After several hours spent searching for other blogs written by OT’s or about occupational therapy I had given up all hope of finding anything remotely related. I thought that my goal of finding something out there addressing school-based OT practice was truly a lost cause. I then, coincidentally, read an article in the January 2007 edition of OT Practice magazine entitled “Surfing or Searching the Internet” by Mary Binderman and Mindy Hecker. They report running a simple Google search using the words autism and association which yielded 6,660,000 hits! They validate the excitement, challenge, and potential exhaustion inherent in surfing and searching the web for specific information and offer strategies including the use of fee-based databases. That didn’t help with my personal blog search, but it did validate my frustration. They close by recommending that “sometimes you just have to ‘jump in’ with both feet and enjoy the ride”. The problem is, sometimes I just don’t have the time to go for a ride.
This brings me back to my mission. I eventually gave up on my directed search efforts and decided to spend some time simply enjoying reading blogs that my school colleagues have written as part of a blogging workshop we’re taking. BINGO! There it was, hidden in plain sight…exactly what I was looking for! I discovered a link to Thriving in School, a fabulous blog written by OT’s at the Hosmer School in Watertown, MA. What this has taught me is that by following sources of particular interest, the digital “word of mouth”, you will likely discover what you were hoping to find all along. Thanks, coffeetalk!
3 responses so far ↓
1 Beth Knittle // Jan 28, 2007 at 7:50 am
I feel your frustration. Sometimes I suffer from overload - so much to go through it is like looking for a needle in a hay stack. Or so little I feel I am looking for a palm tree in the desert. But most of the best blogs I found were from links in other blogs. So every now and then I find a gem and over time I have quite a collection but it took time to build.
2 Karen Janowski // Jan 29, 2007 at 12:12 pm
I’m so glad you mentioned the “Thriving in School” blog written by a friend. I mentioned it at http://www.otexchange.com in the message boards because this is just such good practice and I’d love to see other OTs using blogs effectively.
Congratulations to you as you embark on this new Web 2.0 adventure. I can promise you, you will never practice OT the same!
3 Karen // Aug 3, 2007 at 11:41 pm
I used to feel your frustration. The blog world is growing, however. I have links to a ton of blogs on my sidebar on my otstudents blog. I’m going to add your blog to my sidebar this weekend.
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