Tutorial Six: The internet and online communities

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

www.thelowdown.co.nz


What is the brief or focus of this community

The low down website focuses on depression. It is a site where people can go to talk and hear about other people that experience depression. It allows people to feel safe in a supported environment.


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

There are lots of services provided within this website, they include definitions, facts and knowledge about depression, a place where you can go and chat to other people who have depression and stories about celebrities who have depression or people close to them that do.

There are navigators that you can choose from which show and help you find your way around the site. People can contribute to this site by joining in conversations or starting up their own conversations themselves.


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

People who visit this website will want to find out more information about depression to enable them to help someone that is suffering from it. They also may be seeking help for themselves or just want to listen to other peoples stories or listen to music clips.

Cut and paste an example of the type of topics being discussed (you may have to provide a context to your excerpt).

What is depression

Depression is the experience of being in a really low mood, pretty much all the time, over a long period of time. Depression can be a serious illness, which leaves you feeling sad or miserable most of the time. It’s been described as “being sad or empty”, and “feeling totally hopeless”.

It also gives you facts about depression and you can self-test yourself to see how depressed you are. I cannot copy and paste things off this website as it wont let me so I just typed in a bit of the depression topic.


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.

The low down website has people watching the site to make sure that nothing offensive or inappropriate is placed on this website. Whatever you write can be viewed by many people so you have to be careful of what you write. You are not allowed to copy and paste anything off the website so therefore there must be some type of block on it.


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

Anyone anywhere in the world can go onto the low down website if they have access to the internet, distance is not a factor.


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

This community has some limitations such as not being able to talk with someone face to face. Also if people do not have access to the internet they are not able to view this website. You can not build a rapport with the moderators so this is very limiting.

Tutorial Seven: Posting You Tube Videos and Flickr Badges to Blogs: Explaining the process

Task One: Explain the step by step process required to embed You Tube videos into your Blog . Consider using screen captures to provide a visual representation of these steps.

Step 1: Go to the youtube website and pick a video that you wish to post to your blog.

Step 2:Log on to your blog site so that you are ready to cope and paste it there

Step 3: To post the video on to your blog all you need to do is copy the embed code that is located on the right hand side

Step 4: You then paste this code into a new post and give it a tile.

Step 5: Save the post and then press publish post and when you click on view blog it will be there.


Task Two: Explain the step by step process required to embed a Flickr Badge into your Blog. Consider using screen captures to provide a visual representation of these steps.

Step 1: Log on to your blog account
Step 2: Log into your flickr account throught the website
Step 3: Click on the tools at the bottom of the flikr page
Step 4: Follow the step by step instructions until the URL code comes up.
Step 5: Copy the URL code by using the keys ctrl C
Step 6: Click on the customize tab in blog account
Step 7: Click on add element
Step 8: Click on script
Step 9: Paste the URL code in the element box.
Step 10: Give the badge a title like my photos, my fav photos
Step 11: Save the badge

Tutorial Four and Five: Video Production Session

Task One: Follow instructions and work in a small group to plan and produce and edit a 30 second short.

Task Two: Set up a U Tube account

Task Three: Follow instructions to posting your video on U Tube.

Task Four (Blog Posting): Provide a brief summary of the services offered by U Tube. Information can be drawn from the week five tutorial hand out.

YouTube is a video sharing website where users can upload, view and share video clips. The San Bruno-based service uses Adobe Flash technology to display a wide variety of user-generated video content, including movie clips, TV clips and music videos, as well as amateur content such as videoblogging and short original videos.
The uploading of videos containing pornography, nudity, defamation, harassment, commercial advertisements and material encouraging criminal conduct is prohibited. Related videos, determined by title and tags, appear onscreen to the right of a given video.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube

Task Five (Blog Posting): Provide a brief account (1-2 paragraphs) on how the use of planning (storyboarding and scripting aided your groups short film.

The storyboard was very useful while making our short film in class. We were able to see visually the photos/shots that we wanted to take. The ideas we used were placed in order and were easy to follow using the storyboard. We were able to stick to the footage that we wanted to shoot by referring back to what we had written on our storyboard. Our video clip is about the weather that we experience in Dunedin and we named it Channel D Weather.

We did not have very long to shoot our video so by preparing and doing the storyboard we were able to follow it and we knew what photos/shots we needed to take so that cut down the time. Editing the shots took a while but we were able to cut it down to make a 30 second movie clip.

Tutorial Eight: Assistive Technology

Provide a definition of Assistive technology (your Cook and Hussey reading may be helpful with this).

Assistive technology is a generic term that includes assistive, adaptive, and rehabilitative devices and the process used in selecting, locating, and using them. AT promotes greater independence for people with disabilities by enabling them to perform tasks that they were formerly unable to accomplish, or had great difficulty accomplishing, by providing enhancements to or changed methods of interacting with the technology needed to accomplish such tasks.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assistive_technology


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

Blink glasses- These allow the person who is wearing them to turn on and off a switch by blinking. It has a wee sensor that picks up on the person blinking and enables the switch to turn on and off using the blinking motion.
The size of it is the size of a normal pair of glasses which has a cord that runs to a switch board to change the sensitivity if blinking.
The cost of these is around $1000.00



How does your chosen piece of equipment increased functional capacity for the user? Provide examples here from the tutorial and lecture.

These glasses allow the user control of a switch, using the blinking movement. It is designed for someone with a severe physical disability who can only blink, so by using these glasses they are able to blink, have some control and communicate like everyone else.

Tutorial Three: Blog Creation Tasks

Task four: Provide a brief summary of the services offered by Blogger(this will be your third posting. Infromation can be drawn from the attached hand out). In addition to this name one other Blog host.

A blog is like a diary where you can post comments on an ongoing basis. You can engage with friends by posting them comments and getting comments back from them.
You can design how your blog wants to look, by using different templates, colours and different fonts. You can post photos and videos of yourself and your friends on your blog page. You can send photos off your moblie as well to your blog and it costs nothing and is easy to set up.

Some other types of blog sites are bebo, blogster, facebook and myspace

Tutorial Two: 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?

Some pluses would be the distribution and manipulation of images. They can be used in OT practice to take photos of client’s houses that need to be modified. You can print the photos that you have taken on your camera off your computer once to have downloaded them to it. This only takes a few moments whereas if you were using a traditional film based camera it would take a day or over night to get them developed.

Some minuses would be that the cameras a quite small and easy to misplace. There are lots of settings on the cameras which can be quite confusing for some people who aren’t very good with cameras. Also sometimes the photo quality is not so good which means they can turn out fuzzy and hard to see.

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

Emails
Phones
Memory sticks
CDs
DVDs
Laptops
On the web
Video cameras

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.

People could take photos of someone without asking their permission and then post them on the internet.
The right people receiving the information. E.g. trustworthy who you know.

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

Housing modifications.
Recording clients while they are doing certain occupations.
Equipment- to show the clients what it looks like.
Manuals with pictures- also to show clients different types of equipment.



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

Flickr.com is an image and video hosting website, web services suite and an online community platform. It is a popular website for users to share personal photographs and the users to share personal photographs. The service is widely used by bloggers as a photo repository.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flickr.com

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

Photoshop
Bebo
Facebook


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

Optical zoom works just like a zoom lens on a film camera. The lens changes focal length and magnification as it is zoomed.
Digital zoom simply crops the image to a smaller size then enlarges the cropped portion to fill the frame again.

Explain what is meant by the term mega pixel

Mega pixel refers to one million pixels and is the smallest piece of information in a photo image.