OT and Online Professional & Social Networking
(From my blog)
There has been an ever-growing presence
for occupational therapy on the Internet. Social and professional
networking amongst occupational therapy practitioners has been the
subject of presentations at conferences, blog posts, articles, and more. Several months ago, OT Practice had a CEU article on social networking.
In the most recent issue of OT Practice, Karen Dobyns,
a student occupational therapist finishing up her fieldwork rotations,
wrote an excellent article titled ‘Enhancing Practice through Online
Social Networking.’ She writes about how posting stories, questions,
or insights about occupational therapy creates a permenant record that
can then be seen by others. Therefore, if someone else has a question
that you might have asked, it can be easily found with a search on the
Internet. Collaborating and sharing online also helps one grow
professionally and clinically. I’d like to say thank you to Karen for
including my blog in your list of blogs that you shared in OT Practice.
The AOTA has made a strong push into the online world by actively engaging others in most of the social networking medias, such as YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Flickr, and Plurk. Today, the AOTA has launced their own social networking media, called OT Connections.
Similar in layout to MySpace and Facebook, it allows occupational
therapists to add friends, post blogs and pictures, and truly
collaborate with fellow therapists. It also allows you to have access
to the listservs. What makes it truly great is that you do not have to
be an AOTA member to sign up and benefit from the website. They have
made it open to any occupational therapist (or other professional) that
would like to join. I strongly encourage you to join. On the first
day alone, they already have more than 80 members! Once again, here is the website.