Thursday 22 March 2012

Occupational disruption


As a group Aldrin, Jenny, Astrid and I were set a task to make a one minute film based around occupational disruption. We brainstormed a story board based around the definition of occupation disruption from christiansen and townsend. We all decided on 12 different shots for our short film and decided who was going to do the different roles around making our film. We decided that Jenny would be the main actor, Aldrin would film, Astrid researched occupational disruption, sorted out the props we would need and created the title page and definition page, Astrid and I were also "extras" in the film and I edited the film.

Creating the story board and sorting out our different roles previous to the day we filmed made it alot easier as there was no fussing around we knew exactly what we were doing, what was expected of us to bring and what shots we were shooting and where. All the planning with the story board and roles took the stress out of filming and it also made my job of editing easier as I knew the exact order in which the different scenes were arranged and I knew which scenes to give priority to time wise due to the one minute time limit for the film. The priority of scenes were written under each picture in the story board as we allocated time limits to every scene.

Reference:
  
Christiansen,C.H.,& Townsend,E.A.(2010). Introduction to occupation: The art and science of living (2nd ed.). New jersey, USA. Pearson education inc.



Tuesday 13 March 2012

Occupational engagement, doing, being and belonging

Gym group
View more PowerPoint from alisha93

My occupation I have chosen to talk about is gym group in fieldwork one. In fieldwork one the client group was mental health and addiction and as a census they wanted a gym group as they could work out together as wegiht gain was a side effects of alot of medications. My superviser has set up the gym group prior to commencement of fieldwork one placement, but i want along two days a week and helped a new client feel comfortable with the equipment and other members of the group.


The term doing refers to engaging in a meaningful, goal
orientated occupation, being refers to taking time to reflect,
belonging means the feeling of having friends and social 
interactions (Wilcock, A.A. 1998b).The gym group reflects
this in picture five as it is a heart with healthy food in it. Alot
of the clients said that they had lost an appetite for food yet
the doing aspect of going to the gym was meaningful.
Picture fourteen of the scales reflects both doing and being
as it is reflecting on the past as they were getting better
health and therefore decreasing medication yet one of the
goals was to lose weight which was put one due to
medication. Also picture eightenen and twenty reflect
belonging as they were all working out together to reach the
common goal.

The ethics I took into consideration while doing this
slideshow were that in all the photos I took I
made sure no face identification could be made. I also only
took pictures which were of basic so that no particular gym
or gym group could be identified by this slide show. The
third ethical consideration I used was that all images from
the internet that I used were referenced so that it
could not be mistaken for what pictures I used of the internet
and which are original pictures
which I took.

 References

Wilcock, A.A. (1998). Reflections on doing, being and belonging. Canadian Journal of Occupational Therapy, 65, 248-256.

Wednesday 7 March 2012

Information technology and ethical issues


Information technology and ethical issues


The focus of my first posting is to explain what information technology is in my own words, provide examples and discuss the possible ethical issues I think surround information technology. I will also talk about the different information technology I personally use and weather I am comfortable or uncomfortable with the different information technology available. 
 
The definition for information technology –“refers to anything related to computing technology, such as networking, hardware, software, the Internet, or the people that work with these technologies”(Techterms,2012).I think information technology refers to computer technology but also refers to the internet and the information we can get off the internet, the information downloaded onto the internet and how easily accessible it is. It refers to different networking sites such as Facebook, YouTube or twitter etc. The different programmes needed to run the different internet sites or your computer/laptop.


Information technology has become prevalent in our society and has become so common that it is available easily and has become the norm of everyday life for most people in our society. Information technology provides such a wide range of purpose to our society and caters to a lot of individual needs. If we take social networking as an example Facebook has “845 million monthly active users at the end of December 2011, 483 million daily active users on average in December 2011 and more than 425 million monthly active users who used Facebook mobile products in December 2011”(Facebook,2012).This shows that millions and millions of people are accessing Facebook through a form of information technology each day. Another example is YouTube, it has millions of video uploads each day, under many different categories and subjects. It can be a form of communication, expressing your views and opinions, sharing your talents with the world, listening to music or just being creative. These can all be seen at: http://www.youtube.com/. All these show the different ways of using information technology for personal use.


There are many different information technology devices or systems that some people feel comfortable and competent using, and others which we feel uncomfortable using. Some personal example of mine are: I feel very comfortable using the internet for purposes such as skyping my family and friends, using Facebook for social networking purposes to again engage with friends and family. I use internet to browse and to look up information I want, I use email to contact people, I even use internet to shop online. I feel comfortable because I know how to use the internet for these purposes and have been for many years. I also feel very comfortable using my cell phone. I have had a cell phone since I was 11 years old so I am very competent in the services and apps that cell phones provide, such as speed texting and calling.


The information technology that I am uncomfortable using is downloading or understanding software and the purposes of them. I feel I am uncomfortable using software that is unfamiliar to me for that exact reason it is unfamiliar. This is feel could limit my personal use of information technology as generally I will not download any form of software, which could limit me for the potential or positives of having the software.


The purposeful occupations I use information technology for is on social networking sites to engage and express my opinions to friends and family. The second is skyping, because I have a family member who cannot speak but uses sign language as a form of communication, skyping is meaningful and creates purpose as I can see and understand what my family member is trying to communicate with me.


When I was on placement I saw information technology in an Occupational therapy practise with data logging into the computer programme JADE. This programme could bring up all patient information needed for the particular health professionals. Also in my second placement in another setting the computer was used in conjunction with different software’s and programmes to help educate and teach the clients in that particular setting. It was used to help some clients express their thoughts as some were non vocal. Also cell phones and Ipads were used to help communicate around appointments, as a diary and in fieldwork two they were used for social interactions. I can envisage information technology becoming a tool of practise in Occupational Therapy as it can help with clients interacting, being able to search for information independantly, social skills to be able to connect with family and friends, pay bills online, manage money via online banking and even shopping online. This can be seen in the Canadian association of Occupational Therapists website:http://www.caot.ca/default.asp?pageid=3749, which talks about information technology and its uses for the client base in Canada. 
 
To conclude my first blog I would like to end with information technology is becoming so frquently used and widely accessable and used by many, that as an Occupational therapist it is vital to take advantage of the tools and skills information technology has to offer ourselves and our future clients.

Reference list

Facebook. (2012). Newsroom. Retrieved from: http://newsroom.fb.com/content/default.aspx?NewsAreaId=22

M. Miyazaki,L. Liu.(2002).Tele-occupational therapy: Making occupational therapy services accessible. Retrieved from: http://www.caot.ca/default.asp?pageid=3749

Techterms. (2012). IT definitions. Retrieved from:http://www.techterms.com/definition/it