A new technology is rarely superior to an old one in every feature”. Briefly discuss this statement in relation to digital camera technology. What would you consider to be some of the pluses and minuses digital camera technology holds in relation to more traditional film based cameras?

You don’t get the same quality with digital camera’s as the pictures are pixelated so u lose quality when zooming in or out and its harder to re-size photos.

List some of the ways that digital images can be stored transferred and manipulated using other communications technology.

Photos from a digital camera are often transferred to a computer to be stored, and then saved to a CD, DVD, Mp3, USB etc. Photos can then be moved to other computers or other technologies, and photos can be changed using programmes such as photo shop, changing size, colours and different effects.

Given the prevalence of image capturing devices, and thinking about the issues discussed in tutorial one, consider what sort of ethical issues may arise with their use.

As it is so easy to transfer pictures between different technological equipment, privacy issues arise quite frequently as they can be posted on the internet/online communities/ pxt to a friend without any consent from the person in the photo.

Briefly discuss some of the ways that digital images could, or are, being used in occupational therapy practice.

To capture memories for clients if they have outings in the community, taking photos of houses and putting them on the computer to digitally look at modifications.

Provide a brief summary of the services offered by Flickr.com

Flickr is an image and video hosting website, web services suite, and online community platform. Its members can share personal pictures and use organization tools, such as tagging and browsing photos by folksonomic means (wikipedia, 2008).

Name one other photo storage website which offers a service similar to Flickr.com

Photobucket.

Explain what the difference is between a digital and an optical zoom

Most cameras have both optical zoom and digital zoom. Optical zoom works just like a zoom lens on a film camera. The lens changes focal length and magnification as it is zoomed. Image quality stays high throughout the zoom range. Digital zoom simply crops the image to a smaller size, and then enlarges the cropped portion to fill the frame again. Digital zoom results in a significant loss of quality as is clear from the examples below. It's pretty much a last resort, and if you don't have it in camera, you can do a similar job using almost any image editing program.

Explain what is meant by the term mega pixel

One of the main ways that manufacturers categorize their digital cameras is in terms of pixel count. What this is is the number of individual pixels that go into making each image. Today this number varies between 1 million (1 Megapixel) to around 14 million (14 Megapixels). A million pixels is abbreviated to MP, so a 1MP camera has 1 million pixels and a 3MP camera has 3 million pixels. Currently most popular consumer digital cameras have between 2MP and 5MP. A 3MP camera can make excellent 4"x6" prints and very good 5"x7" prints. If you intend to make lots of 8"x10" prints, then perhaps a 4MP or 5MP camera would be a better choice. Sometimes two numbers are given, total pixels and effective pixels. Total pixels count every pixel on the sensor surface. Usually the very edge pixels aren't used in the final image. Effective pixels are the number of pixels actually used in the image after the edge pixels have been dropped.

Technical description one

2008-06-12T18:27:00.000-07:00

Tutorial One: Information Technology and Ethical Issues

Provide a definition of Information Technology/Information Communications Technology (APA reference required)

Information Technology (IT), as defined by the Information Technology Association of America (ITAA), is "the study, design, development, implementation, support or management of computer-based information systems, particularly software applications and computer hardware." IT deals with the use of electronic computers and computer software to convert, store, protect, process, transmit, and securely retrieve information.

Today, the term information technology has ballooned to encompass many aspects of computing and technology, and the term is more recognizable than ever before. The information technology umbrella can be quite large, covering many fields. IT professionals perform a variety of duties that range from installing applications to designing complex computer networks and information databases. A few of the duties that IT professionals perform may include data management, networking, engineering computer hardware, database and software design, as well as the management and administration of entire systems. When computer and communications technologies are combined, the result is information technology, or "infotech". Information Technology (IT) is a general term that describes any technology that helps to produce, manipulate, store, communicate, and/or disseminate information. Presumably, when speaking of Information Technology (IT) as a whole, it is noted that the use of computers and information are associated.

Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_technology at 7.17pm on the fourth of June.

Consider the definition of IT you have provided. How is this form of technology prevalent in our society? How common place has it become?

Technology is becoming more and more prevalent in our society as it excels in all areas and each new gadget becomes a ‘must have’. Many New Zealanders feel they can’t live without their cell phones or the internet, using these as their only forms of communication, and can’t understand ‘how they lived without it before!’

What IT devices or system do you feel comfortable and competent using?

Cell phone, internet, usb, digital camera.

Thinking about your own fieldwork experiences consider how IT is being used in Occupational Therapy practice?

Resources from the internet.

Phone/ Internet to contact clients.

Notes/ Appointments kept on computer.

What ethical implications arise from the capturing, sharing and transferring of information via IT devices (e.g. mobile phones) or systems (e.g. internet)

The lack of privacy, technology always has a way of finding information.

Information is often interpreted wrong.

Confidentiality is often a problem, and confidentiality form are often used.

Provide a definition of Computer Ethics (APA reference required)

Computer ethics is a branch of practical philosophy which deals with how computing professionals should make decisions regarding professional and social conduct. The term "computer ethics" was first coined by Walter Maner^[1] in the mid-1970s, but only since the 1990s has it started being integrated into professional development programs in academic settings. The conceptual foundations of computer ethics are investigated by information ethics, a branch of philosophical ethics established by Luciano Floridi. Computer ethics is a very important topic in computer applications.

The importance of computer ethics increased through the 1990s. With the growth of the Internet, privacy issues as well as concerns regarding computing technologies such as spyware and web browser cookies have called into question ethical behavior in technology.

Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_ethics june 9th.

Provide a definition of Intellectual Property (APA reference required)

Intellectual property (IP) is a legal field that refers to creations of the mind such as musical, literary, and artistic works; inventions; and symbols, names, images, and designs used in commerce, including copyrights, trademarks, patents, and related rights. Under intellectual property law, the holder of one of these abstract "properties" has certain exclusive rights to the creative work, commercial symbol, or invention by which it is covered.

Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property at 2.20 on the 11^th of june.

Provide a definition of Social Justice (APA reference required)

Social justice refers to the concept of a society in which justice is achieved in every aspect of society, rather than merely the administration of law. It is generally thought of as a world which affords individuals and groups fair treatment and an impartial share of the benefits of society. (Different proponents of social justice have developed different interpretations of what constitutes fair treatment and an impartial share.) It can also refer to the distribution of advantages and disadvantages within a society.

Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_justice at 2.45 on the 11^th of june.

Provide a definition of Informed Consent (APA reference required)

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 implications of an action. The individual needs to be in possession of relevant facts and also of his or her reasoning faculties, such as not being mentally retarded or mentally ill and without an impairment of judgment at the time of consenting. Such impairments might include illness, intoxication, insufficient sleep, and other health problems.

Some acts cannot legally take place because of a lack of informed consent. In cases where an individual is considered unable to give informed consent, another person is generally authorized to give consent on their behalf. Examples of this include the parents or legal guardians of a child and caregivers for the mentally ill. In cases where an individual is provided limited facts, serious ethical issues may arise. Examples of this in a clinical trial in medical research are anticipated and prevented by an ethics committee or Institutional Review Board

Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informed_consent at 3.15 on the 11^th of june

In your own words briefly summarise why (or why not) a great understanding of ITC and the ethical issues it encompasses will help us in our practice and daily lives.

Knowing how to use technology helps us to have contact with various people/groups all over the world, as it is so prominent in all areas of our lives. Also will help us in practice when recording client information and keeping confidentiality and privacy.

work hard play hard

2008-05-22T19:32:00.000-07:00