The following issue of The Bulletin was prepared by Lea Nagel, Visiting Teacher - Eastern Metropolitan Region and Deb Lewis (Statewide Vision Resource Centre).

Inside This Issue

- Professional Development Days - Upcoming and Report
- Ideas for Using Magnifiers
- How to Embossing from Computer Using the Mountbatten
- Braille Calendars
- E-Bility Website Featuring Space Camp Students
- Free Blank Maps - Website

SVRC Professional Development 2002

Low Vision Day - Friday 15th March

Who: VTs, teachers, integration staff, parents supporting students with low vision
Where: Statewide Vision Resource Centre 360 Springvale Rd Donvale
When: Friday 15th March from 8.30am to 3.30pm
Please wear: Clothes suitable for a walk outdoors
Cost: $27.50 including GST
Please call: 9841 0242 if you require further details

JAWS for Beginners Morning - Wednesday 17th April

Who: VTs, students, integration staff and parents supporting students with low vision
Where: Statewide Vision Resource Centre 360 Springvale Rd Donvale
When: Wednesday 17th April from 9.30am to 1.00pm
Cost: Free
Please call: 9841 0242 if you require further details
BYO: laptop with JAWS (if available)

Report: Notes from Visiting Teacher PD Day - Friday 22nd February

As usual, the Visiting Teacher PD day was informative, and a great opportunity for networking and collegiate support.

Kushbu Lal, a student on RVIB Visiting Teacher Service, shared her experiences at the SCORE Program (Summer Careers Orientation for Recreation) camp in Toronto, Canada. Senior secondary students between the ages of 15 and 21 who have a vision impairment can apply for a full scholarship to attend this 21 day camp. The application involves writing a submission and attending an interview, and the scholarship covers all expenses including air fares. The student attends without a chaperone.
Kushbu had a great time with 25 other students, 9 of whom were blind, and 16 who had low vision. Activities were arranged by choice, and they ate out every night! She learned to build a website, using java script and html programming, and experimented with scanners. At the end of the 21 days, awards for computer technology, leadership were presented by the president of CNIB.
To apply, call RVIB around March.

Ramona Mandy from Pulse Data demonstrated how the new TESCO tutorial CD's work. These are educational software for the blind and visually impaired, in a series of three CD's that explain Windows 98, Word, and the Internet. The tutorials have step by step voiced lessons, and keep track of where you are up to. The user can scroll through the directory for instructions on specific aspects, or go back and repeat, or go forward easily. There are quiz lessons as well. User manuals come in braille, large print and on audio tape. Ramona distributed demonstration disks (please call if you attended the session but missed out on a demo disk). Listening to Windows is $385, and Listening to Word or the Internet are $495 each, through Pulse Data.

Linden Woodruff, and O&M instructor from Guide Dogs Association of Victoria, outlined many of the skills that O&M instructors teach, including environment clues: slope, changes in wind & temperature, smell, concept development, planning and problem solving skills. Linden introduced and showed the GDAV video, which outlines the GDAV service, and is a good introduction to O&M. She distributed copies.

Jeni Blake reminded us of the Great Victorian Bike ride, which will be held in December. It finishes in Melton this year, eliminating the difficulties and danger of negotiating suburban traffic.

Marion Blazé reminded us of the importance of training in the use of magnifiers, comparing statistics on successful reading with large print and using the magnifier. The magnifier is a portable, instant way of enlarging print, and can be brought to a library or used with a phone book. Marion outlined a sequence of training, moving from short phrases, to newspaper width columns.

Hector MacLean, Paediatric Ophthalmologist, gave us a fascinating outline of what he called "everything he knows about Albinism", including that Siamese cats are albino, and even insects have albino forms. Five different types of albinism have been identified (in humans), each with its own chromosomal differences, but the educational management of students with albinism is still the same. As some children with ocular albinism may still have pigmented skin, Hector examines the retina of any child with congenital nystagmus using the slit lamp and can diagnose albinism. From the old classification, people with albinism can be tyrosine positive or negative. To find out which, a hair is left in tyrosine overnight, and if it comes out black, the person is tyrosine positive.
In children with tyrosine positive albinism, nystagmus typically reduces as they get older, has a null point, and converging & accommodating helps the nystagmus. In tyrosine negative children, nystagmus does not change. Tyrosine negative children commonly have a distance visual acuity at five years old of 6/60, whereas tyrosine positive children may have 6/36, and could improve to 6/12 by the age of eighteen.
Glasses may or may not help. They could improve astigmatism, and magnification may help a lot. Contact lenses with artificial irises painted on them, may help by cutting glare.
The fibres on the retina and through the optic nerve can be badly arranged so that a mix-up of visual messages occurs, causing difficulty de-coding in the brain.

Some syndromes associated with albinism are
Hermansky-Pudlak: albinos who bruise and bleed easily, for example when a tooth comes out. This is common in Peurto Rico, Angelman's syndrome and Prada Willie Syndrome.

Copies on audio tape of Marion and Hector's presentations are available from the Statewide Vision Resource Centre. Please contact Deb if you would like one.

Assistance with your new 'VT-VI Tool Kit' on CD-ROM

Lyn demonstrated a fabulous tool that she has compiled on CD-ROM and which she handed out to participants on the VT PD day. Amongst its useful collection of files, it includes:
- demonstration typing program and maths game
- braille fonts
- large print cursors
- SVRC forms
- and lots more!

If you would like assistance with any of these, please contact Lyn. Also if you would like assistance getting your laptop connected to your internet service provider, please call Lyn on (03) 9841 0242.

Using magnifiers - follow-up to Marion's session

Thank you to Lea Philp for highlighting the following list of ideas for teaching the use of magnifiers. The following looked useful:

With Preschool/Primary school students -
1. Observe interesting objects: rocks, shells, fossils, feathers, money, fingerprints, leaves, flowers, and so on.
2. Use a magnifier to identify stamps and find out the country of origin in an atlas or on a globe.
3. Use a game board approach to move forward when cut-out pictures on individual cards are identified.
4. Find hidden pictures within pictures.
5. Encourage systematic left-to-right scanning by placing a clear piece of acetate over the page with a grid or scanning plan mapped out first.
6. Read recipes off boxes during a cooking lesson.
7. Life skills reading activities: include reading the following: recipes, menus, newspapers, CD covers, food cans, maps, charts, graphs, television guides, bus schedules.
8. Read Lego assembly instruction sheets to Lego toys.
9. Place magnifier on mirror to observe eyes and open discussion on the child's eye condition.

With Secondary school students -
1. Scan computer printouts for specific information.
2. Read newspaper classified sections, sports pages, and stock reports to search for specific information.
3. Locate information about food ingredients on grocery labels.
4. Read bus and train schedules to plan routes to and from school or work experience placements.
5. Make an address book by looking up names and addresses of friends in the telephone book.
6. Make a chart to compare reading speeds using magnifier with different sized print.
7. Read instruction manuals for computers or new appliances.
8. Use a magnifier to locate geographic areas mentioned in current news broadcasts.

Ref: Corn, A.L. & Koenig, A.J., Foundations of Low Vision: Clinical and Functional Perspectives, AFB, New York, 1996.

VT Conference: 'The Highs and Hazards of Visiting Teachers' - 27-28 May

Visiting Teachers should have received your invitations to the VT Conference to be held at The Grange at Cape Schanck.
Who: VTs - vision, hearing and physically disabled/health impaired
Where: The Grange at Cape Schanck, 41 Trent Jones Drive, Cape Schanck
When: Monday 27 - Tuesday 28 May 2002
Cost: $205 twin share; $255 single
Please call: 9561 2536 (Carolyn Mentiplay) if you require further details or if you did not receive your invitation
RSVP: ASAP - places are limited

Student Results

Fotis of Lalor North Secondary College has continued his studies successfully into tertiary. He is completing a Computer Science degree at La Trobe University. His lowest result for 2001 was 89%! His current interests are turning however to Sound Engineering. He would appreciate contact with any vision impaired person with this interest.

VT Borrowing Lists

We're still updating our lists matching students with Visiting Teachers. If you have received a borrowing list that includes students that you no longer visit, please contact Deb at the Statewide Vision Resource Centre to let us know.

Aide Available for Work

One experienced and qualified braille aide is looking for one or two days integration or teacher's aide work - phone Toni Chilton (03) 9718 2386 (BH).
Please contact Deb at the Statewide Vision Resource Centre for further information.

Embossing from your Computer using the Mountbatten

From Lea Nagel

The Mountbatten Brailler is a great tool for embossing documents straight from your notebook or desktop computer. Before you do this, you need to set up your computer so it recognises the Mountbatten as a printer, then format your document. Here's how to do it.

To set up the printer option:
Click on the Windows Start button, click on Settings then Printers. In the dialogue box for Printers, double click on Add Printer. A wizard may come up, and you may be asked to click Next, then choose the Local Printer option, then Next. From the list of printer manufacturers, scroll down and click on Generic Printer, then Next. Continue through the Wizard until you reach Finish. The computer will need to be restarted.

To format your document:
Open a blank Word document. Click on File, then Page Setup. Set all the margins to zero and click on OK. Now click on Tools, then Options. Click on the Compatibility tab, and scroll down the Options list, and tick the box for: "Use Printer Metrics to lay out document" Check that all other boxes are not ticked, then click OK.

For the Mountbatten to emboss in Grade Two braille, you need to give it the forward translation command. In the document, type:
{FE}for the new Mountbatten, or{FWD EM ON}for the older Mountbatten
Type or paste your document here. Avoid all formatting, including Tab and blank lines.
{FE}for the new Mountbatten, or {FWD EM OFF}
(If you're not sure whether you have the new or old Mountbatten, the new one is greenish and the old one is grey.)
You can set up an empty document like this and either save it as a template, or open it and use it but not save whenever you want to emboss from your computer.
Enjoy!

Braille Calendars from Information Alternatives

Information Alternatives have produced braille calendars for 2002, which are now available at $5.00. Ramona circulated a sample calendar for people to peruse. The calendar contains a calendar month per page plus all Australian public holidays. In the back are details for each star sign and information about services offered by Information Alternatives. If you would like a calendar please contact Christine Simpson on simpsonc@bigpond.net.au

e-bility Website Features Space Camp 2001

The e-bility web site aims to provide easy access and links to a range of resources, services and products of interest to people with disability, their families and carers, as well as health professionals and other service providers in the disability sector. You'll find the e-bility website at: http://www.e-bility.com/.
The article of the month page of the e-bility's web site features information and pics about our trip to Space Camp 2001.
Go to: http://www.e-bility.com/articles/spacecamp.shtml/.
For more information about e-bility contact:
Sandra Vassalo on (02) 9810 2216 or email: S.Vassallo@e-bility.com/.

Free Blank Outline Maps of the Countries and Continents of the World

These sites offer a large list of maps that can be copied and pasted into Word in seconds.
http://geography.about.com/library/blank/blxindex.htm
http://www.embassyworld.com/maps/
Once in Word, the map can be enlarged or reduced for your low vision student or put in PIAF to create a raised line map for brailling students.

If you have something you would like included in The Bulletin, contact:

Deb Lewis (who can be emailed at deblewis@svrc.vic.edu.au).

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