Despite the fact that its high quality continuing education is consistently identified in member surveys as being an integral benefit of belonging to the Texas Occupational Therapy Association (TOTA), many OTs and OTAs are unable to take advantage of the opportunities due to the great distances that they need to travel to a host facility.

After working with several companies, the Texas Occupational Therapy Association has begun a relationship with MegaMeeting, a service that provides for the sharing of the speakers and presentations through a Web site host using a webcam and voiceover Internet protocol (VOIP) to allow high-quality professional development offerings to be viewed in real time and interactively to geographically diverse groups,

The Gulf Coast East District, located in the southeast area of Texas, has begun hosting its monthly professional development meeting using the MegaMeeting service. A session will be offered at the 2009 Mountain Central Conference in San Antonio Nov. 13-15, 2009 (see print ADVANCE for Occupational Therapy Practitioners, Oct. 26) during which potential site hosts will be trained in the guidelines for use of the site so that even more members can take advantage of the service.

Led by former TOTA President Mack Ivy and current President Lynda Jennings, TOTA's district chairs explored various webinar formats, gathering information on the features of the services available, quality of technical support, the costs of running such a program including hardware and monthly fees and what would be involved in setting up guidelines for use before selecting MegaMeeting.

The association hopes the new technology will allow it to be even more responsive to the professional development, information needs and educational requirements of its members, and to advance and improve the practice of occupational therapy for the benefit of the consumers.