PresenceLearning Launches New eBook to Answer Educators’ Questions About Online Occupational Therapy (OT)
San Francisco, CA (PRWEB) January 06, 2014 -- Online occupational therapy (OT) provides a new delivery option for school districts to cope with growing demand and scarce personnel for OT. To help district administrators and special educators better understand how online delivery can be used to help their students with special needs, PresenceLearning, the leader in online speech therapy and other special education-related services for K-12 students, created a new eBook, “Get a Grip on Online OT.” The eBook answers common questions about online OT such as, “How do you do OT online?” and “What are the benefits to my students and school?”
Educators can download the eBook for free at: http://plearn.co/ot-ebook.
Providing students with OT services requires the availability of a highly trained, licensed OT and often requires students to miss class to be transported to the closest OT facility. PresenceLearning’s award-winning online OT service allows students to connect with remotely located occupational therapists while remaining at their school site or wherever they are receive instruction. This helps to address the chronic therapist shortage in many school districts, eliminates travel time and reduces missed class time for students, contributing to higher student achievement. Online OT also improves schools’ compliance with the requirements of the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act (IDEA) to educate students with special needs in the least restrictive environment (LRE) possible by keeping students in their instructional setting close to their peers and classrooms.
The eBook explains how an online OT session works, describes which students are ideal candidates for online OT and lists the materials schools need to implement this form of therapy. “Get a Grip on Online OT” also highlights three key facts about online OT:
● Online OT is effective for meeting goals for most OT-related issues included in an IEP
● Online OT enables schools to get anytime/anywhere access to fully licensed occupational therapists within the LRE and benefits districts in numerous other ways
● Online OT leverages an on-site paraprofessional to help students generalize the skills that are being taught during the session, a characteristic of both online and on-site OT
To further inform educators about online OT, PresenceLearning recently hosted a webinar on the topic as part of its recently-launched 30-minute SPEDcast webcast series for school leaders. During the presentation, Robyn Chu, MOT, OTR/L provides her first-hand experience of delivering online OT, demonstrates what online OT looks like and explains how it can be applied in districts. To listen to the recorded webinar, visit: http://presencelearning.com/sped-cast-webinars/get-grip-online-ot/.
Since 2009, PresenceLearning’s online speech therapy services have provided schools with a practical, affordable new option for service delivery: web-based access to a nationwide network of live, highly qualified, fully licensed speech-language pathologists who are available whenever and wherever they are needed. This past year, PresenceLearning added occupational therapy (OT) and online assessments to their service offering. By partnering with PresenceLearning, school districts can fill staffing gaps related to acute and chronic SLP and OT shortages, reduce high caseloads for onsite personnel, reduce their backlog of assessments, improve student outcomes and become more efficient. PresenceLearning also offers access to technical specialists, as well as culturally and linguistically diverse speech-language pathologists and occupational therapists.
This school year, PresenceLearning will deliver more than 250,000 live online therapy sessions in public, charter and virtual school districts of all sizes nationwide.
About PresenceLearning
PresenceLearning (http://www.presencelearning.com) is the leading provider of live online speech therapy services for K-12 students and now offers online occupational therapy as well. The company offers school districts web-based access to a growing, nationwide network of hundreds of highly qualified speech language pathologists (SLPs) and occupational therapists (OTs) via live videoconferencing combined with the latest in evidence-based practices and powerful progress reporting.
Serving thousands of students in public, charter and virtual schools throughout the U.S., PresenceLearning has shown that online speech and language therapy is practical, affordable and highly effective. PresenceLearning is an ASHA-approved continuing education provider for SLPs and a U.S. Department of Education grant-winner, dedicated to bringing the highest clinical standards to online therapy.
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Kati Elliott, [email protected], +1 (410) 975-9638, [email protected]
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