Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Tutorial 8 Asstive Technology

Defintion of assitive technology:
"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".

Assitive technology i chose:
Personal Listening Systems. DT-100 Directalk personal listener

for mild to moderate hearing loss.

The DT-100 is totally hands-free, it rests naturally and comfortably on your shoulder, nothing to hold or to hang onto your clothing. Proprietary High Definition Sound (HDS) technology delivers near-by sounds in panoramic clarity directly to your ears while suppressing background noise.

background noise.

Selectable Digital Tone Enhacement allows you to boost and enhance the speech frequencies that you can't hear well, making difficult-to-hear words intelligible again. Automatic Gain Control optmizes sound level for superior listening comfort; no more sudden blasts.

PRICE: $129.95
WEIGHT: very light
one year warranty.

Buy from: Serene Innovations

Sunday, June 7, 2009

Tutorial 6 Online Communities

Chosen Community: BEBO

Bebo web address: http://www.bebo.com

What this community is about:

"Bebo is a social media network where friends share their lives and explore great entertainment."


Bebo enables people who are signed up to it to contact friends from their childhood and link up with new friends. On Bebo you can share and comment on pages, photos, add videos and music, add blogs to your page, private message people, join groups and bands and lots more. Bebo is a very interactive social networking site - you add friends or friends add you, you can comment on your friend's page, blog, photos, - there is even a tally of how many people have visited your profile. You can create your own polls and quizzes, create a white board for people to add drawings to your page, even make your own group.

Bebo facillitates "socialability" to the extent that peopole who join have an easy way of communicate with friends, no matter where they are, as long as they have access to the internet. Social networks allow people to keep in touch with friends in other countries.

There are different types of Bebo pages and therefore different topics. There are the personal pages where you can decide who may view them. There are groups that you can become a member of. Some a funny and some are serious. Theres groups that are less disscusion and are a way of uniting with other people who believe the particular group.

Ethical issues include, people who make their pages public to anyone in the world tend to face strangers using their identities for their own Bebo pages. More recently, Bebo has had hackers who steal peoples identities and send rude messages to that persons friends. There is no way of stopping this- and it is a pain signing on to your Bebo and finding you have 7 rude messages which looks like they have been snet from your best friend. Any one can copy peoples photos. Anyone can comment.

Bebo is absolutely fanastic to keep in touch with friends and family who are scattered all over the world! Keep in touch with friends in Australia, you can send them a message and they can reply straight away... its free, no phone bills, you can send photos and know that the person is actually going to recieve them- as emails do not always work. However, this is not as good as actually being able to speak to these people who are far away or actually spend time with them. But is great to keep in touch between visits.





Saturday, June 6, 2009

Tutorial Five Video Production

The group planned the video "spooning around" addressing the issue of overcoming adversity they had to use a script to do so. A script involves everything that is heard, seen and done onscreen. A typical good script involves movement, expression, mood, interaction with others (optional of course), camera angles and shots...a script really involves everything that is going to be done. The use of the script was helpful to get a general overview of what they wanted to do and be done, although it was not quite as detailed as what a "good script" should be.

Also when videoing "spooning around" they had to use a story board, our story board consisted of nine simple scenes that they decided they wanted to shoot for the video. A story board is a illustration of what the video is going to be about in a logical order and where the scenes are going to be taken, this provides a overview of how the video will run before the actual filming stage begins.

Thursday, May 28, 2009

Tutorail 8 Posting a Youtube video

Follow this link to view how to copy a video off Youtube onto your blog!'



This video will show you how to upload flickr badges to Blogs.....



Monday, May 11, 2009

Tutorial Two Digital Cameras.

"A new technology is rarely superior to an old one in every feature"
Digital camera technology vs. Traditional film based cameras

The old film cameras that every family used to have were bulky, could only take as many photos as the roll of film allowed and you could never be sure of how your photo would turn out until you got it developed sometime down the line (and if your anything like my family that could be years later...and huge disappointments when you open that folder of photos). With digital camera technology you see your photo instantly, you can delete if you don't like it and reorganise the settings to get the image you want. Digital cameras have the capacity to take hundreds of photos, battery life is usually reasonably large, whereas film camera batteries tended not to last as long.

How digital images can be stored, transferred and manipulated using other communications technology.

A digital camera is an electronic device used to capture and store photographs electronically in a digital format. You snap your scene and the digital image is saved to the memory card. You can then upload your images to your computer, and from there you can alter the image's size, colour, sharpness, and depending on your editing programme you can do so much more! You can also upload and share your photos on a website such as flickr.com or even a blog based website such as bebo or facebook etc OR Google Blogger!!!!

ETHICAL ISSUES:
The ethical issues arise around privacy and confidentiality. Effectively a person whose image is captured in a photograph should have every right to the confidentiality of that picture.These days photos are taken so frequently and are uploaded to the internet without the thought that you may be breaching confidentiality laws. On some social networking sites you are able to decide whether you want your information or photos to be private and only viewed by people you have agreed to let see.

DIGITAL CAMERAS AND OCCUPATIONAL THERAPY:
As yet i have not seen any OTs use cameras in practice. however, i have the understanding that they can be very useful in physical settings as well as community settings. The ability to be able to capture risks, potential adaptations for the future is extremely benficial. when applying for funding photos of the current environment could be beneficial for the funder to have a good idea of the persons house and obstacles they currently face in their own home.


DIFFERENCE BETWEEN DIGITAL AND OPTICAL ZOOM:

Optical zoom works like the zoom lens on a camera, the lens changes focal length and magnification as it is zoomed. This retains the image quality of the image. Digital zoom is where the image is just cropped and then enlarge to fill the frame - it is very easy to see the pixels and the image has poor quality.

Mega pixels...

Digital images are made up of squares called pixels. Though the picture looks smooth, it is made made up of millions of tiny squares. Megapixel stands for 1 million pixels. So a camera with 5 megapixels has 5 million pixels.

FLICKR AND ANOTHER SITE SIMILAR:

Flickr.com is a photo and video storage website that allows you too upload photos and videos for free - on a basic account. If you want more, including more space to upload more items you pay a membership. You can oraganise, share and set tags to your images and it is also a way to keep in touch with family and friends. They can leave comments or tags to images and give feedback. Group can come together around a common interst e.g flowers or people can share their interest in photography and techniques used.

and another similar site to flickr is a site called snapfish...To check it out, follow this link:

Tutorial One Information technology


  • Provide a defintion of information technology/information communications technology (apa reference required).The development, installation,and implementation of computer systems and applications. ICTs is an umbrella term that includes any communication device or application, encompassing radio, television,cellphones, computer and network hardware and software,satellite systems and so on, as well as the various services and applications associated with them.

information technology:defintion from answers.com. retrieved on 09/03/09 from http://www.answers.com/topic/information-technology.



  • Consider the form of definition you provided. how is this form of technology prevalent in our society? how commonplace has it become? This form of technology is hugely prevalent in our society today. these are our main means of communications with friends, family, colleagues when we arent in a space where we can speak face to face with them. through this technology we can write emails to people on the other side of the world, we can chat with them online. computers and cellphones are massive pieces of technology in the world today. many many people need these to live their busy everyday lives. we have come to rely on on this technology.

  • What IT system or device do you feel comfortable and competent using? i use cellphones and computers in my everyday life. these things make life that much easier, you can have internet banking which saves you going to town to the bank, emails, blackboard!!, social networks, trade me, all of these things make life easier. e.g. socialising, buying clothes etc online, sending assignments to lecturers through email.

  • Think about your own fieldwork experiences, how is IT being used in Occupational Therapy practice? emails, goals, patient reports, educational activities, finding out information, or ideas for a particular client type.