OTS 08: Everything You Need to Know About Professional Development & A Special Announcement!
- Jun 24, 2018
- 29 min read
Updated: Jan 4, 2025
Press play below to listen to the podcast
Or click on your preferred podcast player link!
Welcome to the show notes for Episode 8 of the OT Schoolhouse Podcast.
In this episode, Jayson and Abby look at the many ways to earn professional development per NBCOT guidelines and share 9 specific places where you can earn your needed Professional Development Units (PDUs) or Competency Assessment Units (CAUs) as NBCOT calls them. We also announce that we will soon be offering professional development units for those who listen to the podcast and take a short quiz to prove you have listened and learned the objectives we intended to be learned through the episode.
Have a listen if you would like to have these three questions answered:
1. Who needs continuing education and how many units do you need?
2. What counts as professional development?
3. Where can I earn professional development units?
Links to Show References:
NBCOT - Keep track of your CAUs and earn more for free with your paid certification
AOTA - Acess free and paid continuing education courses
Continuing Competence Requirements for each state licensure
Log into your MyAOTA account to earn continuing education
Also, don't forget to pick up your Best Practices for OTs in Schools book from AOTA or Amazon.
Medbridge has over 150 courses related to school-based OT practice on an easy-to-use website.
Use Promo code: OTschoolhouse to get your first year of unlimited courses for $200 versus the $250 advertised rate. The OT Schoolhouse does receive a small commission for any OTs who sign up to use Medbridge with our promo code.
Occupationaltheapy.com has over 70 School-based related courses that you can watch, read, or listen to earn continuing education all for $99 a year.
Use the link above to help the OT Schoolhouse earn a small commission when signing up. This helps us to keep bringing you excellent content.
Summit provides high-quality online and live courses.
Get access to all online courses for $249 per year. For $299 you get access to both online and live in-person seminars.
Presence Learning is a company that provides telehealth OT and SLP services to school districts across the nation. As a part of that, they provide several free seminars including a 90-minute presentation with Q&A from Temple Grandin
Check out one of our blogs about lessons learned from Joann Sorg, one of Presence Learning's own.
PocketOT.com is a fantastic blog and resource from long-time Occupational Therapist Cara Koscinski. Not only is she an OT, but she also has children of her own with special needs. she is a great resource and you may even see her name in the conference brochure at your next AOTA conference.
OTSchoolhouse is an affiliate for PocketOT as well.
Rhythm Works Integrative Dance is a comprehensive dance program for children with special needs. Be sure to visit RhythmWorksID.com and hear the founder, Tricia Gomez, on Episode 2 of the OTSH Podcast.
Be sure to subscribe to the OT Schoolhouse email list & get access to our free downloads of Gray-Space paper and the Occupational Profile for school-based OTs.
Have any questions or comments about the podcast? Email Jayson at Jayson@otschoolhouse.com
Well,
Thanks for visiting the podcast show notes! If you enjoyed this episode be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts
Episode Transcript
Expand to view the full episode transcript.
Amazing Narrator
Hello and welcome to the OT schoolhouse podcast. Your source for the latest school based occupational therapy tips, interviews and research now to get the conversation started, here are your hosts, Jayson and Abby. Class is officially in session.
Abby Parana
Hey everyone, welcome to the OT school house podcast. This is episode number eight, and we are talking about professional development today. Woohoo. How are you today Jayson?
Jayson Davies
I'm doing very swell. It's a nice being on summer vacation. It is and it's hot today. Yep, Southern California for you. I mean, Pennsylvania, don't even know.
Abby Parana
No, they don't take me years to adjust and not to mention our professional development that we're discussing today. But we're also talking we have some important news and business to take care of here. At the beginning of the podcast, we have our winner for our schools out contest, giveaway. Woo hoo. That's pretty exciting.
Jayson Davies
Yeah, well, we're gonna make it even more exciting right now, because we're going to announce her name. But first, we want to say thank you to everybody that participated in our schools out giveaway. We had a lot of good turnout. There are several ways to earn points. Many of you completed the survey, many of you followed the podcast and liked us on Facebook and entered for more entries every single day. So we want to say thank you to all of you for participating in that.
Abby Parana
Yes, thank you guys so much for participating. We love to see a lot of group participation and things like this. It's really fun. This is our first contest, but it won't probably be our last.
Jayson Davies
Yeah, this was too fun, to fun for it to be our last.
Abby Parana
Right? Who doesn't love a good giveaway?
Jayson Davies
So should we announce the winner?
Abby Parana
Yeah, let's do this. Why are we putting this off any longer?
Jayson Davies
I don't know. I don't know. Everyone out there is probably sitting on the edge of their seat right now, all right. Well, the winner is we do a drum roll. The winner is hope Marie from Florida, not Nassau County, but Nassau County is where she's from.
Abby Parana
Good, you had to practice that. We both had to look up how to pronounce that appropriately. Yeah, turns out there's a YouTube tutorial.
Jayson Davies
A 15 second YouTube tutorial about how to pronounce the name of this county.
Abby Parana
Yes, which is awesome. But hope we are really excited that you won.
Jayson Davies
Super excited.
Abby Parana
So what does hope win Jayson?
Jayson Davies
Hope will be joining us on an episode of a podcast coming up here soon, and we're gonna talk to someone that is on the complete opposite side of the country from us about how she provides occupational therapy services in a school based setting in Florida. So I'm pretty stoked for that, because I've never talked to a Floridian school based occupational therapist.
Abby Parana
Me either. And I think the other thing that's kind of cool is, when you talk to occupational therapists, we all have a reason for doing the practice that we chose to be in, and we also have a reason for being an occupational therapist. Most of us like why we got into the profession. So I'm really curious about Hope's backstory, too. So I'm excited to have her on to share some of her techniques and strategies that she uses, and learn a little bit more. So thanks hope for signing up and participating and willing to make a guest appearance.
Jayson Davies
Yeah, that's gonna be really cool. Can't wait. So with that, definitely stay tuned. Make sure you subscribe right now to the podcast so you don't miss any future contests that we might do. I mean, who knows next time it might be another guest podcast? But we like to, you know, we like to mix it up a little bit. Maybe we'll give away the best practice in OT school book, or we'll give away some other stuff that we have for for a year. I don't know. We'll find something, but we'll see how this goes. I'm really looking forward to it.
Abby Parana
Me too. Me too. And also stay tuned to the end of this podcast, because we happen to have some pretty cool news for ot from ot school house and some interesting ideas that we're going to be bringing you. I can't wait to go over that and announcing I know I'm really excited about it. You guys are going to love it. Yes, I love it.
Jayson Davies
Me too.
Abby Parana
Super easy and convenient and wonderful, so I'm very happy about it.
Jayson Davies
Yeah, all right, Abby, well, let's jump into the actual content for today, which is all about professional development, what it is where you can get it, all the nuances about it, such as why everything has like, eight different names, CEU, PDU, Cau, contact hour. It can be confusing. Yeah, let's start there. Let's start with the whole what all the acronyms are, and how they work, and that stuff. So the first one, I think, is the easiest one to understand, because it's in its name, is contact hour. Yeah, because, oh yeah, isn't I think that's the easiest one. A contact hour is one hour of professional development.
Abby Parana
Yeah, that's pretty self explanatory.
Jayson Davies
Right? And so in my understanding, the closest thing to a contact hour is a PDU, which is a professional development unit. In most cases, one PDU equals one contact hour, correct? All right, so now this is where was that?
Abby Parana
Well, and now it gets hairy, yes, now you have continuing education units.
Jayson Davies
CEUs.
Abby Parana
or CEUs, which one continuing education unit equals 10 contact hours, or PD use.
Jayson Davies
Yes, and you don't see this too much, but I feel like every now and then you see it, and you're like, What the heck? Like.
Abby Parana
Yeah, can we just be direct about it?
Jayson Davies
Because this is the one that you see oftentimes that is in a decimal form. It's like you need or this is point one CEU, which makes it seem like you're getting like nothing. It's like 1/10 of something is what you're getting, right? But point one, or 110 1/10 of a CEU is the same as one contact hour, typically, right? Hence, 10 contact hours equals one CEU continuing education unit.
Abby Parana
And then, to top it off, it seems like every board or state, they all follow something a little bit different. And then you have the NBC ot that follows the PD use. And so you just have to know oh and see au Yes, which, let's see if you can get it this time. Jayson.
Jayson Davies
All I can competency assessment units, CA, use Yes. In essence, this is basically the same thing as a PDU, it's typically one hour equals one Cau. However, there are some instances where it equals 1.25 contact hours one cau does in other instances. And we'll get into this a little bit, because you don't always measure something in hours. When it comes to NBC. OT, you can, you can earn ca use by publishing, and how do you measure how many hours it took you to publish something? And so that's where they have to break it down into competency assessment units. So we'll get into that in a minute. And we're actually going to share on the show notes. OT schoolhouse, com, forward slash episode eight, a resource that points you to the NBC, ot website that kind of explains a little bit about what you can do. And we're going to talk about it in a minute, about what you can do in order to earn these. Ca, use. There's like 32 different ways, and we're getting we're going to get into some of them and here.
Abby Parana
And you know, I think it's interesting, because until we started doing the research for this podcast, I sort of always just assumed I needed to have CEUs and the ones from a ot a but it turns out there's actually a wide variety of ways you can demonstrate that you've done professional development, not just for NBC OT, but also for different state boards and all of that. So we're we're going to go ahead and get into it.
Jayson Davies
Yeah. So another thing we wanted to touch on, I think everyone listening, or most people that listen to this podcast, are either an occupational therapist or a certified occupational therapy assistant. Therefore you mostly all know that OTs and CODAs, we need 36 units caus every three years if we want to keep our MBC ot certification.
Abby Parana
36 PDU.
Jayson Davies
or CAUs, a CAU and no, it's actually CAUs, oh, it's ca use, yeah, I thought we needed 36 well, they're the same thing. Remember?
Abby Parana
Oh, god, okay.
Jayson Davies
So yes.
Abby Parana
so you need 36 hours. Yes,
Jayson Davies
you need 36 hours, basically. But again, not everything's measured in hours. So you need 36 units.
Abby Parana
Right or 3.6 CAUs,
Jayson Davies
exactly. So now that the math portion of this podcast is over, we all need CEUs, if you're an occupational therapist or as a CODA, even if you don't need MBC ot as a certification, such as if you are in a state where they only require licensure and not certification, you very likely need some sort of continuation to suffice for your state's licensure. So every state's a little bit different, and so we are going to actually put up an. Another resource for each state. It's all it's directly from NBC OT, and it shows you what states require what type of continuing education.
Abby Parana
Right? And, you know, I think it's important to note like, what is the purpose of continuing education and what is the purpose of professional development? And it's because, you know, as professionals, our profession is constantly changing. Occupational therapy has evolved tremendously from its inception. So if you think of, you know, our need to stay on top of evidence and research, this is a way for state licensures and the national board to regulate and make sure that OTs are achieving that, yeah, and staying, you know, staying up to date with the evidence based research and that we're doing evidence based practice, because that is what allows us to get paid essentially and justify ourselves so right and justify ourselves as a needed service.
Jayson Davies
Not to mention, I don't know about you, but coming straight out of college, I felt like I knew nothing, and I've learned so much through going to conferences, taking courses, getting the SIP certification, like so much of that has helped shaped the occupational therapist that I am so right. College is just the beginning.
Abby Parana
Oh, it really is. And if you think of like, I've been out of school 10 years now, and I think of just everything that's changed, even with theories and research, sensory integration has a lot more research behind it now than when I was in school. There's just a lot of research that comes out, and if you're not doing professional development and getting these hours, then you're not going to be able to practice using evidence based which is a requirement of the education codes, at least in California. But it's the requirement for special education is that we provide our students with evidence based practice.
Jayson Davies
Exactly. So one thing about NBC, OT or or licensure for a state is that typically, they don't ask you to send in all of your certificates every two years, every three years when you do it, they only just ask you to write down the name of the course and when you took it or how many units it was However, that said, I don't know about you, I think you might have been too. I was recently audited, but.
Abby Parana
No, I've not been audited.
Jayson Davies
Oh, no, I got audited by NBC ot this past year.
Abby Parana
Knock on wood. My renewal is coming up in September, so I'm looking for it because I'm I'm just sort of assuming it's going to happen soon to me, because it just does.
Jayson Davies
It seems like, I feel like it seems like a few people that I know have been audited, audited this year. So it's like they're going, you know, maybe every few years, they just decide we're gonna audit everyone. I don't know.
Abby Parana
How, how quickly were you informed you were being audited after you submitted your application? And how did that happen?
Jayson Davies
It was fairly quick. I got a notice in the mail. I know that's how it came, right? But I don't know how long it took to process that got it so. But, you know, it's relatively simple. I keep all my certifications in a file, you know, with the rest of my important documents that I have. And I also keep an Excel spreadsheet that kind of keeps up to date what I've taken and stuff like that, so that way it's easy to get to, easy to find.
Abby Parana
Well, you're way better than me, because I just kind of put them into a folder.
Jayson Davies
Yeah. And I also used OTEC Occupational Therapy Association of California. They have their own system. If you're an OT member. They actually keep track of if you go to an OT conference, they actually log all those in for you into their Occupational Therapy Association California. They have a some sort of contracting company that you have access to as a member.
Abby Parana
Yeah. And then on top of that, I recently started using the NBC ot navigator, which also provides a similar service where you can log, or they have a renewal log, where you can add activities. And it's super user friendly. It seems really intuitive. I found it really easy to use, and it helps you keep track of all your professional development units that go towards your NBC ot registration. But I think you could probably use it to also keep tabs for your state licensures. It's just it doesn't automatically go back and forth between them.
Jayson Davies
Yeah, yeah, that'd be cool. Yeah, created that, but, oh, that's pretty good.
Abby Parana
So if you're listening NBC OT.
Jayson Davies
AOTA YouTube, but no, but speaking of NBC OT, we should. We can jump into the different ways that NBC OT or not, the different ways that they do. But you. Yeah, well, they have 32 different ways that you can earn. Ca use, PD, us. And so we're gonna, we're not gonna mention all 32 because that's quite extensive, and the likelihood of you using all 32 is probably not likely, because you're not all researchers, but we're gonna go over a few of them. And one of the ones is what Abby just mentioned, is actually the NBC ot navigator. And so what did you find on the Navigator?
Abby Parana
So even on the navigator, when you you sign up and it'll give you your certification number, whether or not you're active, and then right at the top, it says, well, on mine, because I haven't put them in yet, it says zero, 36 units completed. This is not an accurate account, because I have done some continuing ed. However, then you scroll down and it'll have you can click on certification or or navigator or services, and it will help you go through that. But the biggest thing would be like the renewal log as well, and then it pops up with a list of relevant ca use that you can take, and then it will log those in. So on mine, because I'm like a pediatric, I use like I had them look at me as though for pediatrics, because that's my main area of practice. And if you list that, it'll say, you know, you can do case simulations. And for instance, if I click on one child with a vision impairment, and then I can go through that case simulation, and it will give me a continuing or, I'm sorry, Oh, I did it a competence assessment unit.
Jayson Davies
For them, yeah? And I know I went through one of those to the virtual experience, and, man, I learned a lot. They were tricky, yeah, but they're actually not bad. They're, I'm not gonna lie, they're not the most entertaining thing in the world, but they're actually the content involved is pretty darn good. So yeah, that's one way you can earn.
Abby Parana
And it says, too, as part of this navigator, that units earned in NBC OTs navigator are accepted by 38 states and the District of Columbia, and they if you click on the you can find your state. If you click on the link and see if it is accepted by Navigator, and it turns out there are a ton of them, the only ones that do not accept it are in gray. And then there's some contingent upon any additional state specific requirements. So it happens to be the state that we're in, of course. And Pennsylvania, the other state I'm from, it turns out that that would be the only thing, but at least they have a pretty easy, easily accessible map, and it really looks like there's only 10 states that do not use this as part of their continuing ed toward your state licensure. So I think Navigator is a really good thing to check out.
Jayson Davies
Yeah, definitely. It sounds like you can do some cool stuff and and you can, because most of us have already paid for it too. So it's basically, Yeah.
Abby Parana
And you can create a reading list for yourself by and use ProQuest of research articles you need to read, and then looking through your navigator history as well. So I personally think it's a really cool tool.
Jayson Davies
Yeah. So a few other ways that you can earn ca use is through volunteering five hours earns you one cau you can actually, you know how we all read these articles that are peer reviewed. Well, there's actually a way to be a peer reviewer, and you earn five units of caus for every article that you are part of reviewing. I don't even know how to do that, but that sounds cool. You can mentor a ot colleague that gives you one unit for every two hours that you mentor a colleague. You of course, have to, you know, keep track of what you did, what the what the men tease, goals were, and kind of what you how you help them. But that's a kind of free way to do that, to earn some CAUs.
Abby Parana
Right, And I'd say, you know, that's really great if you're certified in something really specific and you want to mentor an OT colleague in that like, if you're really good at feeding, and maybe I'm an OT that works in schools with a certain population, I need mentoring on feeding, because I'm not as skilled in that area. We would just need to set goals for that mentorship and find a way of documenting it so that you could earn those credits for mentoring me. If there's anybody out there who wants to do that.
Jayson Davies
Right, Actually, you know what? Later, it actually says that also the mentee can receive caus as well. Oh, so both people earn some of the caus some other ways. Of course, if you present at a conference that earns you two units for every hour of the conference that you present same thing with a. Poster, you earn two units for every poster presentation you present. Being an adjunct faculty member earns you some some credits. And of course, the most popular is actually courses, right? You know, online courses that that you watch, or attending seminars, or doing a certification of some sort, or going to a conference. Those are all ways that you can earn caus through MBC, OT. One good thing, you know, we didn't mention this earlier, it popped up on my screen right now, is that if you are, if the course is an A OTA approved provider, it seems like that they can actually provide 1.25 so one and a quarter caus for every hour of content, versus if they're not a OTA approved, it's only one hour for or one unit for one hour. So I guess that's kind of a perk of it being an AOTA approved.
Abby Parana
Right, so you could earn a little bit more for less time if you're going for your MBC, OT.
Jayson Davies
And then the last one I really want to mention is that being a field work supervisor, you know, that gives you one unit of CA use for every week that you're working with a student. And so whether it's level one or level two, you get one unit per week per student. So that's kind of cool,
Abby Parana
yeah, and it's something like, it's funny, I, until we started researching for this Jayson, I didn't consider all of these as continuing education. I probably could have been claiming a lot more honestly, continuing ed than I realized I was.
Jayson Davies
Yeah, one was even giving a seminar like to a related service. It doesn't even need to be a seminar for OTs. It can be a seminar for related services. So if you give a in service at your school or at, you know, your place of employment, your district, for related services, which, in my opinion, includes special education teachers aides, because those are ones that need this information. You can actually earn continuing education for that. You can only do it one time per that course that you give, but that's still cool.
Abby Parana
Yeah, definitely.
Jayson Davies
So let's get into the next phase, which is, where can we get? Where can we earn, I should say, professional development. And we have a list of about nine places we're going to go through this, first one, second one, and third one, probably pretty quickly, because I think we've already killed it a little bit. We have NBC OT, obviously we've said, you know, you can go on there. There's so many ways that you can earn continuing education on NBC OT, through the Navigator tool, and they have articles that you can review and ways that you can earn. So check out NBC OT, and I hope everyone is MB, cot certified. Still, it's just a good resource to have.
Abby Parana
It really is, and it makes it easier, with state licensure in a lot of states, to have that certificate.
Jayson Davies
So the next one will kind of, I think most people are pretty familiar with the A OTA website, and they do provide some online free as well as paid professional development on there. You can even earn professional development by reading the best practices in school based ot book, which I know so many people have in reference to a lot. So for every two chapters that you read, you can you can do a small write up, and you earn one hour of CAU.
Abby Parana
I better get on that. I've read a couple chapters, right? It is a very big book. It is. I was surprised. Take your time.
Jayson Davies
Yeah, but it's actually not too hard to read some of it. So.
Abby Parana
No, the chapters are short and very fast and very on point to what the purpose of the chapter is. I found it to be a really good resource.
Jayson Davies
Yep. So another thing is the A OTA conferences. Of course, you know, everyone wants to go to the A ot a annual conference. Shout out to New Orleans next year. Yeah.
Abby Parana
I didn't realize it was in New Orleans. We should go Jayson, we should.
Jayson Davies
But then a OTA, they also just recently started holding their annual school based conference. So I can't remember where that one is coming up later this fall, but I didn't make it to last year's one, but I kind of want to go to this one, so we'll see. Yeah. And then, of course, your state organizations, most states, have some sort of state conference every year, and you can attend that. And some states even have their own webinars and seminars online. And so those are always They're pretty cheap, typically, because it is a state organization, you know, they're trying to give back to their state's OTs, and as long as you're a member, they're relatively affordable to take that's true. Yeah. So all right, now we have a few of the more mainstream websites that are out there that many people use for earning professional development. Some of these have actually, the three that we're going to talk about real quick, actually have a year long subscription. The first one. Is med bridge or med bridge education.com and they have a lot of classes, actually, both this one and the next one, occupational therapy.com I'm really impressed by what they have online. They they got a lot they do absolutely. And I was watching one recently on occupational therapy.com it's actually by Winnie Dunn. And you know, everyone wants to hear from Winnie Dunn, and so she was talking about, you know, how to be really inclusive in the schools. And it was really cool. And for $99 a year, that's not too bad. So med Bridge is a little bit more pricey. It cost, I think they what they say the cost is, is $375 typically, they have some sort of promotion for $250 but actually, ot school house us, we actually talk to them and well, we're able to offer a $200 per year subscription, and that's A 20% discount from the $250 promos. So all you have to do if you want to go over to medbridge.com or medbridge education.com and start up that subscription, it's, well, yes, $200 you just use the code ot schoolhouse for the discount, and you'll get that for a little discount.
Abby Parana
Right? And we are an affiliate for them, so it helps us keep the podcast going and helps us bring you more content.
Jayson Davies
Exactly same thing with occupational therapy.com. We don't have a a promo that says cheaper, but for them to if you use a link through our through our show notes, or somewhere on our website, we do actually earn a small commission off of that one as well. This next one Summit, we don't earn a commission, but we like it, so we want to let you know about it.
Abby Parana
We do. I was just clicking through their autism continuing education courses, and it is a really, pretty good they have a lot of them.
Jayson Davies
Oh, really?
Abby Parana
Yeah, 19 of them.
Jayson Davies
Oh, wow.
Abby Parana
And they're they really range and provide good content.
Jayson Davies
That's cool. So what I like about Summit is that they have a almost, if you want to call it a dual immersion type of way that they do this, you can pay 249 to a year for just their online content, or you can pay an extra $50 299 and you get their online content as well as any live course that you want to go to. So if you're in an area, a metropolitan area, where summit courses, you know you're getting those things in the mail, the mailers all the time that say, Hey, this is Summit. We're going to be at the hotel near you. I mean, you can go to as many of those as you want for $300 and take their online courses.
Abby Parana
Yeah, I think that's really nice to me in particular, because you and I live in Southern California. Yeah, access to and we have access to everything's kind of within driving distance.
Jayson Davies
Plus there they tend to be, like, surrounding us. They'll do one in Anaheim, Ontario and Pasadena, which is like, doesn't matter which way we drive, we get to one right, right? So this next one's really cool. This is actually a website, or it's a business that is actually trying to bring on people to work for them. So it's like a contractor, but they do telehealth, and so they have, they contract with school districts to provide occupational therapy through the computer with students. And so you can imagine, this is really popular, I'm sure, among districts that are in the more rural area. In fact, the district that I work at, we forgot to tell them that you have a new job.
Abby Parana
Oh, that's right, I'm changing school districts, and I'm super excited about it. I'm going back to a district I previously worked for that I really enjoyed, and I'm back there now.
Jayson Davies
More on that. I didn't even cheat. We didn't even tell anybody. I know, yes, the district that she used to work for, and I still currently work for, is using presence learning for speech therapy. And so we have students that with an aid, they get on a computer and they receive speech therapy, therapy through or from an SLP that is on the computer. And so it's kind of cool. It actually worked out. We're a little skeptical when we started it, but it seems to be working out for students that are at least at a certain level or higher. So.
Abby Parana
Right? And I don't know, Jayson, did you go to the presence learning part of the California Occupational Therapy conference.
Jayson Davies
I did, really cool. Joanne sword, yeah, we both were there. Yeah. Joanne sword gave that presentation, and she kind of showed us how it worked.
Abby Parana
Right? Because I was super skeptical of telehealth. But we may need to bring them on the podcast to see how that talk to them more about that.
Jayson Davies
Yeah, that'd be really cool. As far as today's conversation, they super cool, but I know we both but anyways, they actually provide free professional development on their website. Just two nights ago, I was watching a webinar that was from Temple Grandin and. Many of you, I'm sure, know temple, she's kind of all over what is autism, and everything about that, everything that is autism. And so for it was a free one hour course that was directed by Temple Grandin, and at the end, I got a certificate of attendance. Yes, presidents learning is very clear that this is that they do not offer continuing education for these webinars. However, they send you the certificate of attendance. Does it have the amount of time? It does? It shows the amount of time that in minutes, how long it was. And so I really, I want to call NBC OT and ask them about it, because it's, it's strange that they say we do not provide professional or continuing education, is the term that they use. But then they send you this certificate of completion. So I'd be, I'm still interested, you know, MB, C, OT, a, OT, a, they don't always make it easy to know what it is, and that's what we're trying to talk about here today. So.
Abby Parana
Right? It is kind of confusing. It still continues to be sort of confusing, but you always have to check with your state licensure guidelines, of course, and then just checking in with NBC OTs list, really?
Jayson Davies
Yeah. So one more that we put on here was, it's pocket ot.com and this is actually a smaller she's an OT. Her name's Kara Kasi. She runs pocket ot.com you know, she has a few courses on there, like five or so, and they're two hour courses that she charges about $50 for. And two of them are called, one's called, it's sense, is it sensory, or is it behavior? And the other is learning disabilities, and ADHD a toolbox for OTs. And so this is just a person, you know she's, she seems like she's knows what's going on. She's got a fantastic website, just doing a lot of things. And I know she is a presenter at other conferences. In fact, she even has a course on occupational therapy.com so.
Abby Parana
I mean, $50 a course is super reasonable, yeah, for two hours, my opinion, for two hours.
Jayson Davies
Yeah, I haven't. I've been meaning to check out, is it sensory, or is it behavior her course, and I just haven't done it yet, so I can't yet speak to the quality of it, but based upon what I've heard about her and what I know about Kara, I'm sure it's amazing. We will have a link to her website as well, where you can check out her courses. She also has a ton of other free resources and paid resources on her website, so I'll highly recommend it and and we, again, we are an affiliate for her as well, because we do believe in what she's doing, and so we do receive a small kickback if you use our link and purchase either one of these courses or something else on her website. So I website. So right, real quick, I want to say we are definitely not, you know, just recommending these sites, because we do earn something from them. In fact, we haven't earned anything from any of these sites, except for med Bridge, which is like one, one person signed up for med bridge from us. But these are just honestly good websites that people enjoy and use. So that's why we're recommending them correct. And so we just want to make that clear. We have one more on here, and I put this one on here, not only because she was on episode two of the podcast. Tricia Gomez with rhythm works integrative dance, but also because it shows that you don't necessarily have to be an occupational therapist in order to provide professional development. And likewise, as an occupational therapist, we don't need to be need to earn professional development from an occupational therapist. Specific, I think it's important that we actually go outside of our range a little bit, because it allows us to expand. Ot like I would never have even thought about dance, but because she collaborated with other OTs, other PTS, and even behavioral therapists, she put together a certification course that OTs can take to learn how they can use their occupational therapy skills to work with students who are interested in dancing. How cool is that? So.
Abby Parana
I think that's fantastic. And I think that you're right, um, there's a there's some vision therapists too, that I think OTs because we often are addressing vision processing, and visual processing needs, if you're looking for you know that or taking courses from SLPs are very helpful, because we need to be able to communicate with our students too. You I would say definitely going outside of occupational therapy and occupational therapists is a really good way to earn your professional development and get some insight and into things that you might not be thinking about as an OT. I was just thinking I took a when I took Handwriting Without Tears. The person that gave that course was a teacher, a special education teacher, and I remember I learned so much about how educators educate students. Students, which made me better at assessing kids within the school setting, because I understood how they were being educated. I learned something like direct instruction. I finally figured out what that really meant. And teachers we use just right challenge, but some teachers would use zones of proximal development. So you I only got that information from taking continuing education courses that were not provided by an occupational therapist.
Jayson Davies
Yeah, so that's super cool. It's good that we don't always stay in our realm. You know, sometimes we go to conferences and all we do is like, I don't know, we kind of get into that ot bubble, yes, but sometimes it's nice to get out of, get out of the OT realm and take a course from here, take a course from there, and see how we can apply that to occupational therapy. So that's cool, right? All right, so we actually have one more way that, it's a new way that you'll be able to earn professional development. And how is that Abby?
Abby Parana
Well, we're super excited to be starting to deliver you opportunities to earn professional development for listening to our podcast. Not every podcast is going to be applicable for professional development, but we're going to design podcasts that are and that's going to incorporate having specific learning objectives, using evidence based practice tools, and giving you the opportunity to earn professional development while you're doing things like, in my case, walking my dog, yeah, or driving to work, driving or driving between schools, or working out at the gym.
Jayson Davies
Cooking dinner, I don't know.
Abby Parana
Oh yeah, cooking dinner, I love listening to podcasts while I cook dinner, actually. So that being said, you can hop on over to OT school house, and you can look for professional development quizzes that you can take in relation to the podcast that you've listened to. And we will identify what podcasts will be available for professional development so that you can earn those credits on the go.
Jayson Davies
Yeah, and so this isn't quite up just yet, but they are coming. And yeah, we're excited to get this rolled out for you guys.
Abby Parana
Right. And right now, we are working towards becoming an A OTA approved provider right Presently, we will be providing you with a professional development certificate of completion our podcast that we're provide, I guess, providing you the opportunity to earn the professional development for we are making sure meet the criteria of NBC OTs professional development lines.
Jayson Davies
That we discussed guidelines for the podcast, yeah, and so it's really going to be simple. You just go on after listening to the podcast, you go to that podcast episode, and then you click on the the link that says, you know, earn professional development, and you'll pay a small fee. We're thinking somewhere between 10 and $20 right now, per episode, depending on the length of the episode. You will take a short quiz, and the next thing you know, we will be emailing you a certificate of completion that, as Abby likes to do, hang them up on her refrigerator.
Abby Parana
That's correct. So should you want to hang that up on your refrigerator, as I like to do, or frame it and put it over your bed? That's weird. Don't do that unless you really want to if you're really proud of it. I know some professional development courses are like the difficult, but these are just opportunities for you to earn these credits, or, well, earn professional development time toward your licensure or toward your NBC, ot registration. Now, as far as state licensure goes, that's your responsibility to check and make sure that what we're doing provides what you need for your state licensure.
Jayson Davies
Correct. We're going to be doing our best to make sure that we can reach as many OTs in as many states as possible. But every state, like we said earlier in the podcast, is a little bit different. So make sure you check out the episode eight notes page and click on the link that shows you each individual state's requirements.
Abby Parana
Right, because we don't want to provide say that it's good in your state, but that we don't know specifically those state guidelines.
Jayson Davies
Yeah, eventually, we hope to have some sort of list of our own to show you right California, except ot school house podcast. Yes, it does. Maybe, you know, or does New Hampshire? Well, New Hampshire doesn't. Hopefully, we'll eventually have a chart for you that shows you exactly which states our professional development our podcast will work for. But we're not quite there yet.
Abby Parana
Right, so just make note of what your state's requirements are, and then go ahead and we will start bringing you podcasts that you can check out quizzes for and earn those certificates of completion. And yeah, I'm super excited about it. Actually. I think it's a new platform, and it's exciting.
Jayson Davies
Yeah, me too. And so make sure if you haven't already hit that subscribe button. Up on the top, so that you know, as soon as the next episode comes out, there is a very good chance that the next episode will be a professional development opportunity. So stay tuned, right? Yeah, stay tuned. And with that, we are going to say goodbye today. We hope you are enjoying your summer vacation, and we look forward again, one more time, to speaking with hope Marie in the near future, and thank you again to all of the participants, and make sure you're looking out for a special thank you email from us. We'll see you next time. Take care.
Abby Parana
Thanks everybody.
Amazing Narrator
Thank you for listening to the OT school house podcast, for more ways to help you and your students succeed right now, head on over to OT schoolhouse.com. Until next time class is dismis
Click on the file below to download the transcript to your device.
