IT IS FINISHED

And Melissa looked at the blog that she had created, and she saw that it was good, and then she rested.

How to embed a Flickr badge onto your blog

1. Sign in to your Flickr account
2. At the bottom of the page click Tools (in the Help tag)
   
3. On the right hand side look for "Display Flickr photos or video on your website" click the build a badge link.
4. It will automatically select the HTML format, don't change it, just click the blue box at the bottom that says NEXT: CHOOSE CONTENT.
5. Choose which photos you want to include on your badge, then click NEXT: CHOOSE LAYOUT.
   
6. Click the options you want to choose your layout, then click NEXT: COLORS.
   
7. Choose colours for your background, border, links and text, then click NEXT: PREVIEW & GET CODE.
8. If you are happy with the badge, click in the text box, this will automatically select all the text, push Ctrl C, to copy the code.
9. Now sign in to your Blogger account.
10. Click View Blog.
    
11. Click Customise in the top right hand corner of the page.
12. On the right hand side click Add a Page Element.
13. Find "HTML/JavaScript" half way down left column, and click ADD TO BLOG.
14. Click in the content text box and puch Ctrl V to paste the code.
15. Give your badge a title if you wish, then click SAVE.
    
16. Your badge will now appear on your blog
17. Give yourself a pat on the back.
    

Assistive technology

Provide a definition of Assistive technology . The Technology Related Assistance for Individuals with Disabilities Act, 1988 defines assistive technology as “any item, piece of equipment, or product system… that is used to increase, maintain or improve the functional capabilities of individuals with disabilities.”

Describe one piece of equipment introduced in the assistive technology tutorial. Provide information on size, cost and functions. Sunny Sunshine Switch Size: 14" X 14" X 8'' $US 82.95 Requires 6AA Batteries This is a switching device, which means that when it is plugged into any electrical appliance, eg. a radio, you can turn it on and off by pushing the button/switch. The centre button is large and has bendable arms that come out from it, touching either with activate the switch so accurate motor control is not necessary. The device also produces coloured lights, vibration and music, when the switch is activated, this feature can be switched off.

How does your chosen piece of equipment increased functional capacity for the user? Provide examples here from the tutorial and lecture. The switch gives the user some control over their environment and allows them to become active participants, rather than passive observers. The switch can be placed to take advantage of any purposeful movement that the user is capable of eg. side flexion of the neck to hit the switch with their head or abduction at the hip to hit the switch with their knee. It allows otherwise meaningless movement to produce meaningful results.

The internet and online communities

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

Tree Hugger
www.treehugger.com


What is the brief or focus of this community?

Tree Hugger is focussed on environmental issues, they are dedicated to promoting sustainability.


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

The Tree Hugger site contains:
Video/radio pod casts
Weekly or daily newsletter
Relevant articles
“How to” guides for making your life more environmentally friendly

Ways you can interact/contribute to the site:
Forums
Comment wall
Quizzes
“Hugg” where you can post your own environmental news stories.


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

Some people are sharing their opinion on certain environmental issues, but by the most common thing is sharing information to help each other in their quest to be “green.” For example, a good place to buy organic produce, how to start a compost heap or whether urine is a good fertiliser.


Cut and paste an example of the type of topics being discussed.

Urine is a great acticator in the compost. I have a friend who never uses our tiolet when he comes to vistit. It's always straight down the garden to the compost bin. Urine has other uses too. In the near future, you might be an alternative fuel source. Scientists in Singapore have created a battery powered by urine Handy for powering all of those Christmas toys that are running out of power! Most insect bites are acid, so if you are being driven mad by itching you could use an old country remedy- a dab or two of your own urine.


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.

Features such as forums may be misused, and because of anonymity of users there is little accountability.
As posts can be added by anyone there is the question of how reliable the information is.
This then leads to the question of who monitors and regulates the content of the site.


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.

People from all around the world can interact with each other and share information, this gives us access to such a vast range of knowledge and ideas that we would not otherwise have. It is great for people who live in isolated communities or who have a rare interest that may not be shared by anyone within reasonable geographic proximity.

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

There is no human contact and you cannot interact with others in real time so conversation would be very difficult. It would therefore be hard to form relationships with others, this may mean you don’t have a great sense of belonging to the community. Having a sense of belonging is one of the major benefits of traditional communities.

Posting You Tube videos on your blog

• Go to the You Tube website www.youtube.com

• Find the video you want to share by entering keywords in the search bar and click search.

• The results will be displayed here, scroll through the videos until you find the one you were looking for, and click on the picture.

• Use the cursor to highlight the text in this box, then right click and choose copy.

• On your blog dashboard page click new post.

• Right click in large white box and choose paste.

Optional(shown in green): add a title, comment and label.

Click publish to finish.

• The video will now be displayed as a post on your blog.

Video Production

Provide a brief summary of the services offered by U Tube.

YouTube is a website that allows people to share video clips. Anyone can view videos (though some are R18) or you can create an account to upload and share your videos. This also allows you to rate videos or write a comment about them. If you think one of your friends would enjoy a video you have watched you can email them the link
You can search for videos of interest by entering keywords into the search bar or you can watch a channel which is videos posted by the same person. There are also groups which contain videos of similar topics.
There are many more features in the YouTube world, but that's the basics.

Provide a brief account on how the use of planning (storyboarding and scripting) aided your group’s short film.

Our group used a storyboard to plan our short film. A storyboard is a series of drawings; each with a short description, that shows the basic progression of the film. These drawings were then used as a guide when filming. It made the filming process easier and a lot quicker because we knew exactly what we needed to film before we started.
The storyboard was also helpful in the editing process. It gave us a clear picture of how all the separate clips needed to fit together to create the finished product.

Dunedin Weather

Blogging

Provide a brief summary of the services offered by Blogger.

Blogger.com offers a tool for creating your own online blog, a blog is a place where you can where you can write your thoughts, feelings, opinions, ideas and dreams, you can write about what you have been up to or a funny story you heard the other day and then you can share all this information with the world (or you can limit who sees your blog by changing security settings).

On your blog site you can create a personal profile to tell people all about yourself, you can post photos and you can also create links to other sites, fro example, a funny video you saw on Youtube.

Setting up an account is free and easy, you can choose from a range of existing templates or for a bit more of a challenge and a more personalised blog you van create your own.

Name one other Blog host.

Another example of a blog hosting site is Blogster.

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?

Personally I prefer digital cameras in every way but here are some of the issues that others brought up and my response to them:

I like to have the actual photos not just have them on a disc or on the computer….
Get them printed out, just like you would with a film camera, except you can choose not to waste your money on printing the duds, or you can improve your photos by getting rid of red eye, cropping, enlarging etc.

I like the suspense of waiting til the photos are printed to look at them.
Turn the display off and don’t look at them til you load them on the computer, or take the SD card straight to the shop and get them printed out like you do with film.

The batteries are always flat.
Film cameras need batteries too.

I run out of memory.
It’s the same as running out of film, except you can upload the photos then take more or if you haven’t got anywhere to upload it to you could delete the photos you don’t like to make space for new photos... you can’t do that with film.

What if the computer crashes or gets stolen and I loose all my photos.
Back them up on disk, It’s actually safer than storing photos or negatives, which can be destroyed in a fire or flood, plus have you ever tried to print a photo from an old negative… the image gets all discoloured after a few years.


And here are some other reasons I like digital better:

You can be snap happy and take as many photos as you want and you don’t have to worry about wasting film or how much it will cost to print them all out.
You can check that the photo looks good... like that no one has their eyes closed and if it sucks delete it and take another one.
You can share your photos with friends and family over long distances easily and cheaply.
And the list goes on but that will do for now.





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

Images can be stored on an SD card or a flash drive or mp3 player or CD or DVD or on your hard drive. They can be shared on the internet on various sites such as flickr, my space, bebo, facebook, blogger and other blog sites or in devices such as hand held picture viewers and digital picture frames. They can be manipulated in photo editing programmes such as Adobe Photoshop.

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.

The prevalence of image capturing devices especially pxt capable phones, means that people are able to take photos reasonably discretely this raises ethical issues around the use of cell phones in public toilets / changing rooms, in most cases all cell phones are banned from these places.

Also people are taking photos without permission and then posting them on the internet, in most cases people do not mind (depending on the content of the photo) but some people feel this is an invasion of their privacy.

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

Digital cameras are sometimes used on home visit assessments to take photos of the environment, these can be included in the notes/report and give a more accurate picture than a written description alone. This can be especially helpful when an area needs to be modified.

Digital cameras could be used to take photos of each step of a task that is being taught to a client to aid in the teaching process. For example teaching a client how to use a piece of equipment, a compensatory technique or a new skill.

Digital images could also be used to create training resources or information pamphlets about your service.

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

Flickr.com is a website where you can store, manage and share photos. Once you create an account you can upload your photos to the site and organise them. Photos can be sorted by tags, locations or dates.You can control who gets to see your photos by changing the privacy setting so that photos can be viewed only by yourself, by invite only, or by anybody. On this site you can join a group so you can share photos and videos, and chat using the discussion boards with people who have similar interests to you. Other tools available on Flickr are prints, greeting cards, photo books, postage stamps, calendars and slideshow DVDs.

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

Photobucket.com

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

Optical zoom is the ability to zoom in closer before capturing an image.
Digital zoom is the ability to enlarge an image once it has been captured.
A camera with good optical zoom is better than one with good digital zoom.

Explain what is meant by the term mega pixel

A pixel is a single point of an image. The word pixel is short for “picture element.” When an image is enlarged too much, the pixels can sometimes be seen as squares or dots.
A mega pixel is equal to one million pixels. The more mega pixels the higher the quality of the image.

Ethics and Information Technology

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.

Information technology. (n.d.). Retrieved February 14, 2007, from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_Technology

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

IT has become very common place in our society, examples include, computers/internet; email, online shopping, internet banking, blogs etc, cellphones, mp3 players, digital cameras, video cameras……..

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

I feel confident using all technology mentioned above, and I usually can work out how to use a new piece of technology/website by playing around with it for a while.

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

Computers are widely used for managing client files and other information. Email is a common form of communication between staff.
Technology is being used for adaptive equipment.
Digital cameras could be used to document information, eg. on a home assessment visit.
Blogs and forums have potential to be useed for professional development and supervision.


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

When posting information on the internet you need to think about whether you have the right to do so; Is the information someone else’s intellectual property? If you are posting information or images that concerns others do you have informed consent? This is very important because once something has been put on the internet it can be impossible to remove, because even if the information is removed from the webpage, there is no way of knowing who has already uploaded the information and no way to stop them posting it somewhere else.
There are also ethical issues around allowing equal access to all people; those with disabilities may be disadvantaged, for example someone who is blind may not be able to use the internet banking websites, and therefore can not take advantage of the free banking that is offered online.
Also lower socio-economic groups may not have access to certain technologies because they can not afford to pay for them.

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.

Computer ethics. (n.d.). Retrieved February 14, 2007, 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

Intellectual property. (n.d.). Retrieved February 14, 2007, 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.

Social justice. (n.d.). Retreived Februry 14, 2007, 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.

Informed consent. (n.d.). Retrieved February 14, 2007, 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.

Being competent in the use of various technologies is an advantage in OT practice and in everyday life, it can make certain tasks easier or more efficient, and can provide opportunities that would otherwise not be available. As an OT it is important to understand the ethical implications to ensure professional and ethical practice.