Tutorial Eight- Assistive Technology

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

Any item, 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 (Cook & Hussey, 2000).

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

Sunny sunshine Switch.
includes -Coloured lights
- vibration
- 3 different tunes that plays
- 8 different coloured blinking lights
Cost= $82.95

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

This can be used a interactive toy. When the legs are squeezed a tune is played and the blinking lights appear.
Once a cord is attached this toy can produce an action i.e. turn a blender on, switch the radio on.
To activate this toy is simple and not extemely fatiging.

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

Disabled Online
http://disabledonline.com/

What is the brief or focus of this community

This website offers a place where the disabled and their families and friends can find information, provide information and also take part in in forums about many topics relating to the disabled

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

Disabled Online provides
- information such as education, employment, organizations and news.
- community links such as forums and chatrooms
- shopping for accessories, aids and equipment

This site is very interactive in the sense that once your are registered to the site you can join any forum, make posts and also start new topics and links

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

This website/ community provides a social network regarding disability that they otherwise may not have due to distance, isolation and many other reasons. they are seeking support, ideas, friendship and education relating to everything around disability. this is not only for the disabled but also for friends and families and anyone else with a concern.

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

"I’m contemplating setting up a small travel business for people with disabilities, specialising in adapted self-catering accommodation in holiday destinations. But I’m struggling to find enough properties to feature! If you know of someone who’s lucky enough to own such a property, in the UK and anywhere in the world, and would like to let it commercially for a number of weeks a year, could you pass on my email address to them? I’m at the research stage at the moment and need to ascertain whether there are sufficient properties available to feature. My email address:"

This is an exerpt of a topic being discussed on the chat room

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.

To contribute to this site and to the chatrooms etc you must register first. although the registration to this site is very easy and could be very easy to make up a name or to register just for the fun of it, this could lead to inappropriate messages or postings. Although this sight is moderated and overseen by someone, it still seems quite easy contribute in any way shape or form to this site.
It also concerns me how easy it was to cut and paste an exerpt, although the exerpt that i extracted above was not offensive or private, it could be easy to extract a comment that seems very private to that person. when you sign up you do have that choice for your email address to be publicly viewed.

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

This site holds no barriers as to where you come from or who you are. This is advantageous for people in many different countries, particularly to people that come from smaller countries i.e. not USA or UK as this site provides information on many things that may not be provided in their country or the information has not yet reached their country.

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

This site will never or can never provide the level of social networking that metting people face to face can. there is still a degree of networking but not to the degree that actual face to face interaction offers.

As a member of this site and only allowing others of this site get to know you prevent members of the public and your community to be exposed to your issues and concerns and prevent issues being faced within the community.

To Embed You Tube Videos

1. Log onto your You-Tube account
2. Search for the Video you want to place on your blog by typing in key words
3. Copy the link that You Tube provides by the video
4. On your Blog, add a page element, video bar
5. Paste your You Tube link onto this and give it a title.
6. Save and submit
7. Done!

To Create a Flickr Badge

To add a flickr badge:
1. Log on to Flickr account
2. Upload photos
3. Help - tools
4. Create a flickr badge
5. Choose a layout
6. Choose colour of background
7. Save changes and copy the code
8. Go to blog
9. Add an element
10. Go to Java/HTML element
11. Add title and paste code into description

A Typical Day

Tutorial Four and Five: Video Production Sessions

ask 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. You tube is a site that offers short movies/videos about everything and anything you could imagine. You can also post your own movies/videos on this site. Individuals can then use these movies like poetry to emphasise or express there feelings or point of view when they have run out of words or don't know how.

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. Planning our movie was vital. Once we had decided on a topic for our video, we had ideas rushing round but no real structure to the video that we were about to record. Without the storeyboard the process of recording would have been very stressfull and rather unstructured. And due to the limited amount of time having a written plan helped us see how we were going for time and how to best use our recording time. The process of editing was a challenging experience (it was the computers fault), without the planning we had in place the editing process would have a nightmare with alot of clips to arrange in an order and sequence.

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. Blogger offers the service for individuals to publish their thoughts on line. You can share your thoughts, ideas or something that you found really interesting with your family and friends no matter where you are in the world you can share them. Blogger lets you publish photos, videos, images from you tube, and basically be as creative as you want. Other blog host are bebo, myspace and facebook are all blogs that are constantly growing.

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

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?
Plusses:
-The ability to delete images that have not turned out as well as you hoped.
-This also means less cost when printing out photos
- The chance to view photos once they have been taken.
- The ability to edit images
Minuses:
- Not getting round to printing the digital images out. Personally i have hundreds of photos stored on memory devices and still have not got round to paying to print them out.
- The ability to delete images if we do not like them. Although this does have the advantages, it also means that we miss out priceless shots that people may not like but these shots may actually capture the person how everyone else sees them. Capture them in their element.
- Batteries dying real fast especially when videoing. Chew up battery.
- The extreme technology in the new cameras means that when something gets broken it is extremely hard to fix and costly, sometimes cheaper to get a new camera.
- Digital cameras depreciate in value as soon as you purchase them because there is always something better coming out. Competitive market.
- To have a digital camera you need to have the software, technology and computer to grasp the full benefits.

List some of the ways that digital images can be stored transferred and manipulated using other communications technology.
Cd-rw SD, XD CardsComputer hard disc EmailUsb stick Cell PhonesPhoto shop MP3 PlayersSocial networks Cd Dvd

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.
Privacy is a huge issue. A lot of public places that we go digital images are being used (i.e. surveillance cameras) for surveillance and security measures, any images captured do not require consent and could easily be replicated somewhere else i.e. does burglars give written consent to have their security footage screened on the television?

Briefly discuss some of the ways that digital images could, or are, being used in occupational therapy practice.
Digital images are being used to capture environments i.e. houses, access that may need modification. Particularly useful for community physical occupational therapists.
Digital images can be used as a record of activities a service user has engaged in. and also a record of ward based activities.
Camera work could also be used as a tool in meaningful activity if a client recognises digital imagery as an interest.

Provide a brief summary of the services offered by Flickr.com
With flicker you can share your photo's and stay in touch with others, can upload and organize photo's. Then with these images you can make things like calenders, photo cubes, books, postage stamps, slide shows and much more (Retrieved May 18, 2008 from, http://www.flickr.com/).

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

Explain what the difference is between a digital and an optical zoom
Most digital cameras provide two methods for zooming: optical and digital. Unlike optical zoom, which uses the optics of the lens to magnify the size of an image, digital zoom discards pixels around the edge of an image, fitting the remaining pixels into the same space to give the appearance of zoom. Since digital zoom comes at the expense of resolution, you should always choose a camera based on its optical zoom, not the digital or combined figure. Retrieved May 18, 2008 from, www.digitalcamera-hq.com/digital-cameras/glossary-info_guide.html

Explain what is meant by the term mega pixel
A mega pixel refers to one million pixels, which is used for digital cameras as an indication of capability for the required use (Retrieved May 18, 2008 from, http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-a-megapixel.htm).

References
Digital and Optical Zoom. (n.d.). Retrieved May 18, 2008 from, www.digitalcamera-hq.com/digital-cameras/glossary-info_guide.html
Flicker. (n.d.). Retrieved May 18, 2008 from, http://www.flickr.com/
Megapixel. (n.d.). Retrieved May 18, 2008 from, http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-a-megapixel.htm

Tutorial One: Information Technology and Ethical Issues

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

Information technology (IT), also known as Information and Communication(s) Technology (ICT) and Infocomm in Asia, is concerned with the use of technology in managing and processing information, especially in large organizations. Retrieved April 13, 2008, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/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.)

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 has a huge prevalence in our society today, particularly the western society. As humans we have become reliant on IT to carry out alot of everyday tasks.
We have become so reliant on information technology that if someone did not have modern gadgets it would be fair to say that their systems are not working to full capacity.
Personally speaking, IT is a means of communication and information gathering that is fast and efficient. But IT has also become prevalent on other levels – business, work etc.

What IT devices or system do you feel comfortable and competent using?
Cell phones, Internet, Memory Sticks, Computers, digital camera, MP3 players, DVD players, CD/Stereo.
I am also slowly getting there with GPS and slowly on uploading and downloading information.
Please do not ask me how to tune a VCR player!

Thinking about your own fieldwork experiences consider how IT is being used in Occupational Therapy practice?
Computers were largely being used to type up and present client notes. In Waikato Health Board there was a computer system in place that all records and weekly progress notes could be accessed on this database.
One supervisor had a mild form of dyslexia and illegible handwriting and found computer processed neater and easier to understand.
Emails, particularly internal email system was a common form of communication after phone calls.
Cellphones were used for safety issues away from the ward.
Security cameras and alarm systems were used for safety of staff on secure forensic ward.
Teleconferencing was used as a means of everyone being able to attend to the meeting without having to physically being there.

What ethical implications arise from the capturing, sharing and transferring of information via IT devices (e.g. mobile phones) or systems (e.g. internet)
Confidentiality issues
Hackers
Risk of Viruses
System shutdown/failure
Privacy issues
Procedure in place to cope with system shutdown?

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 (Retrieved May 14, 2008, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_ethics).

Provide a definition of Intellectual Property (APA reference required)
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 May 18, 2008, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property).

Provide a definition of Social Justice (APA reference required)
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 May 18, 2008, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_justice).

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. Retrieved May 18, 2008, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informed_consent

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.
Having understanding of ITC and the ethical issues it encompasses allows us to be aware of issues that we could face as professionals. Having this understanding also allows us to recognise the implications that information technology could present and also ways around how to combat this.

References
Information Technology. (n.d.). Retrieved April 13, 2008, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_Technology
Hanks, P. (ed). (1989) Collins Concise Dictionary. Glasgow: Bath Press.
Computer Ethics. (n.d.) Retrieved May 14, 2008, from, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_ethics
Informed Consent. (n.d.) Retrieved May 18, 2008, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informed_consent

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