tutorial 6
· What do you think is the intended purpose of the site? Information can be linked here from the specific sites.
· How interactive is this site?
· How can people contribute?
· What do they contribute?
· Make comment on why people choose to contribute to each community.
· What is it they are seeking?
· Is information shared one way or reciprocal?
· How do you think chosen sites address or relate to occupation concepts introduced in tutorial one e.g. occupational justice, occupational disruption, occupational transition, or occupational deprivation. Choose at least 2 concepts to discuss.
Considering material presented during the course and comment on the potential ethical issues that may arise in this community e.g. lack of identity and accountability.
Consider material presented in the online package and comment on the benefits and limitations these communities provide relate to traditional geographical communities.
This is the Adaptive Snow Sports site it communicates with an international community and helps to enable participation in occupation, these people work with Occupational Therapists who's clients are involved in alpine sports to enable them to participate in this occupation.
http://www.adaptivesnowsports.co.nz/
http://www.disabledsnowsports.org.nz/DSNZ/DSNZ.htm
Disabled Snow Sports New Zealand / Adaptive Snow Sports state that Mountain Adaptive Programs
Through Disabled Snowsports NZ, adaptive programs have been developed on the mountain, providing support for people with physical, sensory and cognitive impairments. This allows occupational participation, and involvement in a life situation. This in turn leads to the persons occupational satisfaction with their engagement in the alpine environment occupations which also allows them to feel that they are accepted.
One of the intended purposes of these sites is to inform the people who participate in and contribute to adaptive snow sports with the knowledge of the latest achievements in the sport. " Winter Park, CO (6 March 2012) – New Zealand’s paralympic gold medalist Adam Hall has risen to the top of the field in a new discipline, winning his first ever Super G at the World Cup level today in Winter Park, Colorado. Hall is now in the running for the overall Super G title. A schedule of events for the Winter Park World Cup may be viewed here" (Paralympic Gold Medallist Adam Hall Wins His First-Ever World Cup Super G March 2012)
Other purposes of this site are to inform people in the international community of Adaptive Snow Sports about achievements, social gatherings and up coming activities and competitions. It also informs caregivers and therapists about the facilities the program can provide for clients and the facilities available for their participation in the sport. This site links to the http://
Snow Sports New Zealand site and to
http://snowsports-coaching.co.nz site and Snow Sports NZ Adaptive.
People contribute to this site by viewing the newsletters that are frequently sent from the Snow Sports site.
They can send correspondence to the web address should they require further information regarding future paticipation during the winter months in snow sports. There are options to register with the programme as a group or an individual and also options for international groups to register as participants through the online community. "Adaptive Snow Sports is about adapting equipment and lessons and providing accessible support systems to allow people with a wide range of disabilities to take to the snow and experience the freedom of snow sports" (Adaptive Snow Sports NZ, 2012). This online site has a list of events and an option to shop online as well as donate to the program.
There is also within this site information for participants about coaching options. "We’re committed to the educating and skill-development for all coaches in five different competitive snow sport disciplines: ski racing, free-skiing, snowboarding, Nordic skiing, and adaptive snow sports" (Adaptive Snow Sports NZ, 2012).
This website is launching a new website in about a month but is similar to what
is already here. It does have a face book group for invited members - who communicate with
each other daily – there is also a face book page for the manager which is a work related one. The main purpose of the website is for information. The new site will have a
link to face book published on it.
Most people contribute by viewing and some of the participants contribute by having themselves as a subject of the News Letters in particular the international competitors. This site is a good way to keep in touch with what is going on in the other hemispheres during the off season. It is a way of finding out what is happening in other alpine communities. If the participant is unable to be in the alpine envronment they can connect and still be involved through the site and gain information about the sport. The information can be one way because it is a news letter it doesn't allow the person to immediately respond but the site does allow people to email back and or join to it.
This site allows occupational engagement by connecting to it and encourages and contributes information for further engagement outside of the site such as occupational performance, adaptive snow sports. This occupational performance contributes to occupational satisfaction being content with ones engagement in an activity or an environment. It shows how an environment can be adjusted to facilitate and encourage engagement in occupations that a normal individual might perform. Something to look at for the future to be more
balanced would be to publish more about the grass-routes skiers rather than just the high performance area.
Ethical issues that arise in this community might include the confidentiality of the clients of the adaptive program. The use of photos of the impaired athletes, permission needs to be obtained.
All photos used have permission. At the Festival they have they have signed consent as
part of registration. Others are given to snow sports for use.
Some of the limitations that this community has are that it doesn't have a blog site so that each member can correspond with another although it does have a face book page. It is only about ski-ing and snowboarding and other snow sports are not represented. It sends a majority of messages about its achievers, but there are fewer about the recreational participants.
The benefits are that it keeps people in touch with each other and it creates a sense of community and commeradery. It promotes participation in occupation and sees impairment as acceptable. This site updates its participants with information about the events and activities for the coming winter and it inspires participation in an enhancing and empowering alpine sport.
