I’ve just spent an enjoyable hour or so cruising around the net.. with music from YouTube in the background. Tonight we’ve had everything from the Proclaimers to who knows what (husband loves to do his accounts to YouTube music in our shared study!).

Anyway… I started cruising tonight because I am cowriting a chapter for a upcoming textbook for fieldwork educators/academics/supervisors/preceptors (pick the relevant one for you). I’ve been reading an article by McGee & Begg published in Medical Teacher 2008 (30/2) (Yes I know find the hyperlink!)… McGee works at the Medical School at University of Pittsburgh. He was describing the use of collaborative learning workspaces for students and faculty… There are apparently 2000 unique collaborative websites maintained by 600 undergraduate medical students – and do you think I could find just one of them?? Apparently the course directors also regularly blog.. so I was keen to find that one of those as well (all examples I could bring into this article).. but nope they alluded me too!

So I’ve hunted McGee down on FaceBook… but in the meantime I’ve checked out a few blogs I haven’t looked at in ages, looked at Health 2.0 online journals, caught up with friends blogs and generally just cruised for an hour or so with very little outcomes to show for it, but it’s been like picking up a favourite book or magazine and just flicking through it. Can’t tell you a lot about what I found, haven’t delicioused any sites, or any of the things I should have done – but I’ve had a enjoyable time… back to the book chapter tomorrow with or without McGee’s exm

This blog has been so quite for so long – I haven’t even looked at the stats!  My only excuse is that 15 months ago I enrolled in a professional doctoral programme at University of Otago. The combination of completing 4 major assignments, and the ongoing work inbetween just left me with so little time to myself to do enjoyable things like creating blogging posts!

So I survived the first year, got the grades I was aiming for and rolled straight on into the second year with more classwork to refine our research topics…. I’ve got a topic, and a focus but more about that in a later post!

Just now I wanted to flag that I aim to get this blog up and running again come June. I’ve just started on a long break from my academic job – a combination of annual leave (7 weeks) and a 3 month sabbatical. The leave part is coming first… so from June onwards I hope to be back and actively blogging!

I’ve a few moments so have been tidying up my messy blog (doing my housekeeping).. There are so many more blogs now written by OT’s (upwards of 60 I’ve heard). I thought I’d showcase a new one that is just getting started  – its organised by postgraduate students as a way to keep on developing and buidling on knowledge gained from a postgraduate course called Language by Hand: Handwriting practices for children and young people

So check it out – its just a fledgling new blog but I’m sure is going to grow.

 

I have for a long time watched enviously as educators really appeared to make the social networks afforded to them by social software work.  I bemoaned the fact that there weren’t enough OT’s online to make this workable, and commiserated with Sarah who finds the same with midwifery!

But… in the last few months, the numbers using the programmes have exploded, and slowly there appears to be slightly more even representation between academics/researchers, students and OT’s, although I think student numbers would still outstrip the rest of us!

The last 3 months I’ve seen the power that emerges from a group that starts to cluster together online – I’m talking about the group that formed within a few short days to submit the abstract to the COT conference that has just happened. The work this group did is described here in my blog.  It’s amazing the level of trust we gained through our work online, and we still have yet to all meet actually face to face.

Building on the success of this combined work, Natan and I grabbed the opportunity at the ‘nth’ hour to submit and abstract to the next American OT conference in Texas next year.  Using mainly gchat and one or two emails, we developed the abstract within I think about 36 hours. The rest of the group were able to view the final abstract after we had submitted it but were happy with the outcome. We will wait for a while to hear back… and we may not be successful, but its another example of what can be achieved through the tools.  And the group has more plans to use the tools to grow other’s understandings of occupational therapy – so please do watch this space (and that of Angela, Sarah, Will and Natan!).

The joint presentation by Angela Hook, Sarah Bodell, Will Wade from Oxford Brookes, and Natan Berry in USA and myself seemed to go extremely well with good interest by those in the audience. Check out Angela’s posting on the Salford OT blog. I’ve also included a copy of the powerpoint presentation here:

so in Angela’s words, please take the time to look at the presentation, and leave a comment, even if it is just to let me know that you visited. Click on “comment” at the end of the post and type your comment into the pop-up box. Even if you didn’t attend, please feel free to comment. Or head back over to Angela and Sarah’s blog and leave comments there.. or check out Will’s or Natan’s blogs (click on their name above to get taken to their blogs).

I’ve been keen to talk more with occupational therapists about the value of web 2.0 tools. In late May I presented at the European Congress/German conference in Hamburg. In this presentation I discussed the outcomes of a research project I completed last year with occupational therapists and learning to use web 2.0 tools.

Coming up is the College of Occupational Therapists conference in Harrogate, England where a team of us are due to present on how social networking tools (ie blogs) have bought us together. Perhaps if you are reading this message, you may have attended either the European Congress, or the British conference. If you did…. what did you find useful in the presentations? what did they get you thinking about? Can you see the possibilities????? Are you more confused, or less confused?

If you attended the British Conference, then Will will have finished the presentation with a challenge to leave a comment on a blog. So please,…. leave me a note, perhaps with a reflection or two (remember you can count this CPD activity)…. I’d love to have more conversations with OT’s about what the tools have to offer. I’m also happy to help anyone get going as well if they want!

And to those who have already left a comment, I’ve been away from Aotearoa/New Zealand for about four weeks now…. so I will be back both to leave more posts… and ….. to follow up links people have given me… and to update my Web 2.0 tab with occupational therapy blogs.. and just maybe… to take the 31 day challenge as Angela is doing….

I’m hoping that I’ve not lost too many readers while I’ve been absent from my blog! I find it hard to believe how quickly the weeks have gone by since I last posted.

I thought I’d quickly update what I’ve been involved in, and then hopefully, I’ll expand the entries in later postings. I enrolled in my EdD studies this year, and was totally engrossed for some weeks in the writing of an essay that argued for the importance and value of reflective practice and researching practitioners. Depending on my mark I may post the assignment later…! (okay – passed assignment well – so here it is! assignment-2-eddx901-for-blog )

One of the good aspects of this assignment was that I returned to readings I had considered earlier which is the work by Kielhofner and his colleagues in the UK – Kirsty Forsyth and Lynn Summerfield-Mann on the creating of scholarships of practice. I’m wanting to come back to this literature, and to explore the possibilities with a company I subcontract to here in Dunedin.

I also have been enjoying online collaborations with a group of practitioners and academics in the UK and US which has led to us presenting at the upcoming COT/BAOT National Conference. Last week we joined together using Elluminate to discuss what our presentation would look like. With 40 minutes for the presentation, and 4 presenters, we were able to quickly divide up the topics to be covered, and we’re using a Wikispace to join our efforts together. Its amazing how quickly we were able to reach agreement, given that we’ve never worked together, or met before! I know that as therapists we believe that the non-verbal cues are so important, but in this situation I haven’t at all felt the absence of these cues. Will be interesting to see what the others think (hope you guys use RSS feeds!).

I’ve also just heard that my nomination to a new group formed under the World Federation of Occupational Therapists (WFOT) has been accepted. This group has been proposed and is being led by Louise Schaper from Perth West Australia. I’m sure the group will be openly talking about their work later, but the name of this group is the E-Health International Advisory Group. Louise and I have been discussing how we may use social networking tools (Web 2.0) to support the work of this group with membership from around the world.

Back soonnnnnnn!!!!

I have been trying for a nightly posting, but with time away last week, and planning for honours/masters students coming for their research school this week, I haven’t quite made it.

However, that doesn’t stop me checking where visitors have come from and where they go to as they pass through my blog, or what search terms bring people to my blog (that is deserving of a posting one day)… but tonight I just want to celebrate two things… firstly

…one of the first OT bloggers that I ever found Will Wade is back on the scene….. we had a lengthy chat about Web 2.0, is it a solution looking for a problem…??? Could it support, or facilitate the creation of Scholarship of Practice as proposed by Kielhofner, Forsyth, Summerfield Mann and associates, what do we consider professional development to be and why, and what do we choose and why etc etc… which led us then off on a long tangent about knowledge – is it something ‘owned’ by some to be ’shared or not shared’ with others – what values underpin this reasoning and why do we hold these values.. which led us then to the analogy that knowledge is built on what comes before – just like the street level in the UK which has risen over the centuries – when we look at the buildings off today, what is holding them up but the buildings that have come before! And by then it was quite late in NZ… and Will needed to do some work as well so we called it a day/night! Perhaps I’ll be able to bring in some of our discussions for others to follow through!

Secondly…. I looked at my blog stats… and today I have 6,000 visitors have come through my site since I first started last year. My first posting was in January 2007, but I really got underway on 18 March 2007 with regular postings… I’m not sure that I ever imagined getting to 6000 visits/hits within a year! Thanks to all of those who link to my blog, or who have mentioned my blog – the more we link with each other, the more we’ll give occupational therapists to come looking!!!

Just a short posting tonight as its been a busy day. I’ve been working on an article based on the research we undertook last year with a group of occupational therapists who volunteered to take part in class for  12 weeks to learn about Web 2.0 tools.

Aside from that I had a quick conversation with Sarah the midwife about how we as professionals prioritise our time for our learning versus all the other tasks that we face every day. Sarah pointed me in the direction of Michelle’s blog which I do pop in an out of from time to time (I should read it every day – its such a great blog!).  But anyway – check it out yourself – what do you think – is she right? And how would you answer the question she poses at the end of her posting:

How do you set your priorities? Do you think that you set them to add value or do you find that you’re doing more things to avoid pain? And how does this make you feel about what you do each day?

Last year one of our lecturers James Sunderland undertook the development of a course called Participation in Occupation 1. I’ve just uplifted from the Participation in Occupation 1 blog the aim of this course. It reads:

Course Aim

This course will enable students to focus on participation of people in meaningful occupation. People today are increasingly engaged in occupations that use technology. Students will explore the different ways technology can be used to bring about engagement in occupation of people who have occupational needs, and to consider how technology can be used to enhance therapy services to clients.

The students are introduced to a range of technologies, and encouraged to consider what access to these tools means to them, and therefore how they may be used therapeutically. The students all use blogs to record their learning. Last year they were closed blogs, this year they are all open! So to all those occupational therapy students out there either actively blogging, or actively reading occupational therapy blogs, you absolutely need to check out the 30 odd blogs on Participation in Occupation 1’s blogroll. So here’s a heads up for Karen and all that connect through your blog Karen – hope you connect in a posting to this new blog! Lets encourage these students to be active bloggers, so they will continue to use these tools once graduated and working as occupational therapists for their ongoing learning – and then we could just about take over the blogging world (well maybe a little corner!).

So while I’m showcasing blogs written by students you might also want to check those maintained by the occupational therapy staff….alongside the Participation in Occupation 1 maintained by James.
Jackie’s who focuses on supervision, and more recently on sustainability and permaculture (and people just thought occupational therapists were into baskets and bunnies!). Check out Jackies interests at our school website! Jackie also delivers one of our postgraduate courses Supervision for the Helping Professions (need to update Otago Polytechnic weblink for this course!)

Linda Robertson’s who has several on the go – check out her personal one as well as one she has set up for PG401001 Clinical Reasoning postgraduate course. Linda might have another one or two out there… how about it Linda? Have I missed any? Oh the link to the postgraduate course called Clinical Reasoning – click here

Graeme – a recent recruit to the postgraduate team has a wiki underway for his course (PG403001 Quantitative Research in Practice), but I couldn’t find the link tonight – so will have to come back to update this post. Oh.. his course the mirror to Linda’s Wilson’s PG402001 Qualitative Research in Practice (read on below).

Bronwyn – well she’s not quite on our staff – but we do contract Bronwyn to provide one of our postgraduate courses (PG408001 Pain Management) and being both psychologist and occupational therapist means she often brings very interesting perspectives to the postings she makes. Bronwyn’s is a great indepth and impressive blog – I’m impressed with what she is offering our presentation and can only hope that more occupational therapists access what she has to offer.

And something a little different..

Linda Wilson has decide to use a wiki as a resource for PG402001 Qualitative Research in Practice. This is very much a work in progress and a trial, but I’m really hoping that it will be a resource that people return to. Linda has created an online space that steps this group of therapists through the research process – other visitors can read, but not comment – but you can choose to email Linda separately!

So all in all we are quite active online, in fact compared with some of the occupational therapy programmes internationally, we have a high presence on the web – go Otago Polytechnic, School of Occupational Therapy!!!!