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This issue was edited by Marion Blazé, Education Officer, Statewide Vision Resource Centre.
Now that the Expo is over, we can start thinking about the end of year and Christmas! At this time there are a few things to remember:
When: Wednesday December 6 - 11am
Where: Statewide Vision Resource Centre, 370-380 Springvale Rd., Donvale
PLEASE, RSVP (so we have some idea of numbers) to 9841 0242
Come and look in our glass cabinets at the SVRC for some funky ideas for Christmas crafts. If you have any, please share. Braille Christmas cards are always a winner. Try brailling a Christmas tree out of the letter g:
g
ggg
ggggg
ggggggg
ggggggggg
ggggggggggg
ggg
ggggg
ggg
From Deb Lewis, Co-ordinator, Statewide Vision Resource Centre
Last week a small but keen group gathered in the Vision Australia Board Room in Kooyong to meet Mike McLinden, senior lecturer in vision impairment from the University of Birmingham. And his topic, “Online ‘Problem-Based Learning’” had us riveted – as he not only talked about this topic, but also used his presentation to demonstrate how it works for students.
The University of Birmingham offers a 2-year course for teachers of children with vision impairments who study through distance education. But in order to overcome student isolation, the course works in quite a different way to any course I have ever studied!
Starting right from the very beginning students meet and work in groups to discuss what they would like to learn – this discussion based around real life situations. Students build a ‘mind map’ of topics that will need to be investigated – for example:
and this becomes the basis of their learning. Not only does this give students the opportunity to work their way through the prescribed course material in a meaningful way, it also recognises the skills, knowledge and prior learning that students bring to the course.
Having briefly experienced this style of ‘teaching’ I feel it would be an engaging and successful way to learn. And in addition, students also learn braille, participate in teaching practicum and agency visits, meet in regional study groups, are allocated a tutor/mentor, and have access to online discussion groups and daily online support from lecturers – just like a ‘virtual classroom’!
For recent research activities from the University of Birmingham, see the VICTAR website: http://www.education.bham.ac.uk/research/victar/research.htm
By Marion Blazé, Education Officer, Statewide Vision Resource Centre
Leona Holloway, the Braille Transcription Co-ordinator at Vision Australia, managed to cover an amazing amount of material in the four hours allowed for this workshop. We looked at the history of this change to the Braille code, contractions and sequencing, punctuation and print symbols, mode indicators and numbers and simple mathematics. At the end of each section, Leona asked us to transcribe some Braille using our new knowledge of the code. This really demonstrated how someone who already knows Braille is going to cope with the fairly minor changes on the literary side, but we’ll have some teaching ahead of us on the maths side (you should see fractions now!). Amongst the 35 participants, there were some heated debated and some knitted brows, but I think we all finished the session feeling like UEB had been clarified for us. Thanks, Leona, for a fascinating day. One participant whispered to me “I’d forgotten how much fun Braille could be!”.
Don’t forget that Deb Lewis and Lea Nagel have spent a heap of time going over our braille correspondence lessons and these are now available in the new UEB code. So, if you, or any parents or aides need to brush up before next year, now’s the time to start.
By Annette Godfrey-Magee, Education Officer, Statewide Vision Resource Centre
A total of 26 people: Visiting teachers, integration aides and class teachers, some as far away as Echuca, attended Leanne Nagel’s workshop on JAWS. Leanne, with great skill and humor taught some of us serious luddites some of the intricacies of this screen reading program. Lea loaded a document on each of our laptops that was printed in white (on a white background, so it was not visible: a very clever idea to stop us cheating), and we were forced to be attentive to the audio output, just like our students. Navigating around the document was a matter of understanding where the curser was and manipulating it to read a word, a paragraph, a line or letter. All good fun stuff!
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By Marion Blazé, Education Officer, Statewide Vision Resource Centre
The staff of the SVRC and, I think, many presenters were exhausted after the efforts of Friday. This event gets bigger (and better) every year!
The latest in technology was displayed and demonstrated by Humanware, Quantum Technology and Micro Marvelous. The Mimio man (from IBS Audio Visual) hardly had time for a lunch break. European Eyewear and the Library, Equipment Solutions and Vis Tech Centres of Vision Australia, showed their latest, and we even had people from the Blind Sports Association, Blind Citizens Australia, Braille & Tactile Signs and Guide Dogs Victoria. Our own ex-student Bryony offered her pearls of wisdom on VCE and career paths. Bolinda Publishing sold a few audio books and very generously donated to our SVRC library and our ‘Door prize’.
Many other organizations who could not send representatives, provided brochures, catalogues and some ‘freebies’. There are lots of brochures still at Resource, if you missed out.
Who Came?
110 people signed our registration lists (compared with 63 last year) but, from
discussions with presenters, there were probably closer to 150 people there
on the day. We met personnel from schools, many students and parents, Visiting
Teachers, of course, and even a group from New South Wales. Vision Australia
even sent their Friday Support Skills Group over in a bus both in the morning
and a different group in the afternoon. So we can literally say we had bus loads
of people!
The Bolinda Door Prize was won by number 58 on our registration list: Eileen Houben, mother of a little girl on the CEO VT service. Mike from Bolinda picked out six audio books which he thought they might enjoy. Congratulations Eileen and happy listening to you and your daughter!
I’d like to say a huge ‘thank you’ to our ever busy SVRC staff who slaved away setting up, keeping things moving, directing traffic, making food appear and disappear and being so friendly throughout it all. They really are a magical team. Thank you also to Lea Nagel who, after overhearing a conversation about how we might get one, made us a terrific banner for the front fence, so that everyone could find us.
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In order to save batteries when not connected to power, IBM laptops have a low contrast screen display. To brighten it up use the following key command:
To set up your laptop to open every time with a bright screen on batteries:
Thanks to Jake (VI student), Mt Evelyn PS
Just have a look at this!!!
An Aide and VT told us about the new “talking” operating system for Apple Macs – Mac OS X (Leopard). Information is available on the website below. In the words of the Aide who looked at it: “It leaves JAWS for dead”. Doesn’t come out until next year on Apple computers, though.
http://www.apple.com/macosx/leopard/accessibility.html
Unlike Windows which needs Jaws; OS X has a screen reader built in. The current version can do English fairly well now, but the Leopard version will have the better voice and support for foreign languages like Chinese.
The Lions Club of Warrandyte are running a driving day to provide the opportunity for blind and vision impaired people to drive a motor vehicle.
When: Sunday 25th March 2007
Where: Sandown Motor Circuit
For further information, call Peter Watts on 03 9844 3903.
The Australian Paralympic Committee are on a search for talent and will be in Morwell on December 9.
When: 9 December 2006 from 10am till 2pm
Where: Morwell Leisure Centre, McDonald St Morwell
For further information, call Tim Matthews on 03 9614 6800.
Adelaide - October, 2007
Blind Sports Victoria is seeking expressions of interest from blind and vision impaired individuals who wish to compete in athletics, swimming, or power-lifting events. For more information contact Blind Sports Victoria bldsport@netscape.net.au
New O&M instructor on team
The team welcomes Janelle O’Loughlin to the team. Janelle completed the Bachelor of Health Sciences (Orientation and Mobility) at La Trobe University in 2003. For the past three years, Janelle has been working as an O&M Instructor with Guide Dogs NSW/ACT based in the Canberra office. She relocated to Melbourne last month and has begun working in the Children’s Mobility Services at GDV and is looking forward to making lots of new contacts and having a great time with the team.
Darlene McIntosh has joined the Orientation and Mobility team at GDV where she will be providing a range of O&M services, including O&M programs for Young Adults, along with the 2 other Instructors in the team. The CMS thanks Darlene for her contribution to the team over the past 2 years.
Melbourne Program
This year the CMS will be running a program for older teenagers based in the
Melbourne CBD. Unlike the January ‘GDV Goes CBD’ program where the
students stay at the Guide Dogs Victoria campus in Kew, the students will be
staying in a hotel in the CBD right where the action is. This program is being
run instead of the terrific Sydney program that has been run for the past 4
years. The Sydney program may return next year. The CMS team is always on the
lookout for new ideas for programs and ways of providing service that students
will find interesting and that will enhance their O&M skill development.
GDV Goes CBD
This program will be run from January 15 – 19 and will be based at the
Guide Dogs Victoria campus in Kew. Although the program name has been used before,
the activities and challenges will be new.
CMS Orientation and Mobility morning
The team ran an O&M morning several weeks ago and the participants enjoyed
learning more about the nature and scope of O&M services in general and
at the CMS in particular. For more information about O&M mornings contact
Alicia at the CMS. The mornings are run on a regular basis and attendees include
parents, teachers and teacher aides.
SPEVI conference in Perth
6 staff from Guide Dogs Victoria will be attending the SPEVI conference in Perth.
5 of the staff will be from the CMS team and 1 will be from the Acquired Brain
Injury (ABI) service. Some staff will be presenting papers and a poster session.
International Mobility Conference Hong Kong
November 27 – December 1 2006
2 staff from GDV will be attending the conference in Hong Kong and learning
about Orientation and Mobility services from around the world. The presentations
about O&M services for children were of most interest to the CMS staff member
attending.
CMS newsletter
The latest edition of the CMS newsletter was distributed at the start of Term
4. We welcome contributions so please contact any of the CMS staff if you want
to have an article included in the Term 1 - 2007 edition.
For further information about any of the items here or any aspect of the Children’s
Mobility please don’t hesitate to contact a member of the Instructor team.
Rachel 9854 4469
Sharon 9854 4496
Lil 9854 4542
Alicia 9854 4493
Janelle 9854 4520
Dean 9854 4506
From Deb Lewis, Co-ordinator, Statewide Vision Resource Centre
As predicted, the number of requests for etext learning materials increased this year – trebled actually!!! Here are the statistics for production of texts and novels.
| Requests | 2003 |
2004 |
2005 |
2006 |
| Successful requests | 17 |
36 |
48 |
210 |
| Unsuccessful requests | 10 |
9 |
5 |
10 |
| Total requests made | 27 |
45 |
67 |
220 |
Reasons for requests being unsuccessful included:
| Number | 2003 |
2004 |
2005 |
2006 |
| Number of students requesting books in e-text | 9 |
13 |
15 |
43 |
| Number of DE&T Visiting Teachers who made requests | 5 |
6 |
11 |
20 |
We have also been rather busy producing literature for our beginning readers
including around 300 picture story books as PowerPoint presentations! And the
littlies just love them from all accounts!
So as you can see, our etext resources are growing and there are lots and lots
of students out there who are utilising this relatively new format.
Got any great tips or good news etext stories? Let us know!
There is currently an advertisement online for a full-time Visiting Teacher for the Vision Impaired in Eastern region. Call Lea Nagel for further information (9841 0242).
Meredith's student Alana achieved 82% for year 11 Legal Studies exam - even though she is only in year 10!!!
Thanks to Jake, Deb Lewis, Dean Jones, Annette Godfrey-Magee, Lea Nagel, Meredith Walsh, Raelene Turpin and Diana 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).