OT and Online Professional & Social Networking

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.