What's disAbility Spin

last edited 3 years ago by admin

Welcome to the dSpin website!

This introduction is here to help familiarize you with what you can do here, and why you need to be part of this community. This website is hosted so that this community can work together to help each other, not just as a reference page.

Signing up for the website gets you permission to post topics to our discussion forums, events to the calendar, pictures to the photo gallery, and set you up with your own personal website. This site is designed to be interactive, and it is hoped that you will contribute to the website in addition to using it as a resource. Every member has unique perspectives and this site allows everyone to garner as much information as possible. So, where do you start? Lets start with the basics.

What can I do on dSpin?

This site is divided into six different sections in an effort help people find areas in which they are interested. These sections are for Governmental, Educational, Wellness, Economical, Social, and Fine Arts issues. Each section is then subdivided by activities. These subdivisions are for forums where you can "speak out", find interesting "news" articles, see upcoming "events" on the calendar, and a "documents" section where resource materials can be found. If you are having trouble finding materials on the site, the search feature in the upper right corner of every page will search the entire website looking for keywords you type into the box.

Anyone can VIEW any of these pages, use them as resources, or follow the links. Only members can ACCESS the pages by posting information, links, or participate in the discussions. Joining the site costs you nothing, and as the site grows, will allow you to direct the website as you need.

As a member of dSpin, you can do many things on this site. If you need help doing some of the various things, we have developed a "how to" page, where, if you are unsure, you can follow the step by step guides on how to do things. This starts with how to sign up for the site, and goes on to include how to post pictures, post discussion topics, news, events, and various other site related issues. If you have questions or issues with anything of this nature, this "how to" page would be the place to start.

You are encouraged to post pictures, articles, rate restaurants, or just opinions in our forums. The more community involvement, the more valuable this site will become. As a member of dSpin, you are able to add pages to the site, help maintain the site, and be active in all of its features. The goal of the site is to make this as useful a site as possible. We hope that you will choose to add to our community.

Powerpoint presentation of dSpin: disAbilitySpin.ppt

Purpose

disAbility Spin is be a place for advocacy, socializing, and just about anything else people with disabilities, friends and family want to do on the web. disAbility Spin is designed to support the Mid-Missouri disability community by creating an electronic forum, community library, and meeting place where we can all share information.

disAbility Spin also offers members the chance to create your own own website. disAbility Spin allows members to customize personal information centers accessible only to them. disAbility Spin is being developed by the Department of Health Management and Informatics at the University of Missouri-Columbia School of Medicine. Two MU staff members with disabilities and an advisory panel of people with disabilities are also actively involved in the development process, and we welcome your advice too. See [link] ?Create This Page for information about the disAbility Spin project faculty, staff, and advisory panel.
disAbility Spin will always be a work in progress, because it is deliberately designed to maximize participation of site end-users in shaping and changing how the site works. The idea is to make it what people with disabilities want it to be, because they/you are why the site exists at all.

The project is based on research clearly showing that information exchange among people with disabilities is highly valued and very useful, but difficult to make happen. Please help make it happen by joining the disAbility Spin community!

disAbility Spin is funded through a grant from the U.S. Department of Education’s National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitative Research. Our goal is not only to make disAbility Spin work here. We hope it will be a model for replication throughout the country.

Please contact me for more information.
Laura Schopp, Ph.D.
MU Department of Health Management and Informatics
schoppl@missouri.edu

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