Occupational Therapy – educational issues

This page provides a place for those interested in finding blogs created and maintained by occupational therapists – either students, or practicing OT’s. The creation of this page was prompted by a comment left by OTstoryteller in one of my postings. In her posting, this OT said….. “I would love to join your collaborative efforts on getting more OTs involved in technology! (especially here in the US, where we seem to be a bit behind your curve; or else, I’m just not looking in the right places!)” . It made me realise that finding blogs written by our profession can be tricky…. so I thought I might aim to keep a list of blogs here. I’ll try to organise them logically, and please – if your blog isn’t here then let me know and I’ll add it in!

Blogs by Occupational Therapy Academics

Aside from my own… which you’ve already found…. here are some more which are organised under country the author lives in…. I start with Aotearoa/New Zealand as we seem to have some very active bloggers!!

Aotearoa/New Zealand

Jackie works at the same school as I do and has been an active blogger since February 2007. She is currently enrolled in a elearning communities course – so her blog has taken a slightly different focus – but do check out her postings at Occupational Therapy Otago

Linda also works at the same school as Jackie as I and has started at least one other blog before settling on this one (its a learning experience). Check Linda’s out – she writes so well I think and you can find her at On the run

British Blogs

The first academics I found who were looking at how to use tools such as blogging in teaching were the academics at University of Salford. This is a joint blog with a few of the staff contributing to it – although Sarah and Angela are probably the most productive – so read on to see their reflections Salford Occupational Therapy Blog

US Blogs

Academics in America are starting to explore and create blogs. I’m sure this list will change as people develop more confidence and develop their skills.

A new blog by Lynn (actually she has two!)… Lynn raises interesting issues about what skills students need and why do we turn to others for the answers rather than to the literature – please check it out!

OT Storyteller’s weblog

Cathy describes her experiences of being exposed to a range of online tools

Cathy’s compilations

Blogs by Occupational Therapists

This group are perhaps less active, but lets hope that as occupational therapists see more written by students and academics they will feel encouraged to put fingers to keyboard!

Lets start with the locals first

Aotearoa/New Zealand:

This is the first blog entry I’ve found for a clinician in New Zealand who has started up independent of the project I did – well done Bronwyn! A registered occupational therapist and psychologist, Bronwyn has heaps to offer in Pain Management… please check out her blog at:

Health Skills Weblog

The following list are the blogs started by a group of therapists who were involved in a project I ran which focused on developing occupational therapist’s skills in using a number of Web 2.0 tools including blogs. Some are more active than others but who knows what will happen now the project has finished..

These two are probably the most productive so I feature them first, and then the rest of the group..

These are the less active blogs..

Not everyone in the group found blogs to be a helpful tool – so it’s not surprising that some are more active than others – I’ll start with the most active and then leave the least active there for the interest of others.

The title of the first one is catchy – and often people jumped from this blog to mine… thanks Jane! Her reflections on grappling with technology are interesting…

Occupational Therapy for You

Others which don’t have recent entries, but do have some interesting postings are:

Occupational Therapy Dunedin

Occupational Therapy Educational Practice

Reflections of an Occupational Therapist

Occupational Therapy Issues and Reflections

Occupational Therapy Educational Practice

Occupational Therapy Rehabilitation Reflections

An Occupational Therapy Blog Experiment

Egyptian Blog

Occupational Therapy in Egypt

This is a great blog for gaining insight into practices in non-Western countries – thanks Laura and your team for taking the time to share your experiences with the world!

British blogs

Will must be one of the first original bloggers.. he has a range of resources on his site – this posting is a great one… but do take the time to explore his site!

Meta-OT

US Blogs

Another detailed blog by Chris Alterio.. who raises very thought provoking issues that deserve more comments. Work in children and young people services – you definitely should check out this blog!

ABC Therapeutics Occupational Therapy Weblog

Another with great promise is that of Natan – a relatively new graduate – the posting I’ve selected to link here from his blog has already generated much debate – see what you think:

Occupational Therapy – A blog about OT

The authors of this blog – Lynda and Beth have been blogging for nearly three years – they seem to have gone quiet recently – but hope to see some more postings as they have a great range of activities – for working with children in schools

Thriving in School

Another one with few postings but also interesting to peruse..

School OT thoughts

unknown country of origin:

Sometimes its not clear where the blogowner is from… Theresa’s is an example

Mancuso Muse
Occupational Therapy Student Blogs

My alltime favourite has to be Karen’s – a busy blogger, Karen is a great role model for other students:

Occupational Therapy Students (B)e(LO)n(g)

A new addition to the student blogs and one that should be interesting to follow is one by one of our own occupational therapy students. Jess is a fourth year hons student and she is at the prompting of her supervisors), using a blog to organise her thoughts. She also has started posting about her experiences in the programme – so it may well be of interest to other occupational therapy students considering a hons year! (and hey you can come from other schools to our programme!)… anyway… the link is:

My Research Reflections 

Patti has only just started OT, but her blog records the year of getting into OT, and more recently her first experiences of OT School as she has just started OT school:

If you can’t fix it with duct tape…

Mamachill is another OT student at about the same point as Patti… will continue to watch this one with interest:

Mamchill

Another from a Masters student (Nivea) waiting to start OT School in the fall – or as we know it Autumn!

The rest is still unwritten

The UK students are active as well

Again new blogs, so I’m hoping these 2 keep up their blogs as their experiences of studying in the UK could be quite different than the US students experiences.

First up is Sarah’s who is studying at the OT school in Edinburgh

Life as a student OT

Singapore

I think I’ve come across this one before, but never stopped to link it in.. so here you go .. this is from Suhaila Usuludin, a final year occupational therapy student in Singapore.

Occupational therapy: Random reviews and reflections