Social media provides excellent benefits in everything. Period. On the latest episode of my podcast, Stuttering is Cool, I interview four speech therapists who incorporate social media tools in their practice. My summary follows.
I first speak with fellow Canadian, Tanya Cole and Shareka Bentham from Barbados. They host a regular live industry chat on Twitter using their joint profile @SLPChat and hash tag #SLPChat. The chats are then archived for later reading on Chirpstory. Both ladies describe the tremendous benefit that Twitter provides in knowledge sharing and connecting with other speech therapists and “slp geeks” (or #SLPeeps) around the world who share the same interests in their field.
My second interviewee and fellow Canadian, Marcus Little describes the large, active community of speech therapists on Twitter. At any random time of day, we both run into the #SLPeeps hash tag or see a question being asked and answered.
Marcus uses Skype to offer speech therapy to clients all over the world. With the disastrously huge cuts in support for speech therapy in Ontario schools, the Internet’s global community opens up a lot of opportunities. Skype gives Marcus the benefit of both audio and video when demonstrating techniques to his clients. In fact, even when the video becomes choppy, Marcus is still able to monitor his client’s progress by listening to audio.
We then proceed to talk about how a quick coaching session is always possible with cameras now appearing on smartphones and tablets.
My third interviewee, Uri Schneider, splits his time between New York and Israel. He also helps clients all over the world using various social media tools in teletherapy sessions. For example, along with Skype, Uri uses DropBox for providing session material. I can see this coming in handy with huge time zone differences. And it’s another unique way of involving the parents in their child’s therapy. We then chat about Uri’s use of social media tools for public advocacy and sharing the documentary films he produced with Dr. Phil Schneider.
Have a listen to my episode for the complete story and useful tips. Feel free to send me your questions about stuttering and I’ll answer them on my next episode. Please subscribe if you are interested in learning about the stuttering experience :)