Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Tut Six
Tutorial Six: The internet and online communities
Either search online for a community which interest you or choose one of the provided online communities to investigate. Make sure your selected a community that comprises some form of online forum, discussion page or chat room. You may also wish to see if your community has a Wikipedia entry.
| Provide the web address and the name of the community you are investigating www.facebook.com |
| What is the brief or focus of this community Facebook is a social networking website launched on February 4, 2004. The free-access website is privately owned and operated by Facebook, Inc. Users can join networks organized by city, workplace, school, and region to connect and interact with other people. People can also add friends and send them messages, and update their personal profile to notify friends about themselves. Facebook users can choose to join one or more networks, organized by city, workplace, school, and region.[27] These networks help users connect with members of the same network. Users can also connect with friends, giving them access to their friends' profiles.[28] The website is free to users, but generates revenue from advertising, including banner ads.[29] Users create profiles that often contain photos and lists of personal interests, exchange private or public messages, and join groups of friends.[30] The viewing of detailed profile data is restricted to users from the same network or confirmed friends. Taken 5th June from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook |
| What services are provided? How interactive is this site? How can people contribute? Facebook is a very socially interactive site. People have the chance to post photos, videos, events, become part of groups and chat with each others that are on the same network. There are no other providers which are based with facebook as I am aware of. |
| 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 contribute to facebook as it’s another way in which to communicate with other people through the internet. Some people find facebook is for the more mature audience who enjoy using the internet as a way to communicate over things like Bebo. People are usually wanting to have another way in which they can connect with others and/or keep in touch with the ones who are not so easily accessiable in a normal day. |
| Cut and paste an example of the type of topics being discussed (you may have to provide a context to your excerpt).
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| 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. Everything that is posted onto facebook is at the user’s risk. Anything can be copied and seen by other users therefore being aware of your own privacy and not making anything visible which is seen as person and confidential to you as the user. |
| 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 Provides people with a way that they can keep in contact with friends/ family/colleagues from all around the globe. In some ways it can be easier, quicker and cheaper to keep in touch with someone. |
| Consider material presented during the lecture and make comment what this community lacks or can not provide which traditional communities can. A community like this is very open to the world and lets anyone see what you are up to- unlike a letter being posted in the mail. I personally feel this is the lazier option to take when keeping in touch with a person as its not as personal and appropriate as a telephone call. |
Thursday, June 5, 2008
Tut Eight
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. Although, Cook & Hussey (2001)[1] report this term is usually not used for rehabilitative devices and for devices that able-bodied find useful. According to disability advocates, technology is often created without regard to people with disabilities, creating unnecessary barriers to hundreds of millions of people.
Taken 5th June from: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.
Describe one piece of equipment introduced in the assistive technology tutorial. Provide information on size, cost and functions.
Gooshy step talking sequencer - $117.95 US
Size: 10¼” x 7¼” x 3”
Operates on 4 AA batteries
Description of device
Red Flashing lights when gel pad is touched
Gel pad which is sensitive to touch. Vibrates and sings when touched. (Varies in colours)
Hard yellow plastic shell to protect gel pad from sharp objects
Colourful balls and stars inside to gel pad to give more effect
Perfect for non speaking adults and children
Ideal for:
Sequencing
Testing
Directions
Multiplications
Memorization
Medical instructions
Storytelling and Sing-along’s
How does your chosen piece of equipment increased functional capacity for the user? Provide examples here from the tutorial and lecture.
Easy way to capture the user’s attention is working with a switching device for the first time. Its features are easy to use and provide the user with colour, texture, lighting, sound and vibrations to help with different sensory, motor and co-ordination skills. Client can then move onto a more specific switcher that’s at their level to improve there education and show better improvement at their level.
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Tut Four and Five
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.
You tube technology displays a wide variety of user-generated video content, including movie clips, TV clips and music videos, as well as amateur content such as video blogging and short original videos.
Unregistered users can watch most videos on the site, while registered users are permitted to upload an unlimited number of videos. Some videos are available only to users of age 18 or older (e.g. videos containing potentially offensive content).
Related videos, determined by title and tags, appear onscreen to the right of a given video. In YouTube's second year, functions were added to enhance user ability to post video 'responses' and subscribe to content feeds.
Retrieved May 14, 2008 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Tube
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.)
A story board is used before you began filming as a way to visually plan how your short film will be produced. A storyboard is laid out so that you can write down what is going to be in the shot but also how it’s going too look with a box that allows you to draw your shot as a starting point. Our group focused on Student life. Our shots involved areas around the polytechnic which gave a strong sense of being a student. This ranged from The local well known dairy and coffee shop to the closest flat where we focused on the mess and the electronic devices around the house. We stuck to our storyboard, but also deleted a few shots which we thought weren’t as relevant. Editing was also done to some of the videos as we had included people’s faces and bits that took along time to get to the point.
Tut Three
Task One: Follow instructions to set up a account with Blogger
This will involve setting up a Google account (make note of your user name and password)
Task Two: Follow instructions to complete the following Blog construction tasks
Choose a Blog Template (this can be changed later if you wish)
Provide a Blog title (this will need to incorporate your name and the course title Participation in Occupation 1)
Provide a Blog outline. This is a short statement outlining the purpose of the Blog (this information should come from the course outline and assessment guidelines for Participation in Occupation 1).
Complete your Blog profile (you need to include your age, gender, industry, occupation and location)
Up load a photo to your Blog profile
Task Three: Follow instructions to start posting content. Your first two post should be taken from the technical descriptions for tutorials one and two.
Task Four: Provide a brief summary of the services offered by Blogger (this will be your third posting. Information can be drawn from the attached hand out). In addition to this name one other Blog host.
Blog provides an individual a safe, world-wide website where it’s run by them through the website host blog. A blog gives a person the chance to write posts, put on pictures and communicate with the world through their own blog. The blog is open to everyone who also has a blog so what one posts or makes visible on the blog is their own personal choice responsibility.
On a blog you can:
Steal things from other peoples blogs
Change fonts and colours
Write posts and add pictures
Use videos from you tube and show photos through flickr
Task Five: Upload 5 photos from tutorial 5 onto your flickr account.
Any remaining time can be spent
· Exploring Blogs hosted by Blogger and other services (e.g.myspace)
· Setting up a personal Blog
· Organising your flickr account into groups
Tut two
“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?
Positives
The shot you have taken can been seen after its been captured
Can hold a lot more photos
Different settings, i.e. automatic, black and white, sepia, sport etc
Deletes photos automatically
Increase the size of a photo through the cameras settings.
Easier, cheaper option
Negatives
Different shutter speeds
Optical zoom a lot better than digital zoom
More quality, i.e. Lighting, zoom
List some of the ways that digital images can be stored transferred and manipulated using other communications technology.
Digital images can be
Attached to files and then emailed to someone else
Photo shopped through different programmes
Stored onto external/internal hard drives i.e. cds, memory sticks, other computers and laptops
Imported onto websites, chat rooms, blogs etc
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.
Taking photos of others – this may result in having permission from other people who are involved in the photos before displaying on the web.
This can also be the case when e-mailing to and from.
Briefly discuss some of the ways that digital images could, or are, being used in occupational therapy practice.
Taking photos of houses for enabling funding, equipment installation, giving the OT and other services a visually description of what they environment looks like.
An OT could also take photos of persons movements when completing an activity so then they have more of an idea towards the bodies angles of elevation and posture.
Provide a brief summary of the services offered by Flickr.com
Flickr is an image and video hosting website, web services suite, and online community platform. It was one of the earliest Web 2.0 applications. In addition to being a popular Web site for users to share personal photographs, the service is widely used by bloggers as a photo repository. Its popularity has been fueled by its organization tools, which allow photos to be tagged and browsed by folksonomic means. As of November 2007, it hosts more than two billion images.
Retrieved May 12, 2007 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flickr
Name one other photo storage website which offers a service similar to Flickr.com
Ringo
Explain what the difference is between a digital and an optical zoom
Digital zoom is a method of decreasing (narrowing) the apparent angle of view of a digital photographic or video image. Digital zoom is accomplished by cropping an image down to a centred area with the same aspect ratio as the original, and usually also interpolating the result back up to the pixel dimensions of the original. It is accomplished electronically, without any adjustment of the camera's optics, and no optical resolution is gained in the process.
Retrieved May 12, 2007 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_zoom
A zoom lens is a mechanical assembly of lens elements with the ability to vary its focal length (and thus angle of view), as opposed to a fixed focal length (FFL) lens. They are commonly used with still, video, motion picture cameras, projectors, some binoculars, microscopes, telescopes, and other optical instruments.
Retrieved May 12, 2007 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_zoom
Explain what is meant by the term mega pixel
Number of individual pixels that go into making each image.
One mega pixel equals to one billion pixels
Pixels contain the light in a photo
