Tutorial Seven: Assistive Technology

Woops got a bit carried away and posted tutorial 8 before tutorial 7

Anyways the task for this tute were.....

Provide a definition of assistive technology

Trev gave us a good definition in our assistive tech tutorial which was something along the lines of:

"assistive technology is used to increase, maintain or improve functional abilities for people with disabilities."

Cook & Hussey (1995) also include things such as:

• devices
• services
• strategies
• practices
• equipment or product system that is modified or customize

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

One piece of equipment that we used in the tutorial was a "talking photo album". This looks just like a normal 6"x4" soft photo album, but it has the ability to record a message on each page. We used this when giving instructions on how to make a banana smoothie- on every page we could record an instruction in the recipe, and include a drawing and written instructions also. The message is easy to record and can be played back to the user with the press of a button.

The photo albums are available from 'Star Mobility' (http://www.starmobility.co.nz) and come in two sizes: A3 and A5. Both sizes hold 25 inserts and each page has a recording space of ten seconds. The A3 costs $122.01 and comes in black. The A5 costs $97.59 and come in black and red.

How does your chosen piece of equipment increase functional capacity for the user?

The talking photo album can be used as an educational tool, enabling communication, speaking and listening skills, word recognition and sequencing. It can be used to aide memory, social stories, as a timetable or diary .

Tutorial Eight: Posting Youtube videos and Flickr Badges to Blogs: Explaining the Process Part II

Task Two: Explain the step by step process required to embed a flickr badge into your blog.

• Go to www.flickr.com and sign into your account
• Scroll to the bottom of the page where you'll find a 'tools' link. Click on this.
• On the right hand side of the page there is a link saying 'Hey! where is the badge?' click on this.
• Step 1: choose what sort of badge you would like. I chose a flash badge as it moves and your photos change. Scroll down and click the blue button 'Next: Choose content'
• Step 2: choose content. Decide what photos you would like to be displayed on your badge. Scroll down and click the blue button 'Next: Colours'
• Step 3: choose the colour theme for your badge.
• Step 4: Flickr will provide you with a code for your badge. Highlight the text and right click on it and press 'copy'.
• open your Blogger blog page. Make sure your logged in!
• Click on 'dashboard', located at the top right hand side of the page.
• Find the 'layout' button which it situated below your blog title.
• Click on an 'Add a gadget link' . There may be a few places you can put it- right hand side, top, bottom.... its up to you.
• A new screen will appear titled 'basics', you need to click on the 4th option on the list titled 'HTML/javascript'
• A screen called 'Configure HTML/Javascript' will appear. Give your badge a title, then in the main body right click and select 'paste'. The code for your badge should now show.
• Click the orange 'save' button.
• You now have a badge on your blog! click 'view blog' to check it out.

How to embed a Youtube video into your blog

Tutorial Eight: Posting Youtube videos and Flickr Badges to Blogs: Explaining the Process Part I

Task One: Explain the step by step process required to embed Youtube videos into your blog.

This sounds a lot worse than it is...

All you have to do is go to the Youtube website (http://www.youtube.com) and find the video you want to embed in your blog. This can be done by typing key words into the search bar found at the top of the page. Once you have found the video you want, scroll down and beneath the video you should see a button called "embed". It can be found right alongside the 'like', 'dislike' and 'save to' buttons. Click on the embed button and new information will pop up. Here there is a long line of coding should be highlighted, you need to right click on this and 'copy'. You can also decide what size you want the movie to be and if you want a colour theme. If you do, do this before you copy the link. You then need to go back to your blog and click on 'new post' just like you would create a new post on your page. Once there, right click and choose 'paste'. This will transfer the code from you tube and will look like jibberish! give it a title if you like and then press 'publish post'. View your post and you will find a Youtube video embedded into your blog! Easy as.

Overcoming adversity - Participation in occupation paper

Tutorial Six: The Internet and Online Communities

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

http://www.facebook.com also known as Facebook.

What is the brief or focus of this community?

The focus of this community is to share and stay connected with friends, new and old. You have control over how much you share with other Facebook users.

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

Facebook allows you to share your thoughts with friends, like a blog, on your own personalized home page. Like blogger you can have a profile picture and have up to date personal information that your friends can access. You can also communicate with friends by writing on their personal blog. Your information and blog page can be as private or public as you wish- you can set your privacy settings so that only people you have approved as your "friend" can see all of your information. On your Facebook page you can upload photos, videos and links to share with your friends. There is also a 'chat' and 'message' service where you can instantaneously chat with friends who are on Facebook at the same time as you, or message them privately like you would an email. Facebook now has a mobile phone application so you can do all of the above while on the run or when unable to access a computer. Games or 'applications' can also be used on the interactive site.

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

To keep in contact with others in the most efficient, non-time consuming way possible.

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

can everyone help me settle a dispute in our flat? who is hotter, Heidi Klum or Rachel Hunter?? much appreciated :)

Considering material presented during the course and make comment on the potential ethical issues that may arise in this community

Facebook uses advertisement to create revenue for the developers as it is free to join. This has created spam advertisement, and users are susceptible to scams and viruses.

Confidentiality & Identity theft is a huge issue with social networking sites such as Facebook. As the default privacy setting is open to everyone, if you do not change this then anyone has access to all of the information you share on your page including occupation, hobbies, photos, where you live, even your phone numbers (depending on how much you share).

People can also take photos that you display on Facebook and 'steal' them, claiming them as their own work or even manipulate them. It is also common for employers to search for their potential employees on Facebook, giving them a personal view on the person where they can see the types of relationships/social behavior etc via photographs on the employees page.

There is also the risk of people stalking you on Facebook, which can lead to more serious concerns such as cyber bullying, child abuse, rape & theft.

Consider material presented during the lecture and make comment on the benefits this community holds over traditional notions of community

Facebook fosters an online community, creating links and connections with people that you may otherwise not communicate or be in contact with. Facebook breaks down the geographical barrier that separates us from some friends & family making it easier to stay in touch. It is a convenient way to communicate as it can be done from the comfort of your home, at work, school or even on a mobile phone. There is no fee to join Facebook and therefore there are no big phone bills at the end of the month, as there would if you called someone to keep in contact. The only disadvantage I see to Facebook is the fact that the face to face communication is lost, and your community becomes slightly isolated. I think the next generation will lose important communication skills due to this.

Consider materials presented in this lecture and make comment what this community lacks or can not provide which traditional communities can

I have kind of answered this above, Facebook lacks the face to face communication that a traditional community provides. Some sort of programme similar to 'Skype' (a video conference programme requiring a webcam so you can see and talk to another person with the programme and vice versa) would be a good addition to Facebook.

You Tube Video