This bumper issue was edited by Marion Blazé, Education Officer, Statewide Vision Resource Centre.
To see the annual program of activities offered by the SVRC and to download programs for professional development activities, go to: http://www.visiontech.svrc.vic.edu.au/pd2007.htm
What a day we had, making many fascinating discoveries. Annette launched the day and her new “Career Education Curriculum” with her usual enthusiasm. She emphasised the vital importance of social intelligence, which as Geoff states, for our students needs to be ‘taught not caught’.
We then heard some fascinating facts from Dr Susan Carden about Retinopathy of Prematurity. Did you know that the condition only started appearing after World War II, when development in plastics made it possible to seal incubators for prem babies, and therefore provide them with more oxygen?
We then launched our second curriculum document “The EMU Book: a curriculum for using an electronic magnifier unit”, with the help of Scott Freeman from Humanware. Trevor Boyd then demonstrated WYNN software, which is designed for students with learning disabilities. Geoff shared his wisdom on the topic of dealing with families and delivering difficult information and then we saw the return of Alan Johnston, eminent optometrist who is opening what promises to be an excellent Low Vision Clinic in East Melbourne in November (we’ll keep you posted).
Some of us stayed back and were joined by Vision Australia and Guide Dogs folk (numbering 20 altogether) to share news and hear of the wonderful research being conducted by Catherine Wan. She is exploring the changes in the visual part of the brain, due to loss of vision. It was especially interesting to hear Garry Stinchcombe’s experiences being a subject of this research. His auditory and tactile skills were tested to the limits and he undertook an MRI. It was also great to meet some newcomers to the field, one only having worked with Vision Australia for the last week!
When: Monday October 8 (first day Term IV) 9.30am to 3.30pm
(Registration from 9.00am)
Where: Vision Australia Burwood, 333 Burwood Hwy, Burwood
Cost: $33 SPEVI members; $44 non members - lunch included (Make
cheques payable to ‘SPEVI Victoria’)
Program:
Call for Papers
If you would like to present, we need to hear from you by Friday August 31 with an abstract for your presentation (Title + 100 words) as well as your name, title/position, contact details, and a note of any technology/resources you will need (eg whiteboard, datashow, laptop). Concurrent sessions will run for 30 minutes each.
Contact people (Victorian SPEVI Counsellors) are:
Marion Blazé: Ph. 9841 0242 marionblaze@svrc.vic.edu.au
Garry Stinchcombe: Ph. 9808 6422 garry.stinchcombe@visionaustralia.org
Lil Deverell: Ph. 9854 4542 lil.d@guidedogsvictoria.com.au
The Renwick Centre in NSW are conducting a three-day workshop on Braille Literacy and Technology: Collaborating to improve student outcomes in literacy skills, October 16 to 18, 2007. The workshop is $360. For more information contact the Royal Institute for Deaf Blind Children on (02) 9871 1233.
Deb Sukarna and David Hornsby will be conducting another seminar at the Darebin Arts Centre on the 1st September. For information call Paula Welham on (03) 9499 2065.
The following articles appeared in the June edition of JVIB:
Win a prize for your ‘dictionary dress-up’ by wearing something which starts with the same letter as your name!
The Statewide Vision Resource Centre is again organising a National Literacy & Numeracy Week Activity which promises to be a bit of a hoot!!! at SVRC
When: Friday 7 September from 10am to 2.30pm
Where: at the SVRC - 370 Springvale Rd Donvale (in the grounds
of Heatherwood School) Parking just north in Doncaster Indoor Sports Centre
grounds.
Who: any student with a vision impairment, together with family,
teachers or aides.
What to bring: Your favourite word (in your preferred format),
your lunch (morning tea will be provided), your low vision aids, your word and
alphabet knowledge and your smile!!
Cost: Free
On ‘Dictionary Detective Day’ you can come and try some fun activities using large print dictionaries, talking dictionaries, optical and electronic magnifiers, online dictionaries and more!!!
Franklin International are sponsors of National Literacy and Numeracy Week and are generously lending us some Franklin Language Master Talking Dictionaries for this activity and we have MyReader, SmartView and PocketViewer on loan from Humanware.
RSVP: to Marion or Deb on 9841 0242 by Friday, August 31.
This year’s driving camp will be held on Thursday the 6th & Friday the 7th of December at Charlton. There are only 9 places. Payment will be in one cheque. The cost will be $145. Please email Helen Caldow to ensure a place is available and to receive the forms. PLEASE DO NOT CONTACT SVRC.
Students need to meet the following criteria:
Helen can be contacted via email: caldow.helen.f@edumail.vic.gov.au
The World Blind Union - Children’s Committee and the Spanish National Organisation on the Blind, in partnership with UNICEF, ICEVI and Save the Children, are hosting the 1st International Congress for Blind and Partially Sighted Children - “Listening to the Children”.
When: 25th to 29th March 2008
Where: ONCE Educational Resource Centre “Santiago Apóstol”
in Pontevedra, Spain
They want 24 boys and girls with vision impairments representing all six regions of the world to participate in discussions about their particular needs, and policy decisions required by those responsible for their care. The really exciting part is that there is a competition for those who wish to attend, and winners will be funded to go to Spain! They are after teenagers (aged 14 to 16) who are actively involved in regional, national or international children’s initiatives. Applicants are asked to submit an essay (up to 1,500 words) on one of three themes:
If you need more information, let us know or email umc@once.es. The entry form is quite lengthy.
The 2007 Great Victorian Bike Ride looks very exciting indeed!!! Whilst we probably won’t be organising a group, we thought you might like to know a bit about it - and maybe go with your own school group or organise a family event!!!
When: Saturday 24 November to Sunday 2 December (9 days)
Where: Cowes to Buchan in Gippsland
Distance: 544km
Longest day: 88km
| Price category | Before 14 September 2007 | After 14 September 2007 | ||
| Online | Paper | Online | Paper | |
| Adult | $640 | $660 | $740 | $760 |
| Child Under 17 | $495 | $515 | $595 | $615 |
| Child Under 10 | $110 | $130 | $210 | $230 |
Note: there are discounts for families and for school groups
Optional costs include: transport Melbourne to Cowes, transport
from Buchan to Melbourne, day trip to Wilson’s Prom (day 3), insurance
From the Bicycle Victoria website:
The Great Victorian Bike Ride is the world’s largest fully supported bike
tour: a nine day, 544km bike riding and camping festival. It’s an exciting,
thriving community on the move, that takes in a different region of Victoria,
Australia each year. Imagine riding side-by-side with a new found friend, experiencing
the spectacular sights and sounds from the seat of your bike. The Great Victorian
Bike Ride draws people from all walks of life. Whether you’re eight or
78, seriously sporty or new to cycling, there’s nothing like the buzz
of soaring along on a bike with 3,500 others, nor the sense of achievement in
getting somewhere by your own steam. Gippsland: there are few places in the
world where you will find such an extraordinary diversity of landscapes. From
lush rolling hills to snow capped mountains, rugged coastlines to magnificent
waterways and wide sandy beaches - Gippsland has it all.
For more information about the ride visit: http://www.bv.com.au/great-rides/20004/
Vision Australia, the Dept of Sustainability & Environment, Parks Victoria and Sea Wish are holding a Bird watching day on September 15th. For more information call Di Hayward - (03) 9761 0011.
A group of students with vision impairments from Queensland will be having a snow experience from 3rd to 7th September. Queensland teacher Di Porrill was hoping that some of Victoria’s students could join them at the RVIB Ski Lodge! She thought it would be a great opportunity for socialising and for our students to “show us how it’s done (whatever they do in snow)”. The nine students are aged 14 to 18.
If you’d like more information about the RVIB Ski Lodge, visit: http://www.rvibski.com.au/ and to see information about transport, gear hire etc visit: http://www.svrc.vic.edu.au/BawBaw.htm
Saturday 4th August was the first social meeting of families of vision impaired students on the Mornington Peninsula, and it’s all thanks to Jackie Robinson, the force behind the get-together.
Families met at the AMF Bowling Centre on the Frankston/Cranbourne Road and had a game of Ten Pin Bowling, a bit of a chat, a cup of coffee and a couple of bowls of hot chips. Kids met each other for the first time, as did the parents.
The parents clicked and are keen on getting together in five weeks. They have discussed lots of ideas for future outings, such as The Ashcombe Maze, Ace High Riding School, Top Fun - mini golf, tandem bike riding, swimming, Mornington Train Ride, a double-decker bus ride, a cooking day, or a board games day. The ideas came thick and fast, and the enthusiasm was apparent.
The next get together will be a swimming day at the Pelican Park in Hastings on Saturday 8th September. It is an outstanding facility, set on the beach front. It has a great fitness centre with a pool, a sensational coffee shop and a very large park for walking the coffee and cake off.
If you are at all interesting in getting involved with this group please ring either:
Over the weekend of 3 - 5 August 2007, Guide Dogs Victoria ran a new and exciting program for students – Guide Dog Program for Teenagers! The objective of this program was for school aged students (ranging form 14 – 20 years) to gain a realistic experience of what it is to care for, live with and travel using a Guide Dog.
Six students from around Melbourne and country Victoria arrived at GDV campus
in Kew on Friday evening. The anticipation was clearly visible for the students
who couldn’t wait to be paired up with their guide dog.
After a huge meal, the students bid farewell to their parents and got stuck
into the program, beginning with an introduction to “handle work”
including basic commands, positions and signals.
On Saturday morning the students were up bright and early, eager to receive and get to know their dog. Three black and three blonde Labradors met their temporary owners and became instant friends! After some training in obedience, and how to toilet the dog, the students and instructors headed to North Balwyn for their first residential walk with the dog.
After lunch the students received some further training in obedience and grooming and health checks of the dogs. A second residential walk was completed in East Kew, where the students worked with their dogs to make safe road crossings and negotiate obstacles along the way. As all of the students were cane users and accustomed to finding the gutter or obstacles with their canes, it was a very different experience to have the guide dog maneuvering around the hazards.
The Sunday presented a further challenging environment for the student / dog teams when they completed a walk through the shopping strip of Fairfield, complete with street furniture, buskers, onlookers, and even tied up pets yapping at the guide dogs as they walked past!
After a shared lunch with their family, the students completed the weekend program with a solo walk along river with family members cheering as the students walked past!
At the completion of the program the students were also provided with a booklet (in their nominated format) which included a heap of information on dog behaviour, feeding, sleeping arrangements, obedience, exercise, grooming etc.
The students reported that they thought the weekend was a fantastic initiative and definitely a worthwhile program to participate in to gain a good understanding of the related skills and responsibilities of having a guide dog. The students were able to reflect on their own mobility skills and goals and discuss how having a guide dog would impact on their current and future mobility and lifestyle.
Applications for this exciting program for older students close on August 31. Please contact any member of the CMS team for further details.
Dean Johnson 9854 4506
Rachel Morgan 9854 4469
Sharon Taylor 9854 4496
Lil Deverell 9854 4542
Alicia Madden 9854 4493
Janelle O’Loughlin 9854 4520
Erin Galloway 9854 4521
The ever-energetic Jeni Blake and her student, Nikita, are organising a Braille Fun Day at Chelsea Primary School on August 29th. The day will include a ‘Braille-ion-aire quiz’ and then a walk to the Chelsea Indoor Fun Park. The cost will be $12 for students and $5 for adults. Please contact Jeni on 0428 134 660 for a flier in your preferred format and an application.
In February 2008, Vision Australia will award Further Education Bursaries to a select number of students who are blind or have low vision. The bursaries are awarded to people who for financial reasons would not be able to participate in further education. Each Bursary provides adaptive technology up to the value of $6000.
Eligibility Criteria
Selection Criteria
The Bursary Committee will take the following criteria into consideration when
making their selection:
Applications are treated in the strictest confidence. All applicants will be notified of the outcome of their application. All decisions are final and no correspondence will be entered into.
How to Apply
There are three stages in the application process.
Stage 1. Contact Vision Australia for an Adaptive Technology Bursary Assessment.
Stage 2. Submit the Application form and accompanying documentation.
Stage 3. Submit a copy of your tertiary enrollment form.
The deadline for applications (stage1 and 2) is 29 October 2007.
For more information or to make an appointment contact: Renee Williamson, Tertiary
Education Consultant, Vision Australia
Telephone (direct): (03) 9520 5555
Toll free: 1300 84 74 66
Email: bursary@visionaustralia.org
The Centre for Learning Innovation's (NSW) Adaptive Technology site now contains a News and Reviews section. Several product reviews are now available and more will be added in the near future. This section of the site replaces the Adaptive Technology Newsletter, as it is a more efficient way of making information available. The News and Reviews section has a link to Latest News, which includes snippets on adaptive technology developments. There is also a link to Upcoming Events, where information on relevant conferences and seminars is provided.
Andrew Downie, SEO, Adaptive Technologies, Connected Learning Team, Centre for Learning Innovation NSW Department of Education and Training Ph: (02) 9715 8347 Email: andrew.downie@det.nsw.edu.au http://www.cli.nsw.edu.au
The Jackson Models, an essential part of sex education for blind students, are models of the genitals and are made of a latex-type material making them very realistic. There are various models including stages of growth of the pregnant uterus enabling the blind student to feel the foetus within the uterus. Priced around $5,000 from the USA: http://ww.jimjacksonanatomymodels.com or they can be borrowed from Family Planning Victoria - phone (03) 9257 0100.
From the ever-helpful Lea Nagel, VT Eastern
Some considerations when making submissions for funding and buying notebook computers:
If your student has problems with glare: not many of the computers now have a matt screen. The Lenovo (Department roll-out) ones do, and some Hewlett-Packards do. ASUS and others seem to all have shiny screens.
Make sure you buy a computer with enough RAM (Random Access Memory) to run
Vista, which uses lots more RAM than XP. You can still buy computers with XP
or Vista. Schools that I work in seem to still be running XP. In a couple of
years, however, the school or the student will probably want to upgrade to Vista,
so there needs to be that capability. On top of Vista-capable, you need to buy
enough RAM to run extra software, depending on student need: JAWS uses lots
of RAM and so might other text-to-speech or enlargement software.
IMPORTANT: Talk to the school Information Technology people
before you buy the computer and check that they will be happy to load the (generally
Microsoft Office) software that is used in the school, onto the computer, and
provide IT support for it. If IT are on board before you buy the computer, you
will find that they can be very helpful. Some IT departments will only support
computers that they purchased themselves on behalf of the integration program
(and your student). Some are happy to support whatever you buy. Others will
not provide any support. In that case, budget for outsourced IT support.
From Tricia d’Apice
Royal Institute for Deaf and Blind Children (RIDBC) has expanded its services to cater for school aged children with a vision impairment in rural or remote areas of Australia. The new RIDBC Teleschool provides services for children from birth to the end of their schooling. The service provides weekly contact for families through video conferencing, phone, email or post. It is designed to compliment the services already provided by the child’s itinerant teacher. Families and itinerant teachers can access the service to provide assistance for the child for braille or adaptive technology instruction, as well as other disability specific needs.
Video conferencing can take place at a local service venue or in the family home, with the equipment provided by RIDBC. Appropriate resources are mailed out regularly to be used as instructional material for the video conferences. The service does not replace the current visiting teacher service and comes at no cost to the family.
Visit: http://www.ridbc.org.au
and there is a ripper video clip here: http://www.ridbc.org.au/services/remote_video.asp
Phone: Melissa McCarthy 1300 131 923 (RIDBC Teleschool Co-ordinator)
Or email: teleschool@ridbc.org.au
The Association for Children with a Disability has developed a range of resources to assist parents and service providers in better supporting siblings. Web-based information is available at http://www.sibs.org.au and there is a directory of sibling programs at http://www.acd.org.au. To get hard copies of the ‘Sibsheets’, call (03) 9818 2000 or freecall for rural callers 1800 654 013.
The Volume 26, Number 2 issue of Future Reflections - the National Federation of the Blind Magazine for Parents and Teachers of Blind Children features articles on sports, fitness and blindness. As the editorial indicates, the articles “are a collection of stories by and about blind adults, blind kids, parents, PE teachers, and coaches which confirm this truth: blind kids don’t have to be relegated to the swing on the playground, keeping score during PE class, or sitting at home listening to music while everybody else goes to the ballgame. Blind kids can swing a bat, race down the soccer field, rock-climb with friends, dive at the community pool, compete on the gymnastics team, hike up mountains, play a family game of touch football, cheer on his or her favourite team at the sports stadium, and more. They can, that is, if we expect it and give them lots of opportunities to practice and build up stamina, dexterity, strength, and resilience in body and in mind. This is a truth you can count on.”
Articles include:
One interesting described another feat achieved by Erik Wiehenmayer, the only blind person to reach the top of Everest - a climb with a group of blind teenagers!
‘His expedition crew of forty people and sixty yaks, strapped with duffel bags, tents, propane tanks, folding chairs, cooking equipment and other essential gear, wound its way through the Qomolangma (Chinese for Everest) Nature Preserve in southern Tibet for an arduous two-week trek to Advance Base Camp, where the north face of Mount Everest towered to the right and Lhakpa Ri rose to the left. Trekking through the Himalayas above lower Everest Base Camp at 17,000 feet is dangerous enough for a sighted person, let alone for blind teenagers with little climbing experience, as was the case on this expedition, called Climbing Blind. Footpaths worn into loose rock on mountainsides can be as narrow as the width of two hiking boots, with thousand-foot drop-offs that can send any stumbling climber into an uncontrollable slide to icy glacial rivers.
“When stones are kicked over the side, I can hear them falling very far and I know that it’s dangerous,” said Kyila, eighteen, one of two girls on the trip. Like most Tibetans, she does not have a last name. “But I’m not scared. I follow the sound of the bell.”’
Let us know if you want the full text, or to read this and other articles, go to: http://www.nfb.org/nfb/Future_Reflections.asp?SnID=1019147678
Jeni Blake would like to sell the reading-writing stand (right). It was supplied by Co-ordinates Occupational Therapy Services and is clear Perspex with a large bull-dog-type clip at the top. It also has a built-in sleeve for displaying information or improving contrast under the sloping surface. It is currently located at the SVRC if you’d like to view it - and is selling for $40. Please contact Jeni for further details - 0428 134 660.
Thanks to Deb Lewis, Mike Steer, Andrew Downie, Tricia D’Apice, Paula Welham, Odette Budge, Lea Nagel, Lee Clarke, Lil Deverill, Dean Johnson and Di Hayward for contributing to this edition of The Bulletin. Thanks also to our fabulous proof-readers, stuffers and mailers.
Marion Blazé (who can be emailed at marionblaze@svrc.vic.edu.au).