Wii-technology - an assistive devise

Wii-habilitation or Wii-technology is relevent to occupational therapy, in that it is now used world wide as an assistive device to improve peoples functionability. Used widely in rehabilitation of cerebral palsey, stroke, traumatic brain injury.

Tutorial 8: Assistive technology

A widely used definition of Assistive technology is "any item, piece of equipment or product system whether acquired commercialy off the shelf, modified, or customized that is used to increase or improve functional capabilities of individuals" as provided in PL (public law) 100-407, as stated in the Technical Assistance to the State Act, United States (Cook & Hussey, 2000).

A piece of equipment shown in our very interesting tutorial class today is the "Go-talk 20plus" a cool communication device. Shaped in an easy to carry, rectangular 15cm x30cm durable platform which had square holes aligned in rows of 5x4 (20)on one side - through which to view the message sheets. The message sheet overlays were recorded by yourself, carer, educator to follow a step-by-step process of whatever function, task, list may be needed. (like following a recipe). These had numerous uses - school, playground, home, going to the shop, getting on the bus, making a smoothee. There were 5 levels with a pictorial function with colours that were simple and clear. The idea was that you push the picture and it gives you a verbal pre-recorded prompt.

This device is great for assisiting people with stroke, TBI, non-verbal clients with memory task problems, because it is easy to follow the seguences and jogs thememory of the next step in the task needed. Increases task sequencing, because its all in order.

This little puppy will cost around $500.

Tutorial 7a: Uploaded description of Flickr Badge

YAY! Heres the Flickr badge step-by-step eplanation .. Which explains it better than I do..

Tutorial 7 Uploading/posting Youtube

Today we had to give a technical description of uploading video from YouTube and embedding a flickr badge on our personal blogs. The best way I found to do that, is by letting the technology lead the way. A step by step process leads the uninitiated, through the technological maze of computer analogue, push-the-button pathways -- until, "yay! its there"

Flickr Badge is on blog 7A

Tutorial 4&5 We sure overcame adversitiy, to get this movie here!!

YEEHAAA !!! WE DID IT !! Bummer that the music wont play.
Talking Heads "We're on the road to nowhere..."

Tutorial 6 Online and internet communities

Online communities - http://www.globalsurfers.com/

I looked at Global Surfers an on-line community that provides information about surf spots all over the world. The site provides access to otherwise inaccessable point breaks and waves around the globe, from the comfort of your computer so that one can plan where and how to visit and travel to these destinations. There is a forum to comment on, ask questions about, or update any information on the different surf spots, swell/wave forecasts, video clips, photos - a person maybe interested in. The social community has aprox 1500 members.

There is a forum for people to chat, ask questions, look for surf buddies and post comments etc... Seems to be updated regularly.

People using this forum are generally surfers, looking to travel and surf in different locations around the globe

Ethical considerations noted on this site are the fact that there are literally heaps of photos of surfers in and out of the water, babes on thebeach who appear not to have been asked for their consent for their images to be posted online. Possibly it is the nature of the surf scene that there is no accountability by image-snapping photographers with big lenses, of individuals sunbathing or surfing.

The benefits of this type of website is that people can geographically view surf spots - which until recently were unavailable to the general landlubber. This can be a benefit to the traveler - however not to the local surfer of that region - because now there are surfers from all over the globe crowding the waves and creating tension amongst locals and visiters...

Possibly what this site lacks is accountability to the average surfer individual of that region. The traditional community of surfing provides the context of comraderie, of surfing when the waves are up in that area - not jumping on a plane to get there. There is nothing like the real thing!!

Tutorial 4 & 5

Holy kamoly!!! Here we go! -- Movie production... Follow instructions working in a group with two confidantes to make a movie! Sounds like fun - EASY! NOT!!!
Our group overcame adversity - technological adversity to make a 60 second movie.. We used in total 3 cameras - which all had either full memory cards, flat batteries etc, etc.. The storyline was created by Julie, shared with the rest of the crew. From this we roughly outlined the sequence of shots, creating our storyboard. We nutted out a few techniques, angles, re-running a few scenes until we thought we had enough footage. Then it was back to the computer to download and edit. That was time consuming but fun. The program "Movie Maker has some pretty tricky editing capabilities. You can cutout snippets, rearrange them, along a time scale. We then added effects like fading in or out, uncurling the scene etc. These added a "professional" touch to the movie. The final effect was the music added, easier said than done. Then voila, movie makers.

We used storyboarding for our movie - which basically meant that we worked out what we were going to film, then broke it down into sequences, around the deliverence of each shot ... Similiar to doing a cartoon, the way Walt Disney used to do. This made it a bit easier to be effective with our mini-film production. We knew between us how we were composing the shot, what use of lighting, background and type shot with the camera we would use - close up, panning, zooming in or out, etc.

Our script was pretty basic really - there wasnt much talking in it, just a lot of mouthing off and facial expressions. Added to the storyboard, with the deliverence of our 10 shots or so ... we overcame adversity to produce our little movie which we will then upload and edit on the computer before putting it out there on U-tube.

U-tube for those who dont know is a video sharing site - which has some amazing stuff on it (also disgusting), anybody and everybody can upload videos and make them available for the world to see. Utube provides place for rating videos, commenting, reporting abuse and subscribing to favourite producers.
U-tube can be found by following the link - http://www.youtube.com/