Several ways to stay connected to the online OT community

I'm starting to see more chatter across the web by OT's that are having trouble finding occupational therapy related blogs. I know, some of you out there are probably shocked thinking "are you kidding! I get daily feeds from 10 OT related websites and those are just the ones related to my specialty!"

Truth is, there are new OT blogs coming online almost every day. When you think about it, it's not really all that surprising. After all, we're all expected to know how to write effectively and encouraged to communicate with peers in OT as well as our PT and SLP colleagues. Isn't natural to want to chat with peers about work? Social networks like Facebook and the more professional LinkedIn have made it easier to keep in touch. Furthermore, they have become such a popular part of our social fabric that they are practically pandemic. Virtually every subculture in the modern world has an online presence, or as I like to refer to it, an avatar.

These avatars now take the place of business cards, advertisements in professional publications and more recently, have replaced dedicated websites.

So how do we connect? There are too many ways actually. That's why as a community we need to have prolific discussions about ways to contrive a virtual town hall. Currently, these are some of the tools available to us:

* OT Connections: the official AOTA online forum to meet and discuss issues. May be irrelevant to those who practice elsewhere in the world. And don't we want a "UN" of meeting places for our profession?

* OT4OT Facebook Group: a Facebook group page created by Anita Hamilton of the University of Alberta targeted to heavy FB users. There are several FB groups out there for OT's but this seems pretty busy right now.

* Twitter: a microblogging service that has become ubiquitous and forces brevity, just what our already short-attention-span generation needs. We are only just getting to the tip of the iceberg on this invaluable tool. I am willing to bet my credentials there is at least one Ph.D. candidate out there currently writing a thesis on the affect of this service on practice. There are a multitude of ways to utilize Twitter to track current trends in conversations happening online using hashtags. Socialbro is just one such tool to analyze what's out there. Go here for a primer on the use of Twitter by an OT.

* Google Blogs: a nifty specialized search engine that will search all online blogs using keywords just like your "favorite" search engine. Find which blogs address your interests. If they don't exist, then create one. The great thing about the Internet is that it allows any idiot or genius equal access to be heard. I won't go into detail how this is both good and bad as you should be able to discern this for yourselves. :) Finally, have a way to check those blogs frequently or have them notify you when they are updated. See more about this in the Device section below.

* OTION: as per their website "A grass roots initiative to promote outreach to areas of need by forming partnerships using the internet." Started by Australian occupational therapists and hosted on the WFOT website. Features a valuable resource section.

* A Device: this can be anything; a desktop computer, a smartphone, iPad or other tablet, laptop, practically anything that has access the Internet. You will also need a feed reader which you will utilize as a news aggregator. Basically, you tell this application which blogs are of interest to you and it will organize posts in various styles. My favorite app is Zite for the iPad. Zite is intuitive in that it learns what your interests are as you select certain posts to read and interact with the app to let it know whether or not you liked the article and what your favorite keywords are. Here are a few other feed readers: Google Reader, Bloglines and Feedlooks to name a few. The most important thing to note is that the interface facilitates your use of it frequently and conveniently. Furthermore, the application should allow for reposting or sharing of articles and posts on your social network of choice or just email it.

Obviously this list is extremely limited. I could go on and on but would rather have you contribute your favorite methods via comments below. These comments which follow many posts on blogs and news sites have become the new "water cooler" of the 21st century. They by no means are set to replace conventional professional publications (AJOT, OT Practice, Advance for OT, etc.) but create a new forum for discussion that will leave you behind if you choose not to participate.


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Location:Ocala,United States