Ergonomic Issues

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Ergonomic issues

With the introduction of computers comes the negative effect of prolonged use without periodic breaks. You may find yourself deeply into a computer game, glued to writing a paper, or surfing the web, and not notice your environment or that you have a stiff shoulder until four hours of uninterrupted computer use has passed. It may seem an unlikely way to injure yourself, especially if you are used to incurring injuries only on the ski slopes or during a soccer game. Injuries from prolonged computer use is from lack of movement or repetitive stress to your body. Unlike unpredictable accidents on the ski slopes or during a soccer match, there are preventative measures that can be taken to reduce the occurrence of injury from long term computer use. If you are going to be supervising students on computers in the schools, it is important that you become familiar with these preventative measures, so your students learn good habits early on. For this lesson, you are asked to complete the ergonomics quiz and review the websites provided below. Create a list of best ergonomic practices that you could post in the computer lab at your school and save your list in a word document that you will submit as part of your assignment. Save this document as "XXXergon" with XXX being your initials.

Ergonomics Quiz
http://keats.admin.virginia.edu/ergoquiz/home.cfm

Safe Computer Use Tips by the Ergonomics Program at the University of California
http://www.me.berkeley.edu/ergo/services/tips.html

Please continue to the next lesson on Viewing Preferences.