Number 9 Friday 16^th June 2000

Inside This Issue

• PD Program
• Counselling Skills
• SPEVI Evening Function
• SVRC Mini Expo
• VT-VI Adventure Camp
• VI Students with Additional Impairments - Report
• Popular Music in Braille
• DEET SD&I Conference
• TADVIC
• Parent Support Group
• Retina Australia
• RVIB Transition Info Night, RVIB Intro to Public Transport
• IMAX Theatre
• JSPEVI
• Staff News
• Job in the Solomons
• Reports from the trip to Samoa by VT Janie McLeod and her student Yeliz

Counselling Skills

Geoff Bowen, Educational Psychologist for the SVRC and Northern Region; and Helen Clements, also from Northern Region will be conducting a full day seminar/workshop on Friday 25^th August at the SVRC for Visiting Teachers. Details will follow or call the SVRC.

Next Evening SPEVI Function

The 31^st August is the date for the next SPEVI night and catered dinner, this time at RVIB. The focus will be current research into Vision in Victoria and we will have the pleasure of hearing several speakers including optometrist, Rikki Gibson, who is currently studying Retinitus Pigmentosa; and continent-hopper, Dr Jill Keeffe who is always up to something interesting. Details will follow or call Deb Lewis (9841 0242) or Sandie Mackevicius (9888 7889).

SVRC Mini Expo

The staff of the SVRC are currently planning an Expo of assistive technology and equipment for students who are blind and vision impaired for some time in term 4. We are currently inviting presenters from Quantum, Spectronics, European Eyewear, MicroMarvellous, Edsoft etc to provide displays and seminars/discussions. This Expo will be suitable for Visiting Teachers, students, integration staff and parents. Please call Lyn or Deb to provide feedback for this idea, to offer organisational assistance or to suggest other suppliers. Thanks.

VT – VI Adventure Camp

Jeni Blake and I are cooking up an adventure/self esteem camp for term 3. Places will be available for a maximum of 15 upper primary to secondary students. Activities may include public transport travel to and from the venue (in Gippsland) followed by abseiling, climbing wall, flying fox (over a lake) and other fun stuff. We are currently pricing the whole affair and will bring you details very soon. Call Deb to register your student’s interest. Details are attached for VTs or call Deb Lewis.

VI Students with Additional Impairments – Report

Fifty interested participants, from as far as the border, came to our annual Vision Impaired Students with Additional Impairments professional development day last week. We were treated to Geoff Bowen’s approach to behaviour management – he encouraged us to see behaviour management as a team effort involving the whole staff. Yvette Higgins and Annette Godfrey-Magee then discussed classroom strategies for supporting vision impaired students in the regular or special school setting.

Assistant principal of Nepean School, Ann Burke, gave us an overview of the work they are doing to cater for blind students at the school in relation to the CSF. Ann showed us the wonderful curriculum document being developed by staff which is also on sale for $50. Contact Nepean School on 9786 9111. Yvette described the expanded core curriculum – additional curriculum areas that need to be included for a vision impaired student. The expanded core curriculum includes:

• Visual skills – attention, focus, fixation, scanning, tracking
• Learning media – tactual, audio, enlarged print, print with low vision aids
• Auditory skills – memory, listening skills
• Adaptive technology – speech, enlargement
• Low vision aids – magnifier, telescope, CCTV
• Orientation and mobility
• Social skills

Lynda Anderson, occupational therapist from Diamond Valley SDS, spoke about sensory enrichment and tactile defensiveness and was very engaging. Diamond Valley SDS, with its boxes of rice and cornflakes to explore and its comprehensive horse riding program sounds like a very interesting place!

Professor Hector Maclean, paediatric ophthalmologist from The Royal Eye and Ear Hospital is always a wonderful speaker and we are constantly grateful for his support to the Visiting Teacher Service. He reported that we get 40 new students on DEET Visiting Teacher Service each year and 15 of these have additional impairments. Always entertaining, one participant suggested that he was ophthalmology’s answer to Billy Connelly!

With wonderful food – as usual – from the staff and students from Heatherwood School, it was a great day and very well received by all. Several participants again commented on the high standard of the program – one wrote, ‘it was the best PD days I have ever attended. Very relevant to the student population at our school (SDS). I feel I have really learnt something – this does not often happen on PD days!’

Popular Music Available in Braille

Opus Technologies is publishing braille editions of music titles from Hal Leonard’s extensive catalogue of print music including 25 individual sheet music pieces. These consist of the piano vocal guitar (pvg), easy piano (ep), or piano solo (ps) versions of the following 10 best-selling popular songs:

1. Forrest Gump Main Title (Feather Theme): ep, ps

2. Great Balls of Fire (Jerry Lee Lewis): pvg

3. Heart and Soul: pvg, ep, ps

4. Imagine (John Lennon): pvg, ep, ps

5. Memory (From ‘Cats’): pvg, ep, ps

6. My Heart Will Go On (Love Theme from ‘Titanic’): pvg, ep, ps

7. Tears in Heaven (Eric Clapton): pvg, ep, ps

8. Unchained Melody (The Righteous Brothers): pvg, ep

9. What a Wonderful World (Louis Armstrong): pvg, ep, ps

10. Yesterday (The Beatles): pvg, ep

Each braille music piece is professionally transcribed and proofread according to the latest international standards for the music braille code, using uncontracted braille for all literary elements.

Fore more information contact Opus Technologies, 13333 Thunderhead St., San Diego, CA 92129; Phone/Fax 858-538-9401; E-mail opus@opustec.com; Web site www.opustec.com.

DEET SD&I Conference – 1-2 August 2000

Eastern Metropolitan Region is again conducting a conference for principals, teachers, support staff and parents involved in supporting students with disabilities and impairments in schools. The program includes keynote addresses by:

• Dr Elizabeth Bruce – Grief, Loss and Disability: Information Processing within Grief
• Dr Katherine Rowe – Auditory Processing Effects on Early Literacy and Behaviour
• Professor Frank Oberklaid – Service Delivery for Students with Special Needs – the School as a Platform

The program will again be held at the Melbourne Exhibition and Convention Centre and will cost $198 (including GST). A copy of the program is available at the SVRC or you can contact Di Betts at EMR on 9881 0225.

TADVIC

TADVIC is a non-profit, non-denominational organisation whose volunteer members are dedicated to improving the quality of life for people with disabilities. TADVIC’s technical volunteers design and build or modify equipment to meet the specific needs of individuals when no commercial options exist. Contact TADVIC on 9853 8655 or get further info at www.vicnet.net.au/~gerged/tadvic.htm/.

VT Parent Support Group

The next Parent Support Group will be held at the SVRC (360 Springvale Rd, Donvale) at 2pm on Saturday 15^th July. Guest speaker will be Dr Alan Johnson, director of research at Vision Australia Foundation.

Retina Australia

Retina Australia (Vic) Inc., formerly The Retinitis Pigmentosa Society (RP Society) represents people who live with Retinitis Pigmentosa and other Retinal Dystrophies. These are degenerative diseases causing low vision and a gradual deterioration of a person’s sight. The work of the RA is carried out by volunteers, many who are vision impaired. They aim to assist people who need to come to terms with the personal and social impact of gradually going blind, to raise public awareness to change community attitudes, and to facilitate self-help support and counselling to sufferers and their families.

People with RP and other Retinal Dystrophies, their family, the public and organisations sympathetic to their cause can join RA. Contact Kate Giles on 9650 5088 (phone/fax). Membership costs are:

• Pensioner/student $15
• Individual $25
• Family/Organisation $35

RVIB will be conducting and information evening ‘Moving on to School’ consisting of a panel of speakers including:

• Maree Littlepage – Manager, RVIB Education Services
• Sherry Cunningham – RVIB Senior Visiting Teacher
• Yvette Higgins – Education Officer, DEET
• Hugh McCusker – Catholic Education Office
• Teresa D’Aprano – Parent of child at prep at a local school
• Keith Young – parent of child at RVIB school
• Christine Malone – Parent of child in prep at RVIB school and a child in middle primary at St Scholasticas Resource Base

• Range of services available
• Eligibility criteria for service
• Ongoing involvement in parental choice of school
• Discussion and questions

Where: RVIB Staff Room – 333 Burwood Hwy, Burwood

RSVP: Sandie Mackevicius 9888 7889

RVIB: An Introduction to Public Transport for Kids!

RVIB Eastern Region are again running this program for students aged between 7 – 16 who would like to experience the different forms of public transport Melbourne has to offer.

When: Thursday 29^th June, 9.30am – 4.30pm

Where: RVIB Eastern Region – 333 Burwood Hwy, Burwood

Cost: Free – and includes all fares and lunch at Southbank

Further information: 9888 7889 or peckpa@bwd.rvib.org.au

Please note that this program may also be running from the Western, Northern and Southern offices of RVIB – contact your local office!

EASE: IMAX Theatre

Cirque Du Soleil (3D) is currently showing at the IMAX Theatre. Price for EASE members is $11. Contact EASE Ticket Service on 9699 8497 for details. A fee of $2 per booking is charged to help cover administration and postage costs. Bookings can be made by email ease@artsaccess.com.au and payment can be made (in advance) by credit card, cheque or money order.

JSPEVI

Yes, the long awaited Journal of the South Pacific Educators in Vision Impairment has arrived! The Journal presents essays, quantitative and qualitative research articles and analyses, conceptual papers, comprehensive reviews, case studies, policy analyses and innovative practice descriptions and evaluations on a wide variety of issues and topics related to the education of children, youth and adults in the South Pacific region who are blind or have vision impairments.

The Journal is provided free to SPEVI members as part of their annual membership benefits. There is an $15 subscription fee per volume for non-members – contact Fran Telec on 9886 7494. Membership of SPEVI till February 2001 is $30. Contact Deb Lewis on 9841 0242.

Articles in Volume 1, Number 1, 2000 include:

• Haptic Exploratory Strategies in Blind Children with Additional Impairments: Preliminary Case Study Findings
• Valuing Our Students’ Learning in the Extended Core Curriculum
• Parental Reports of Visual Diagnosis and Visual Acuity
• Reviews of Kurzweil 1000 and Kurzweil 3000
• Book Review of Multisensory Environments by Paul Pagliano

• Former DEET Visiting Teacher, Nola Christopher, who left a number of years ago to pursue a career as a class teacher, called recently to say that she was currently working 2 days a week as an RVIB Visiting Teacher. Although she is very much enjoying working with vision impaired students again, she said she had forgotten all the hard things about being a VT – carrying heavy boxes up stairs, paperwork, driving and getting lost! She said, ‘It’s a very demanding job, really!’ She sent her regards to the oldies who would remember her!
• We finally met our new Visiting Teachers from Mildura – Jodie Noblet and Jillian Hale – at a recent professional development day. It is great to have them on board!

The Solomon Islands need an experienced person to set up services for 200 registered clients with vision impairments on their 6 main islands. The Ministry of Health and Medical Services have funding to employ a person with experience in the field of low vision. If you are interested contact Diana Yates at the Community Based Rehabilitation Program, Ministry of Health and Medical Services, PO Box 349, Honiara, Solomon Islands or telephone 677 24589.

And Finally

This week I’m off to the wilds of Colac for a bit of VCE supervision and then to Charlton for driving camp with a bunch of feisty teenagers!!! As this will be the final episode of The Bulletin for term 2, I wish you all excellent holidays and for those seeking fun in the sun (lucky souls – I’ll be painting my house yet again), that the days are fine, the sand warm and the bar open!

Regards from Deb Lewis deblewis@svrc.vic.edu.au

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