Other News and UPDATES…

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 Videos are available now for your FREE viewing on YouTube.  These are not for purchase but available to all to educate and improve the Activity Professional Field... use them... tell others about them... tell us what other subjects you would like to know about... and we will produce it...  The field is changing with a stronger emphasis on Person-Centered Care, Cultural Changes, and the implementation of Dementia Focused Surveys and new regulations that are looking for activities as diversional treatments to mood and behavior issues... 

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Other News and UPDATES…

Using High Tech in your Activities: 

Here is a listing of ideas used by activity directors: 

Activity Directors are employing Echo plus a firestick to call families. It also can track the movement of the resident as they walk in their rooms and show families different items/things they have done in their room, share or play music during visits and answer questions.  Echo can also remind the resident of when activities are happening... in other words it can be used as a cognitive enhancer.​

Helping Residents to use and understand their SMARTPHONES and set them up also for easy touch use to call family or to be used as cognitive enhancer reminding residents of events and activities that they are interested in. In addition, connecting the Smart Phone to a Smart TV allows interactive TV experiences and an app to watch TV with family members.  Watching a cartoon with your grandchildren or Facetiming to have those precious family moments.

Most families are using Zoom visits and many facilities and hospitals have purchased extra laptops for visitation purposes.

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Interact systems to use in your Facilities is the In2l system for Activity Directors. This system allows for calendar development that can be printed out and also posted on the facility's interactive TV system.  It can have residents interact with the system and play Bingo and other activities with you from their rooms.  This is especially valuable during our covid19 restriction periods. Activity Directors using this system find the appointment scheduling for residents and the budget planning features to be very helpful and efficient.  Giving it high ratings, reducing their workloads, and helping to keep everything organized and running smoothly. 

Another system that has received good reviews is the Town Crier previously known as the Touch Town.  This is an interactive facility internal announcement  TV system that allows for live readings,  movie presentations on a closed channel, recording and music presentations, and announcements and has an app for remote family assessment capability.  It also has a  feature for Activity Calendar programming with the ability to print and present the calendars on the screen, and has budget, and appointment scheduling features. 

Hope these suggestions are helpful. The only concern I have is for the Echo system which can track movements and follow the resident in the room, this would need some supervision as we need to respect residents' rights and privacy.  This would be something to discuss with the administration.  Although, families have reported that it is extremely helpful when the resident forgets to stay within screen view when visiting.  

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