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