on the OTher hand

As time passes I am finding out that OT must not be the hot new blogging topic.  There are several blogs started by students and OT practitioners that seem to run for a year or so, if that.  Many appear to be blogs that are started by students as an assignment, yet they only run for what seems to be the length of a semester or about a one year term.  In other words there are few updated blogs, if any in the past month.  One of the most consistent bloggers is ABC Therapeutics Occupational Therapy Weblog.  The last post is one of my favorite interest—Autism.  Tantrum or not a tantrum, describes the reaction an autistic child with developmental delays, and the struggles she gives her parents who are trying to get her to wear a new pair of shoes.  This is a typical disturbance of an autistic child; anything new seems to cause discomfort and irritableness.  The question is whether the tantrum the child throws is because he or she knows that the parent does not want to put up a fight, or whether the discomfort of a new shoe is truly uncomfortably disturbing.  Fascinated by this topic I find that many times it is the parent who gives into behaviors, and the child who discovers how to push the right buttons in order to get what is wanted out of the situation.  Parent many times believe that because the child is disabled they would not know how to manipulate behaviors, but autistic children especially, with or without other developmental delays know very well who they can manipulate and who will not budge regardless of behaviors.  It is up to the parent to discover how to modify and diminish behaviors before they become out of hand.     

It is not common for occupational therapy blogs to post on a daily basis, but some post more often than others, I found an interesting comment on Pageflakes this morning, on Occupational Therapy-Educational Issues, http://oteducation.wordpress.com/2008/03/11/a-very-quick-posting-on-visitors-to-my-occupational-therapy-blog/ I found it interesting that she commented on how her last check of blog stats she had over 6,000 visitors to her post.  This is really exciting for me.  I want to find out where to check my visitors, maybe a year from now I will be the one with 6,000 visitors, we’ll just have to wait and see!!  As a career in OT, blogging will open many door to ultimately reach my final goal—opening my privately owned clinic.  As technology advances I can see parents and potential customers visiting my blog before considering me as their therapist.  People may vary well comment on my post several times before even considering me to see how I respond to their comments.  From their response to my posts and comments they may decide whether they are interested in hiring me or not.  This would be similar to an indicator of matching personalities; if the person likes the way I blog they may check out my clinic, if not they may choose to go elsewhere.  Possibly being the only blogger in California, or one of very few, some local clients may choose me as their therapist simply because I hold an active blog.  As a student, I feel that this blog is the first building step to my future as the occupational therapist I will become.

Slowly Zotero is becoming my new resource guide for research.  Being able to tag and refer back to all my sources is extremely helpful when completing a research paper.  A great article I tagged from the New York Times, written by Mike Stobbe, talks about the huge rise in children with autism in the United States.  I found this article very interesting because there are quotes from parents and their thoughts on the rise in diagnosed children with autism.  The rise in numbers is substantial, ten years ago the statistics were 1 in 10,000, and today the numbers are beyond 1 in 150 children.  According to this article the heave of diagnosed cases is largely due to categorization and how the disorder is currently being diagnosed.  What is most striking is the response of parents: one parent states, “I do have to admit I almost like the idea of having the autistic label, at least over the other labels, because there’s more help out there for you”.  With the word services this mother is referring to occupational therapy, behavioral therapy, speech therapy, etc.  How heartbreaking it is to think that a parent would want a label on their child just for the benefit of services.  I cannot believe that this is what the world of special needs is coming to.  I hope that by the time I am an actual OT, the services will be more accessible for all sorts of disabilities, giving me the opportunity to help many patients and steer away from parent wanting their child labeled to acquire my services.

Pageflakes! What else but a new application? Pageflakes is a great online source that carries all the important updated news of a particular desired topic. This is how it works: first you register as a new user and start investigating the programs many options. In my case, I am looking for the latest news on occupational therapy.  So, I find blogs, news, and information pertaining to my topic of interest and attach it to my new Pageflakes, or as I like to call it, my new personalized newspaper. When the new information from that source appears, it remains bolded your Pageflakes and is displayed as unread until the page is opened by the user, similar to an e-mail page. This way one can sift through the information and decide what is important to actively read or what should be used a quick read.

My personal Pageflakes has many interesting aspects; first it is divided into three sections. The most important section is my RSS feeds, and as mentioned before, these are blogs or interesting news sites that provide me with updated information as quickly as it is publicized on their site. For example, if I have a person profiled on my Pageflakes, and if they have not submitted a blog for some time, an automatic pop-up will notify me that a current blog entry has been posted. I like this feature, because I do not have to open up and look at each blog every day, I simply look for the recent postings and check those out—it saves time!

Besides the latest information on Occupational Therapy, I enjoy opening my page to keep informed on current world news. For example, my favorite is the weekly weather. This may appear useless for some people, but for me, preparing my clothes the night before is helpful during my rushed mornings, considering I live two hours from school. It also makes me feel like a better mom to send my son to school in the right clothes, and not have him uncomfortable or unprepared for daily weather changes.

Additionally, another central part of my Pageflakes is my link to Driving Directions; I use this at least several times a week in order to find my way around Los Angeles. There is nothing better than a personalized map to know where I am going and how long it’s going to take to get there.  Furthermore, a useful active search is Wikipedia. I know that everyone who uses a computer has used “Wiki” at some time or another. It is an excellent resource; dictionary, thesaurus, and an encyclopedia all in one.

Zotero is my next goal, unfortunately I have not yet figured out how to use this new application. I know that once I understand how to use it, it will be very helpful. This is not only going to maintain my current articles and books I will be using in research papers, but it also has the same benefits of diigo where I can sticky mark it and annotate the contents for future reference. Best of all, is that I will be able to keep the bibliography, of all my sources used, in one little section without any citing errors, which are easy to make in bibliographies. This will be great for all my research papers throughout school years; I have many yet to come.

Pageflakes also provides the option to separate your personal page into sever different pages with subtopics.  For instance, I put all personal information of world news, weather, driving directions etc. on one page and the all OT RSS feeds on another page, classroom group pages on separate pages.  This allow for a great sense of organization.

Of course I can’t forget my new friend diigo. This is where I do all my social bookmarking, highlighting, and stick post it notes. What better than to have this site also posted to my new pageflakes newspaper? Now, it finally seems as if all my applications can be easily accessed through my new friend pageflakes!

With all of this, my new pageflake is an awesome new application which is beneficial for my blog and my personal life in many different ways. Not only am I able to benefit from this now with the blog I am writing, but I will also use it in the future for other classes and maybe someday I will have time for simple pleasure reading, ha, ha not in the near future, for now it will be strictly used for school! If anyone has other suggestions for pageflakes and would like to share, please comment!