The following issue of The Bulletin was prepared by Deb Lewis (Co-ordinator, Statewide Vision Resource Centre).
The SVRC PD program for term 2 appears below. For the complete list of activities for 2004 go to: http://www.svrc.vic.edu.au/PD2004.html
All activities are open to subject teachers, integration teachers and aides, careers teachers, therapists, parents, VTs, students etc. Please remember to register: tel (03) 9841 0242, fax (03) 9841 0878 or email svrc@svrc.vic.edu.au
Professional Development Event |
Date |
| Enlargement Options Workshop 10am-12noon | Tuesday 15 June |
| *NEW*Workshop:*Mimio* – New Features 10am-12 noon | Wednesday 23 June |
| O&M Morning | Tuesday 20 July |
| Mountbatten Workshop (‘Users’) 10am-12.30pm - BYO MB | Friday 23 July |
| Window Eyes Workshop 9.30-12.30pm - BYO laptop | Monday 2 August |
| Visiting Teacher Day | Tuesday 10 August |
| JAWS Workshop 10am-12 noon - BYO laptop | Thursday 19 August |
| MAGic Workshop 10am-12 noon - BYO laptop | Tuesday 7 September |
| O&M Morning | Wednesday 20 October |
| Mountbatten Workshop (Beginners) 10am-12.30pm - BYO MB | Monday 15 November |
| Technology EXPO | Thursday 2 December |
Jeni Blake has arranged for the latest in Mimio technology to visit the Statewide Vision Resource Centre, along with presenter Peter Goldie from Presentation Systems.
When: Wednesday 23 June from 10am to 12noon
Where: SVRC – 370-380 Springvale Rd Donvale
What’s on offer:
As always, everyone is welcome – bring teachers, aides, students, parents – please remember to register: tel (03) 9841 0242, fax (03) 9841 0878 or email svrc@svrc.vic.edu.au
Source: http://www.cdesign.com.au/spevi2005/
The South Pacific Educators in Vision Impairment (SPEVI) is a long established professional organisation. It enables teachers, parents, orientation and mobility instructors, orthoptists, medical professionals, optometrists, therapists, social workers, teacher aides, case workers, welfare agencies as well as service providers and community members, to increase their knowledge and skills in the area of blindness and vision impairment.
The Association’s objectives include the following:
SPEVI holds an International Conference every two years. Melbourne will be the next host. The Conference will be held at the prestigious Rydges Hotel in the centre of Melbourne.
Our Conference theme is ‘Families and Educators: Facing Challenges’. We feel that this current and particularly relevant topic is one that will attract a wide range of delegates and help to explore and strengthen the essential bond between the families and educators of students with vision impairments.
Rydges Melbourne is a stylish property located in the centre of Melbourne’s vibrant theatre and entertainment district with great shopping and restaurants only moments away. The generous rooms are contemporary and sophisticated with refrigerator, mini bar, air conditioning, colour TV, tea and coffee making facilities, iron and ironing board, hairdryer and internet access as standard features. A roof top heated pool is available for guest use and complimentary access to the exercise facilities at the Melbourne Baths is offered to guests.
The ‘Call for Abstracts’ is available as a downloadable pdf file from the web and abstracts can be submitted online – go to: http://www.cdesign.com.au/spevi2005/
Source: http://www.icevi.org/
To achieve the International Council for Education of People with Visual Impairment’s (ICEVI) global objective to assure equal access to education for all children with visual impairment by 2015, a vital partnership between ICEVI and The Hadley School for the Blind, United States, has been established. The “Globe ALL” (Growth and Learning Opportunities in Blindness Education) program, will offer educators of blind children worldwide distance education coursework designed to enhance their abilities as teachers.
The Hadley School for the Blind offers 90 courses to blind people and their families and is expanding its services to blindness professionals. Courses range from braille and daily living skills to computer training. Currently 8,000 students in 100 countries have courses available in braille, large print, audiocassette and on the internet. These learning opportunities allow study at anytime, any place - all free of charge.
The program is open to any individual associated with ICEVI and offers distance learning in:
Persons who successfully complete courses through the ICEVI-Hadley “Globe All” program will receive a certificate signed by the President of ICEVI and President of the Hadley School for the Blind. However, to receive a certificate, you must indicate when you register that you are signing up through ICEVI.
To see the course catalogue and register for a course go to: http://www.hadley-school.org
To enrol contact: Dr. Michael Bina at bina@hadley-school.org or the ICEVI Secretary General, Dr. M.N.G. Mani at sgicevi@vsnl.net. Please mention ‘ICEVI’ and ‘Globe ALL’ in your enquiry.
The following articles appear in the May edition of JVIB:
Up to $150,000 over three years (income tax exempt) is being offered to Australian citizens in all fields of study at leading overseas universities in 2005.
For further information, please see: http://www.monashawards.or
It has been a long time coming this year but we have finally got our act together. All are welcome to attend and listen to the dulcet tones, wonderful stories and factual and helpful information provided by Geoff Bowen. Geoff, psychologist for the Education Vision Assessment Clinic, will be discussing the impact on siblings of having a brother or a sister with a vision impairment.
Date: Saturday 26th June, yes the first day of the school
holidays
Time: 2:00pm
Place: Resource Centre 370-380 Springvale Rd., Nunawading
Babysitters and afternoon tea will be provided. Visiting Teachers please encourage your parents to attend, it is a wonderful opportunity for both the kids and the families to get together and just talk. If any of the VTs have a new piece of equipment they are willing to show and tell that would be fantastic and very helpful to the families. A note for your diaries, Erin Shale is also going to speak on Saturday 23rd October. Erin is a very creative and knowledgeable careers teacher at Balwyn High School who has written books on the how to manage your VCE and knows all the tricks about entry into tertiary placements. Keep that date free (please).
Any enquiries: Annette Godfrey-Magee 9841 0807
Hark The Sound is a really simple computer sound game intended for young kids who have vision impairments. It is free for educational and fun use.
The object of the game is to name a sound or tune that is presented as a prompt. The game is played by using the arrow keys – left and right, up and down. The Escape key will quit the current game and return to the game selections.
All the games follow the same general pattern – Question, Prompt, Answers, Reward – and include:
You can also make your own game.
The user interface is clear and uncluttered and the game (JAWS compatible) can be played without sight:
To download, go to: http://www.cs.unc.edu/Research/assist/Hark/ and follow the instructions.
Due to changes in the Building Standards of Australia, sign makers are branching into making tactual signage. One such company is Signmaking Specialists. You can view their website at: http://www.braillesignsaust.com.au
The Onkyo Co. Ltd., The Mainichi Newspaper ‘The Braille Mainichi’ and World Blind Union Asia Pacific (WBUAP) have announced an essay contest known as ‘The 2nd Onkyo Braille Essay Award’ for persons with visual impairment in the Asia Pacific Region. The objectives of the Award are:
Topic: “How Braille Literacy Has Changed My Life”
The essay should give real experiences and should reflect the impact which
Braille literacy plays and influences your daily life.
Conditions of Entry:
There are no age restrictions for contestants. The length of the essay excluding personal details must be between 700 – 1,000 words.
Closing Date: entries must be received by the close of business 15 June 2004
A maximum of 5 entries from Australia will be forwarded to a regional judging committee of the World Blind Union Asia Pacific regional Braille Writing Competition.
Prizes: will be given to the best five entries received from all countries in the region:
Completed entries should be mailed to:
Maryanne Diamond
C/o Blind Citizens Australia
PO Box 24
SUNSHINE VIC 3020
Marked “Confidential” – all entries should be sent by post
as a flat parcel to minimise the damage to the document
The University of Birmingham is now offering their ‘Touch Typing Tutor’ program for free. The program presents a series of lessons, systematically introducing the user to different letter and sentence copying exercises.
The program allows the font sizes and colours to be manipulated, and the colours of keyboard and finger ‘maps’ to be altered. All visual information can be presented as synthetic speech output. The program has been used successfully with adults working alone and young children working with some support from a teacher.
For your free download, go to: http://www.education.bham.ac.uk/research/victar/resources/tech/centre.htm
For a comprehensive list of Short Cuts and Keyboard Commands for Windows XP, go to: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q301583
Adapted from: Visability, Autumn 2003
There are many theories and views surrounding a complex issue like social inclusion. Inclusion is often associated with children who have disabilities or special educational needs and whilst development in the theory and practice of inclusion may have a significant impact on such children’s lives, inclusion is an issue that affects all children and young people, and whole communities.
The Social Inclusion Project, lead by RNIB, was borne out of the belief that children and young people with vision impairment are vulnerable in terms of their social and emotional development. There was an underlying assumption that vision impairment is a significant factor in relation to inclusion but an acknowledgement that this process will be influenced by a number of personal, social and environmental factors in addition to the visual impairment. Indeed, research supports the individual differences approach - that is, that although vision impairment is a complicating factor it does not necessarily account for slow or abnormal social and emotional development. Sight is a critical factor in forging and maintaining social contacts but many children with a visual impairment have no trouble in making friends and establishing positive social relationships whilst others, sadly, may have few or no friends and be struggling with adjustment and self-esteem issues. It is important for these ‘struggling’ children that the visual impairment profession needs to develop and share the many examples of good practice and successful intervention/ support strategies that are taking place.
Furthermore, social and emotional well being are fundamental to all learning and development. Recent educational research has established that from birth learning is a process which occurs in a social context. School success is not predicated by a child’s fund of facts or a precocious ability to read so much as by emotional and social measures; being self assured and interested, knowing what kind of behaviour is expected and how to rein in an impulse to misbehave, being able to wait, to follow directions and to turn to adults and peers for help, expressing needs whilst getting along with other children.
For example, large school playgrounds may prove to be difficult environments for children with vision impairments and may lead to these students becoming socially isolated. Large playgrounds lead to smaller groups developing and none of them are static. Research indicates that preschool children with vision impairments are two and a half times more likely to be near the teacher than are their sighted peers. Students with vision impairments are more likely to wander around on their own and engage in solitary play.
Suggestions to provide more playground structure and therefore more opportunities for social interaction for students with vision impairments included:
The student can also be supported in the playground by:
There are a series of articles in the Autumn 2003 edition of Visability – contact us if you’d like copies:
Other articles in this edition of Visability include:
Source: http://www.tsbvi.edu/textbooks/afb/index.htm
Excerpt from article by Boguslaw Marek – source: http://www.icevi.org/
Tactile graphics is a notoriously difficult area in the education of congenitally blind children, and yet, since so much information vital for the correct functioning in this predominantly sighted world is available as two-dimensional visual displays, tackling the problem of making this information accessible to blind people becomes an urgent task.
The aim of this paper is to show how tactile graphics can be incorporated into teaching programmes for different subjects and into leisure activities, and how a structured course in production and recognition of tactile drawings can be made more effective and more enjoyable by making use of some high and low tech devices, as well as with the help of some do-it-yourself tools.
Of the adult population of blind people in Poland, and probably in other countries as well, very few feel confident with tactile maps and diagrams. This is quite understandable if we accept a rather obvious link between the amount of exposure to tactile graphics in early years and efficiency in using such graphics. While sighted infants and children have practically unlimited access to pencils and scraps of paper, blind children and their teachers are severely disadvantaged by the cost, or lack of such basic materials as plastic sheets of film on which raised lines can be produced with an old biro. But as new technical resources for producing and reading tactile graphics become available, there is little excuse for not giving blind people yet another way of communicating with the sighted world and accessing information stored as graphic presentations.
While maps of continents and countries, city maps and layouts of buildings are the most obvious uses for tactile graphics that come to one’s mind when one thinks of blind users, the educational potential hidden in raised lines and textures goes far beyond such displays. Opportunities for introducing raised pictures are numerous, no matter what subject is taught. Geometrical figures, cross-sections of single cells and of whole living organisms, machines, diagrams, graphs and drawings of everyday objects, plants and animals - all of them are an important component of the education of sighted learners, and all of them can, and should be made accessible to a blind child. All of them can be introduced in the form of games, tasks and leisure activities which, in addition to teaching graphics, will encourage a blind child to explore and enjoy the exciting world ‘out there’. Textures, outlines, solid and broken or dotted lines introduced in such activities will be invaluable in helping the blind child understand the significance and meaning of these devices in tactile maps where they are used to represent stretches of land or water, buildings or continents, boarders, roads and rivers.
My own interest in tactile graphics stems from my interest in teaching English as a foreign language to blind children and goes back to the day when I realised how modest and uninspiring the materials I had for my blind pupils were, in comparison with those available for sighted children. Pages and pages of braille dots could hardly compete with colourful pictures bustling with life in the print version of our course book. In search of new, stimulating materials, sound and tactile graphics came to aid, helping to solve some, and creating new fundamental problems. The two vital questions which anyone involved with teaching tactile graphics must be able to answer are:
Answering both questions requires good understanding of the host of problems, which a blind child encounters in dealing with tactile graphics. Of these, I would like to mention just two:
For an average sighted person, it is difficult to understand that a simple drawing of a table represented by means of three lines may remain just three lines for a blind person. This will no longer be surprising, however, if we make the effort to understand a blind child's path towards acquiring the concept of a table. The small hand moves along the edges of the tabletop, then brushes over its surface and moves on to examine the four legs. With each new position of the ‘comprehending hand’, the rest of the table disappears and continues to exist as a memory of a series of tactile impressions, and, which is perhaps even more important, as a series of movements of the child’s hands examining the object. A small model will help the child grasp the spatial relations among the different parts of the table but will not bring the child any closer towards understanding how a sighted person can recognise it in a graphic representation consisting of just three lines. Just as puzzling as it is revealing for a sighted person, was the drawing of a London double-decker made by a blind English girl, who chose to represent it by means of just three lines - one for the step she climbed to board the bus, one for the hand rail and one for her seat. This picture was just as accurate as it could have been, given that the girl had no interest in, and perhaps poor awareness of the existence of those elements of the bus which she had no experience of.
All of this suggests, that attempts to supplement a blind child’s educational materials with complex maps and diagrams must be preceded by a series of structured exercises which will help the child understand, and feel confident in interpreting the relation between three-dimensional objects and their two-dimensional representations as well as the spatial relations involved. These exercises, involving both producing and interpretation of graphics, combined with ‘life situations’, will provide a good basis for understanding tactile graphics representing both familiar and new, unfamiliar environments.
Teaching Tactual Graphics in an English Language Class:Explaining the relation between three-dimensional objects and two-dimensional representations
Outlines of objects
Outlines of complex shapes
Models, flat shapes and outlines
Raised lines and textures
All of this requires a lot of work from the teachers and teacher assistants who decide to use tactual graphics as one of their educational tools. But just as big is the effort which must be put into designing and implementing such materials, so will be, if not bigger, the reward – a confident, independent blind user of tactual maps and diagrams, who will not have to say what one hears only too often from blind people confronted with any tactual two-dimensional displays: “If only I had been taught tactile graphics when I was a child”.
More reflections from Marion Blazé, Advisory Teacher for Vision, Darwin
Note: Names of towns and people have been omitted or changed to protect the innocent!
I was picked up by taxi at 6am. Then it was onto the 20-passenger ‘pencil’ for the 2½ hour flight to a remote town in the NT. I was picked up at the airport by the Special Education Advisory Teacher in a new four-wheel-drive with a satellite phone. Then we were off to an even more remote location, another 2½ hour drive south. The school was miles from anywhere. The one teacher lives on her own and seems to live entirely for the school community. All 24+ students are aboriginal. We could just see their community across a dusty paddock from the school.
The students here start the school day with a shower, get into their ‘uniform’ and then have breakfast together. The teacher is trying to instil good hygiene and eating habits. Breakfast is also an incentive to attend school. Some students express dismay when holidays come and they no longer have breakfasts provided.
The student I saw there has glaucoma, associated with a syndrome.
On the trip back to the original town, I chatted to the Special Education teacher with whom I was travelling. Her husband is a ‘group school’ principal in the area meaning that he is principal to several one-teacher schools. Because both she and her husband have worked in remote schools for some years, they have accrued special ‘study leave’ and will be spending the next six months travelling all around Australia looking into indigenous education.
After a night at the Caravan Park, it was off to the Primary school to see a little blind girl who is enrolled at the school. I met with the AP and AIEW (Aboriginal, Indigenous Education Worker) but - no student! So it was into the car with the AIEW to go ‘hunting’. We drove to one house where the family sometimes resides, but were told mother and daughter were at the other house in a camp on the outskirts of town. The AIEW told me that lots of kids were not at school that day because it was pay day and they tagged along with their Mums hoping to get a good feed.
There was no sign of anyone at the house in the camp, but a neighbour said they’d seen them walking this morning to the other house. So we followed the route the AIEW thought they might take (as best we could because it was ‘off-road’), with no result.
We were told the family had come into town because of a rodeo last weekend and a footy carnival this weekend. The child had only attended the Primary school on one day in the fortnight. They were expected to go back to a very out-of-the-way camp after the weekend. The camp is a three hours drive from this town. In the absence of the student, I set to work to get some more information about where and how the family was living and perhaps set up an alternative method of delivering some support. I met with a lady (let’s call her Mary) from the local Aboriginal Corporation. She visits the camp regularly delivering water and trying to arrange housing. When she told me that her corporation had ‘cleaned up the car bodies at the camp’, I completely misunderstood. I presumed she meant they’d cleared them away, but no, they had actually cleaned them up. I soon learnt that the car bodies are in fact the current form of accommodation for the families at the camp. The camp has no water supply, so water is delivered to fill a tank once a fortnight. I approached Mary with the hope that she may be able to deliver some braille materials for the child to go on with. She seemed more than willing and also said that once the housing is sorted out, they may be able to get School of the Air operating at the camp.
I also made contact with a lady at the station nearest to the camp. She runs the station shop and has regular contact with the family. The station receives a postal service, so we could provide materials through there.
On my third day in town, I visited a secondary school student who attends the YDU (Youth Development Unit), which is a unit for kids for whom school is not really working. When I arrived, I again met the AIEW and found no student! So we hopped in her car and went to the student’s house, where we found her still in bed. She quickly got ready to leave while we waited and I did a functional vision assessment at the YDU and provided some information to the student and her teachers.
My flight back to Darwin that evening was delayed, apparently because the aircraft was ‘overweight’! The story was that one of the airstrips where we had to land, had been shortened by the Air Force, who are using part of it, and Air North had apparently forgotten this and overbooked the flight. Too many people and too much luggage meant an aircraft which needed a longer runway to land and take off. With this reassuring news, we finally did take off after the luggage had been shuffled around the various holds of the aircraft.
In the following week I wrote up functional reports on the two students I did see and took part in a teleconference about the one who was missing. I don’t know how keen the family will be to read braille books with the little girl whilst living off the land in a car body, but our hope is that it might give her a chance to develop some literacy.
Editor’s note: Marion should be back in Victoria in late June – we look forward to more stories and insights into life as an AT (or VT) in the NT!
Faye Squires’ student Bradley recently featured in the local paper in the Shepparton area. Bradley, a twin, is legally blind after being born at 25 weeks. “Armed with a Mt Batten (sic) brailler and talking dictionary, Bradley completes his work in braille which is then transformed by a computer program so it can be read on a normal computer and printed in everyday text...
(His mother reports) ‘We are what we consider to be lazy parents because we believe the kids need to be able to do things for themselves. Even little things like making themselves a sandwich or getting a drink. If we expect (brother) Matthew to be able to do it, we expect the same of Bradley. He needs a bit of extra guidance and time but if he’s able to do it then we’re happy to let him ... He kicks the footy with his friends but if he kicks it up a tree his mates have to climb up to get it … he is also quite a good swimmer and is actually very good at reading.”
The print copy of The Bulletin includes the full text of the article.
Displays have been refreshed in the foyer of the SVRC – please make sure and have a look!
A congenitally blind student described her understanding of vision thus: “I think I know what it is like to see. It is like telling the future, because you know now that there will be a tree, and I will know later, when I come up to it and touch it.”
Does anyone know the source of cheap spectacles – or of financial support for families to assist in the purchase of spectacles for their kids? We have had a call from a caring school in Gippsland who is trying to assist all students in their school who have been diagnosed as needing specs – but it is a job that is rather bigger than they had first thought… Please call – 9841 0242.
Special thanks to Carolyn Mentiplay for taking on the planning and organisation of the Visiting Teacher PD day on 4th June – it looks like it will be a fabulous day! Thanks also to Kay McQualter for organising the Special Arrangements for the June VCE examinations – very much appreciated!
Thanks to Helen Caldow, Marion Blazé and Maria Elford for contributing to this edition of The Bulletin.
Thanks also to my FABULOUS proof-readers Dianne Skillern and Lea Nagel.
Deb Lewis (who can be emailed at deblewis@svrc.vic.edu.au).