Tutorial Five

Motor Planning

Motor planning is a skill which I had the privilege to learn about on my fieldwork one placement, working in a CDS paediatric team.

Motor planning or praxis is the ability of the brain to conceive, organize, and carry out a sequence of unfamiliar actions.

Therefore Motor Planning is a skill we all have that allows us to complete new tasks that we have not done before by watching the task be completed then copying it. In children motor planning can be effected by sensory integration disorders which can cause the child to have difficulty in all new tasks that they attempt in life. Due to this the child may appear to not be developing correctly as they are unable to learn new activities at the spend of a child that does not have sensory integration problems.

For a child who has minimal motor skills a new task, one which may seem so easy for us now that we have completed it numerous times, could be the most difficult task for them to master. You may be thinking that giving clear instructions to explain a task as you go would help overcome this problem. However then the child would no longer be using motor planning, they would have switched into using cognition which is a different skill to motor planning.

Motor planning can have an effect on every motor skill task that we do. Form walking, running, co-ordination of balls/ balloons and much much more.

Following this write there are five youtube clips. Each clip presents a range of motor skills that can be learnt or be effected by motor planning and motor skill development.


Clip One:
This clip explain how sensory information can effect a child's ability do develop motor skills. This is only one case, every case presents differently.





Clip two:
This short clip is of a child with difficulty with co-ordination which is effected by motor planing development. This shows how difficult a simple task of catching a ball can be.




Clip three:
This clip shows a child moving through an obstetrical course. This task requires motor planning to co-ordinate through the course and is a task that is very difficult to do if a child has motor planning problems



Clip four:
This clip is of an OT who works in paediatrics and discusses how he assess sensory development and its effects on children's development

Clip five:
this clip is of a group of children using motor planning skills to co-ordinate balloons and their play in the gym

Tutorial Four

Occupational Deprivation

The aim of this tutorial was to create a 1 minute film, as a small group, that focused on one of the following concepts:

1.Occupational justice

2. Occupational disruption

3. Occupational transition

4. Occupational deprivation

My group choose the concept Occupational deprivation. Occupational deprivation can be defined as "a state of prolonged preclusion from engagement in occupations of necessity or meaning, due to factors outside of an individuals control." C.H, Christiansen & E.A, Townsend.

To get the concept of occupational deprivation across to our viewers we chose to focus on the environments in our society and how the simplest things are depriving wheelchair bond individuals from taking part in a range of occupations. things as simple as putting ramps in where there are steps and creating doors that are easy to manoeuvre wheelchairs through independently can remove this occupational deprivation.

Tutorial Three

Creating a blog and blogger account:
This blog has been created as required for my OT course.

Tutorial Two:

Pio ppt 1

View more PowerPoint from ekhands

Tutorial Two

Progression of hand writing-

As an OT student I attend a range of fieldwork placements around the country. One of my placements was a paediatric placement which I help run a weekly hand writing session in a primary school. The children were very reluctant to take part as to them hand writing seemed pointless because the introduction of computers meant everything was typed. This made me reflect on how handwriting was certainly becoming a dying occupation. However it is not only an occupation taught in schools to help improve fine motor control it also requires us to look at the core strength and stability necessary to sit in a chair. This is an aspect of hand writing, computer skills and many everyday activities. Due to this I have created a slide show on the progression of handwriting to typing including the aspects of core stability.

The following defines the concepts do, being, become, belong.

Do or doing: doing can be described as “the emphasis of knowing and doing as a focal concern.” (G.D, Rowles). It is a “concept that includes purposeful, goal-orientated activities.”(Hammell, 1998). In terms of the slideshow handwriting is shown as a purposeful and goal-oriented occupation, this therefore shows doing. This can be seen in almost all slides. For example in slides two and eight.

Being: being is defined as “time taken to reflect, be introspective or meditative and re-discover self.” (Hammell,1998). In turn this links to self actualisation and finding a meaningful appreciation. The slides reflect being through the use of achievement. Such as is slide nine when the students are being all they can be through their skills of handwriting.

Becoming:  Becoming describes the “ideas that people envision of future selves” and “explore new opportunities. (Hammel,1998a ;2003a. In terms of the slide show it is through becoming that we are able to explore the new technology of typing over the skill of handwriting. It is a skill that has become an aspect of everyday and has certainly progressed from the basic means of typing shown in slide twelve (a typewriter).

Belonging: The term belonging refers to “the contribution of social interaction”... “And the sense of being included, to occupational performance and life satisfaction.” (Duggan & Dijkers, 1999). We can link the skill of handwriting to having a sense of belong as it is through handwriting that skill of letter writing came about. We were able to feel as if we were a part of something, whether it be a family or a business as we received or past on letters. In today’s society we type letters in email format and pass them on with the click of a button over the internet. Letter writing and emails are both shown in slides seven and seventeen.

Ethical considerations you made:

1. For my slideshow, as I was using images, to attend to any ethical concerns i have provided a link under each picture that I took from the internet. These links show where the original image was obtained.

2. In regards to the images that i have taken myself, of other people (e.g. slide 5), I obtained both verbal and written consent. By doing so I have evidence of the given consent if i am required to present it at any given time.

3. Lastly I have provided a reference list for all viewers to refer to that states what slide an image is on and where that image was attained.

Tutorial One:

Tutorial One

For week one of our PIO studies we began looking at both information technology and communication technology. This required us to look into the society’s interactions with technology and how technology was being accepted in society.

What is Information and communication technology?

Information technology is “the development, implementation and maintenance of computer hardware and software systems to organize and communicate information electronically.” In turn ‘Information communication technology encompasses areas such as telephony, broadcast, media and all types of audio and video processing and transmission.” http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/information+and+communication+technology

In other words information and communication technology can be defined in many ways due to it being a very broad topic. It can include all forms of computer and internet technologies and also incorporate the use of cell phones, radios, iPods,  television and all the social networking site that many of us use on a daily basis.

The reading “mainstream Technology as an occupational therapy tool: Technophobe of technogeek?” written by M.C, Vendonck and S, Ryan focuses on the introduction of mainstream technology can be useful to improve both functional independence and occupational performance in everyday interventions.

Information and communication technology are both growing aspects in today’s society. We spend more than half our lives engaged in occupations related to the internet, including study, research, shopping, socialising (e.g  facebook, blogs, skype, etc.) and business.  All these occupations involve the basic state of communication where there is a sender and a receiver. This loop of sending and receiving creates a sense of purpose and has been greatly enhanced through the use of information and communication technologies.

Technology is an aspect of society that is constantly changing. We learn to use one form of technology then the next new latest and greatest technology is released. Currently I feel  comfortable using a range of technologies for example my laptop. My laptop is an Acer laptop. I have had it for a year and know most of the ins and outs of how to use it. These are skills I have learnt through using it ever day to increase my knowledge on the occupational therapy course. However if I have to use an apple computer such as my sisters laptop, I have not got a clue on where to start. Personally I believe that whether you are a technophobe or a technogeek, everybody has limitations with technology use; it’s just a matter of practise and sticking with what works for you because no matter how hard you try to keep up with the new technology being released there will always be the next big thing coming out.

Within occupational therapy it is important to have an understanding of the technology out there as we live in a techno world so there is going to be forms of technology out there that will suit a range of different clients. For example on one of my field work placement I worked with a child with dyspraxia. To try helping the child with speech therapy we used a talking story book. This let me record a story for individual pictures a in a story board so that as the child worked through a story they pressed the picture which would play a sentence that they could repeat back to help gain an understanding of how to pronounce words correctly. Another example is in a case where a young boy had extreme high tone in his left arm. He refused to allow anyone to touch his arm making it very difficult to exercise the arm. By introducing him to Nintendo Wii we were able to increase the movement/ function in his arm while making him think he was only playing games. In turn this decreased the high tone so that his hand has now uncoiled and he has increased from having 15% function to having 85% function.

In the case of the boy with high tone we had a small technical issue the sensor not registering to the Wii remote due to the way the boy had to hold the remote.  To redeem this we had to adjust where the sensors were.

In the future I believe that technology is going to become a massive impact on the tools of practice. We are already seeing this being adopted through the use of online communications. By having online communications the lines of communication between those in multi disciplinary teams and other physicians involved with an individual client can communicate a lot faster allowing the treatment plan to go ahead in minimal amounts of time.

Another reason that technology will impact is because society is becoming much more technologically structured, meaning that the amount of technology available and relied upon is only going to increase.

Having a understanding of technology is becoming important in the position as occupational therapist. This is due to the increase in the availability to technology in society. There is no longer a choice in whether you use it or not. If you want a job you need to have a basic understanding of the technology in the work place. Due to this fact occupational therapists need to have the ability to work alongside clients that are required to use technology and help them to adapt the required technology to suit their personal function, both physical and mental to help them achieve goals of participating in meaningful occupations (including employment.)

Yes technology is a growing aspect of society; however there are growing concerns for the ethical issues arising around using it in health fields. Without the correct protection on mobile phones and computer files there is a risk of client’s personal information being released into the wrong hands. This is why it is very important to gain consent when taking images and also having the correct knowledge about the technology you are using to transfer, save and report any information about a client’s case.

Introduction to my blog

This is an introduction to my first ever blog. I have created this blog as a portion of my PIO paper for my occupational therapy course