TSBVI Coffee Hour: More Remote O&M Strategies 09/21/2020 Transcript start >> Everybody, welcome, welcome, weÕre going to give it a couple minutes and make sure everyone has time to join us. Hi, Gina. Thanks for joining us today. Hello. Everyone, while youÕre waiting for us to start, you can go ahead and set your chat to all panelists and attendees. It currently says all panelists is what it defaults to. You can change it to all panelists and attendees and everyone can see what youÕre saying. Hello. Hello. Welcome, everybody. All right. Thanks, Kate. Looks like the numbers are leveling out. IÕve got a few announcements before we get started. Again, if you have questions or comments during the time that Chris is talking, please post that in the chat box, and make sure it says all panelists and attendees, not just all panelists, otherwise we canÕt see what youÕre saying. Your microphones and cameras are muted. You donÕt need to worry about that. The recording of this and past coffee hour sessions are shared through a link on our coffee hour page. Once youÕre on that page, youÕll scroll down to enter the list of sessions where it says visit the new TSVBI outreach coffee hour archives. ThatÕs a link and it will take you to transcripts and chat information. To obtain your CEUs for today, youÕll respond to the evaluation that will be e-mailed to you this evening from our registration website ESC works. YouÕll end the code given at the end of the session, and the CEU certificate will generate upon completion of that evaluation. There is no opening code, only a closing code. It will be given at the end of todayÕs presentation. WeÕll stop the presentation at 3:55 and give you your code and some announcements. IÕm happy to introduce you today to my friend Chris Tabb, and IÕll turn it over to him. >> Thank you very much, Casey. Hello, everyone. It looks like the links just got there. There are links that are in the chat, and the one is for the LiveBinders that weÕll be using today and weÕll put this in once in a while so folks can still see that. The next link is for one of the documents weÕre going to look at, which is a guidelines and standards document. The third link is for input for the same document, the guidelines and standards, and then the fourth link is for anybody that wanted to get to other binders that are related to O&M. ThatÕs where you can find those as well. So weÕre going to be working on the LiveBinders to get us going here. WeÕre going to dive into those things. But IÕm hoping that people will be participating in the chat. We can start that right away. If there are things that you came hoping to hear about today, hoping to talk about, please include that in the chat so we can make sure to talk about that. If you have comments, suggestions, other resources to share as we go along, it makes for such a more in depth conversation thatÕs beneficial for everyone if weÕre all participating. So please do go ahead and participate there. ItÕs wonderful to be able to see everybody. I know IÕm going to miss half the chat, so IÕm going to download it and save it for later. If you want to do that, you can choose the -- if youÕre on a computer, the three dots to the right of the chat that allows you to save that chat or you can probably wait for that to be tooled around by our media team so they can get that in a downloadable format. Hopefully that chat will be an active area for learning, and as I see things come up in the chat, itÕs wonderful to be back home in Texas. I love everybody in Maryland and had a wonderful time there, learned a lot, but it sure is nice to be back at TSVBI. WeÕre going to get things started here. IÕm going to share this screen. WeÕre going to jump over to LiveBinders. If you use the links in the chat, you can navigate to the LiveBinders that weÕre going to work from today, which is the LiveBinders on the remote instruction. ThereÕs also links for some of the documents that are stored in Google Docs that you can get to from the link, your choice. Whatever works easiest for you. So IÕm just using, at the moment, a browser Firefox, but you can use any browser to get into the LiveBinders. The easiest way is to use the link. WeÕre going to start with talking about some different areas. WeÕre going to focus on risk assessment and some additional resources. A lot of information has come about recently about risks or things to be concerned about. So IÕm going to cause everybody to have a little bit of a worry time, but hopefully that worry will be something that helps us to think about how we can provide remote instruction and do so in a safe manner for both our students, our families, and ourselves. There is certainly the inherent risk of COVID that is here, but by doing remote instruction, we add some additional layers of risks. There have been lots of groups that have looked at this in different ways, and weÕre going through those resources. So IÕm going to start with this last tab thatÕs additional guidance for O&M. One of the first links that is here is from parents, and weÕll get into that. ThatÕs a video that is a terrific way to get a sense of what parents are experiencing in relation to remote instruction. WeÕve got some different guidance documents that other groups have done. So IÕm going to jump into those to begin with. This is from a group from, and they started a group looking at liability in regard to telepractice. There are lots of different ways to look at telepractice, remote instruction. This is just one perspective that helps people to think in terms of what could happen so that hopefully you can be prepared. I think you can provide services in ways that are safe and allow you to continue instruction, whether itÕs face-to-face or remote or some type of hybrid. These are just things to consider. The quote here, telepractice is a viable option when specific conditions are met. IÕm going to scroll. IÕm sorry if I make anybody nauseous. IÕm going to navigate to a start here that says considerations for risk assessment for student client injury. This represents both school age as well as adults. IÕm not sure how many are school age and providing for adults, but since school age itself is a cross-section because we have students from the ages of 18 up to 21, 22, weÕre working with both school aged students as well as adults. I will try to use the word learner instead of student wherever possible because itÕs really based on -- could be an infant or senior citizen. If theyÕre learning and youÕre providing instruction from a remote place. So this first category -- and IÕm color-blind, so IÕm going to try not to name the colors because IÕll mess them up. This first category is low risk factors. This is where it we would like to stay. This is a safe area. WeÕve got -- it lists the columns. WeÕve got potential risk for injury, safety supervision, learner goal, and lesson plan, scope of practice, and learner characteristics for risk assessment. Again, these are the columns going across the top in the first row, the header row. Then weÕre going to look at the Considerations for liability. The first low is the low risk factors. When something is predictable and itÕs familiar, we have a better sense of whatÕs going to happen. We have more control over that situation. We can anticipate things a little bit better. ThatÕs our safe zone. The safety supervision, weÕre going to be looking today at all sorts of different supervision. Sometimes, as you the O&M instructor will be right there. Sometimes you wonÕt be there based on whatÕs happening. In our face-to-face instruction, thereÕs always discussion about role release and weÕre willing to have another professional or family member or team member provide. That could be a TVI. That could be a paraprofessional, any number of people on the team. It could even be a sibling or a peer. So thereÕs places where weÕre willing to, letÕs say, release the wheel and let things happen without us being there. It might be something as simple as a traveler working with another young person to get through the campus to the cafeteria, to carry their tray and find the table. The same can be true if weÕre asking a parent to carry out a lesson that we might be able to see remotely through a smartphone camera or may be seeing later after the parent takes a video or we might just hear about it. So we need to consider the level of supervision. In this first category, itÕs considered low risk because you, as the O&M, are providing on-site supervision. YouÕre there. As we move down into some greater risk factors, the environment can change. We can have a more complex environment. The O&M instructor from this particular scenario -- again, this document is looking -- in this portion of the document, weÕre looking very much at what could go wrong so that we can hopefully prevent those things from happen. ItÕs a little bit like making sure that no one returns around the pool because we know thatÕs where you can slip on the wet concrete. WeÕre trying to take all of those precautions ahead of time to prevent them from occurring. So when we think about the instructor not being there or anticipating things, thatÕs when we increase the risk. Again, these documents are available for you to view on a LiveBinders. You can click the link and can download them. IÕm going to demonstrate that real quick. By clicking the link above the document, it will just automatically provide the document as a PDF and I can download that document on to the computer. It will look different based on which browser youÕre using. Some documents are actually links to websites. This particular document is stored as a PDF, and the authors were kind to allow that to be shared. Moving into the higher risk category -- IÕll jump back to the chat soon if we have questions. We can come back to talk about this more. This is going to be our highest potential for risk. WeÕve got -- this is in our first column, high risk factors. The second column is high potential for environmental variables, some of which could be life-threatening. We donÕt want to put people in dangerous situations while weÕre with them, wherever possible, but if we think about not being physically present, to send somebody who hasnÕt developed safe travel skills to send them downtown for a lesson on their own and have them come back to tell us how it went is a risky scenario. Again, the third column, the O&M is not on site. So we are also looking as we move across that grid, the goals at this point wouldnÕt even match with what weÕve asked the learner to do. WeÕre putting ourselves in a situation of being a perfect target for a lawsuit and even greater sense, weÕre putting that student or that learner, that traveler in an environment where there could be injury or risk. So we want to avoid doing that. This is one resource. ThereÕs also another document that came out recently, and this is the image of how it would look on the LiveBinders. In order to make it a little bit bigger, IÕm going to click the link so we can actually jump over to Google Docs and see it there. Hopefully it will make it larger or it will allow me to do that. The -- letÕs see if I can make it bigger here. The document itself, there is basically an outline on our left-hand side that can help for navigating the document. By tabbing through, you might be able to use that easier if youÕre using a screen reader. But IÕm just going to read through these to get a sense of whatÕs in this document. Need for evaluation, weÕve got methods and purposes of evaluation, remote assessment considerations, in-person assessment considerations, final considerations and additional resources. So IÕm going to scroll through the document a little bit, try to make the document a little bit bigger here. The purpose of this guidance document -- the purpose of this document is to provide resources of the teachers of the blind and visually impaired and certified orientation mobility assessments during a unique time of remote and hybrid instruction T provides a summary of the guidelines as mandated by California -- this was prepared in California, but certainly wherever you are in the country or the world, thereÕs going to be some topics in here that are very relevant. It says in overview of methods required for evaluations and considerations for in-person and virtual assessments. So they drew from different places. TheyÕve also noted here that they are drawing from the California association of school psychologists resource paper from August of 2020. We are fortunate that we have ancillary or related fields that we can learn from their experience; many of which have been provided remote instruction well before the days of COVID. TheyÕve had a greater opportunity to develop resources and guidance on this. IÕm going to -- question one, what is the impact of school site closures on special education monitoring time lines and processes? If you have questions about how am I supposed to complete my evaluations, things like that, this gives you at least some sense that youÕre not the only one. TheyÕre going to give you some ideas of, yes, this is a true and given fact for everyone across the country and the world to talk about how those things can happen, whether youÕre extending that time, whether youÕre conducting the evaluation, asking for additional time or possibly just saying that youÕre going to make amendments to it moving forward. So weÕll look at some of those as we continue. And I apologize, when we get to the end of the document, IÕm going to give credit to the authors, the one that comes to my mind is he moment is Ting Su and Justin Kaiser. IÕve forgotten the others. WeÕll do that at the end of the document. Methods and purpose of evaluation and assessment, lots of different ways to evaluate and assess for O&M and weÕll talk about some resources for that as well. IÕm going to make myself a note to go into that. As we move along, thereÕs going to be some details here that look at, even down to the level of what does assessment and evaluation and is testing really mean? So thereÕs some description here, helping us to understand what is evaluation, assessment, and testing? Are they the same? Are they different? Is this so weÕre really looking at -- IÕm going to read the underlined part here. Evaluation and assessment are both broader activities that both can be conducted without testing. So in other words, you donÕt have to physically be present to do that testing yourself. You donÕt physically have to be present for all areas of evaluation and assessment. There are some areas as a specialist that I feel is necessary to be present for that I wouldnÕt ask a student to do without my presence or without having some established practice of having that happen. But there are ways to address some of those components remotely. WeÕll talk about those. IÕm going to move into the third category here into remote assessment considerations. IÕm going to read through the bullet points. IÕm sorry IÕm going through this quickly. Just want to make sure we have a chance to give an overview of the resources that are available and if we have time to take a deeper dive into those, we will. So the first set of bullets here, extensive review of records. We donÕt have to be present for a records review. You may have to go on campus to get those records. They may not be able digitally, but we donÕt physically have to be in the same place as our learner at that time. Interviews with the IEP team, students family and students. Those obviously can be done remotely. We may ask certain things. We may ask for details about what a student is or isnÕt able to do in different environments. The family and team may or may not be able to meet in a video conference format. It might be through e-mail or U.S. mail. Lots of different ways that can occur. Options in learn environments, itÕs important to be able to know what a student is able to do when theyÕre in this new learning system. For students who are face-to-face, theyÕre in school, their travel will be different based on for many schools having a different number of students and staff in the building. For many students, itÕs half capacity or alternating days. There are situations where students are learning all remotely and it might be helpful for you to know how is their learning occurring? Can you sit in on lesson theyÕre doing? Maybe you can observe the OT or the PT conducting their less ons remotely or maybe the speech, getting a sense of how well does a child attend to that activity compared to your activity? Is a child able to remain in a seated position or are they able to follow through with the directions givive? Lots of different ways you can use that to add to your report, evaluation, and assessment. Remember to evaluate and assess in the spirit of best intentions. So weÕve got our free education, least restrictive environment. This is individualized still. Next set of points, longer list here. Comprehensive evaluation. We need a statement that the reported data did not comprise a comprehensive evaluation. Important for mobility. IÕm only one credential, one -- not even credential. One certificate -- IÕm only an O&M. So thatÕs the only window that I can take from an O&M perspective, I canÕt say that itÕs comprehensive when I havenÕt physically been able to be with the student. As an example, in the state of Texas weÕre required to evaluate in different lighting conditions. I can ask the parent to dim the lights and observe the child -- the traveler walking through a room and might be able to discern a difference between their travel during the lights being fully illuminated, but IÕm still going to be using a deviceÕs camera window. I donÕt get the full perspective as if I was physically there. How the data is gathered, including when the data were collected through remote video and or with assistance of untrained volunteer. There may be opportunity for you to work with the individual who is assisting, but if not, in either case, giving some documentation about that, it really comes back to whatever report youÕre going to write, you want to be writing a report that is the same kind of report you would like to be receiving about a student coming to you. So if a student moved during COVID and you received an O&M report, what would be helpful information for you? You would want to have that same type of information in your report. Continuing on with the bullets, student affect during the assessment, some children are reportedly not as engaged. So are they happy? Excited? Are they falling asleep. Sorry to be graphic, but it the drool coming out of their mouth? How much are they participating or getting from that activity? Next bullet, what components of the assessment were or were not included. There may be some things that you cannot do or you do not feel are safe to do in lots of given situations. YouÕll want to note that. There may be some things when you get to the end where you canÕt make a decision and you may have to physically say, I canÕt make a determination with this level of information and, therefore, I recommend that the decision be delayed until we can meet face-to-face. Or it may be that youÕre just saying that you would like to add additional information when you meet face-to-face. Next bullet, what testing, data collection, and assessment methods were omitted and must be carried out when possible in order to finalize the recommendations? Next bullet. Validity statement indicating the results and or interpretation of the results were likely impacted by virtual assessment. And you may know the student well enough to know that youÕre getting either the same student you would get if you were face-to-face or if the student is functioning at a much different level based on either the remote delivery or the environment that the student has to be in or possibly the engagement of others around. If you were independent with that student before, you could go to areas where the student didnÕt have any assistance and now, so many of the family members are trying to assist. You may not be able to get a true sense of what that student can do independently. Lots of different variables that can occur. Finally, a recommendation that outstanding components of that comprehensive evaluation be completed and findings confirmed once face-to-face assessment is safe. No one knows when that will be. YouÕre just using that indicating that still needs to occur in order to make that assessment thorough and truly complete. It says this is especially critical when there is a major change in placement. In other words, going from virtual classroom to physical classroom or a change in the studentÕs needs based on their disability. Personal decision, I will not decline service to a student based on a virtual assessment. It might be very easy to identify a student who does need service, but I wouldnÕt want to decline student or change a student to no service based on what I was able to gather from a virtual assessment. I feel much safer making those determinations when I can meet face-to-face with the student to make sure that I thoroughly conducted all of those areas to make sure that IÕve covered every area to determine whether that student in this case does not need the additional service for O&M. IÕm going to read the bold here. When conducting a remote assessment, or reporting assessment results that have been collected virtually or reliant on the interpretation of untrained assistance, weÕre gathering information from our team, from family, different sources, that weÕre not physically there with, itÕs essential to include a disclaimer statement within the evaluation report. This is necessary to ensure that assessment work arounds do not become a permanent way of conducting comprehensive evaluations as remote assessments may be limited in scope and may not yield sufficient data to make meaningful individualized recommendations. ThereÕs been lots of concerns that have come from O&Ms about what if my supervisor says this is the way we must do this forever because I donÕt have to travel anywhere and itÕs so much less expensive. ItÕs important to use these statements, both in conversation with your administrators and your teams, also in your reports, to say that during this uncontrollable situation, during this situation of COVID where there is an increased level of safety need, thatÕs why weÕre making these accommodations, but these accommodations will also have to be matched with amendments to these evaluations when we are able to do so. These are just are work arounds. They are not permanent solutions. They are a way of providing instruction to allow students to continue to maintain and hopefully continue to develop their skills while we are apart during this time of COVID and social distancing. The document goes on -- IÕm going to try to go a little bit faster here to make sure we cover some other options. The next set of bullets weÕre looking at the whole environment and how the family has been faring during COVID-19. These are important considerations for the level of independence the young person or adult may have. Access to resources and supports for distance learning, not all of our students have the same amount of computer time or any computer time or ability to connect to the internet. They may be engaged or disengaged with distance learning. Expectations of other siblings performance during distance learning. We have some families where itÕs an only child. We have families where they have six or more children at home. ThatÕs a much different balancing act both for the children themselves as well as for the parents. How has the academic performance before and during distance learning changed? Has there been any change? They identify two different types of data. WeÕre going to have quantitative data as well as qualitative data. You may be asking family members to count certain things. It might be how often are they using their cane when they go outside? Are they sweeping it and for how many feet? ThatÕs our quantitative data. That qualitative data, getting their empresstion how things are going. WeÕve got our review of records. WeÕve got interviews with the team and family. Within each of these are greater detail if you choose to look through that. It goes into some depth about our triennials or FIEs as well as initial evaluations. Again, the disclaimer statement, when conducting a remote assessment or reporting assessment results, it is essential to include this disclaimer statement. HereÕs some suggestions for the disclaimer statement, that the reported data did not comprise a comprehensive evaluation, talking about how the data was gathered and so on. Talking about in-person assessment considerations to keep you safe as well as the family safe and those that are in the environment that youÕre heading to. This delegation of testing to non-credentials personnel. This is about the role release. It goes on and on. So thereÕs lots and lots of details here that will be helpful for you for consideration when youÕre planning, how I do test? What do I do? It thereÕs some details here about before and during your testing and after testing, things about cleaning your -- this is, again, for face-to-face, cleaning things so that they are safe for both you and the next individual that youÕre meeting with. ThereÕs some final considerations. It also includes some additional resources and trying to get to the part where I can identify our authors here. So this is the guidance document was prepared by a group of individuals that include both orientation mobility specialists, teachers of the visually impaired, and others. So hopefully that will be helpful for you all. Jump back to our LiveBinders here. IÕm going to stop sharing and see if thereÕs anything in the chat. LetÕs see. Again, please, I encourage you, if you have questions, comments, if IÕm -- if youÕre bored, tell me so that I know to change it up a bit or if there are things IÕm not covering that you have questions about, please, please, please ask so that we can make sure to cover that. At the moment, IÕm not noticing anything at a quick glance. LetÕs see. ThereÕs a question from Amy, can I continue to access the LiveBinders after this meeting? All of the information thatÕs in the LiveBinders is there available for you 24 hours a day. It doesnÕt sleep. It just keeping living there. You can share it with your families, teams. You can bookmark it however you would like to use it. WeÕre fortunate that the authors gave us permission to use the documents that weÕre sharing today. So weÕre very fortunate that the field has great willingness to share. We all learn from each other. IÕm going to jump back to sharing for the moment. This is the guidance document, and now IÕm going to jump to something thatÕs much more O&M specific. This is a work in progress. It is not complete. I donÕt know that it will ever be complete. Hopefully it will continue to evolve. I donÕt think that remote instruction is going to go away. I think remote instruction is something that will have a place. It will likely not be anywhere near as prevalent as it is required to be today because of COVID, but there are some things that weÕre all learning can be very helpful, ways to support ongoing education, ways to support greater levels of service for people in remote areas, and so there may be some things that continue because of what we learn during this time of kind of remote instruction out of necessity. This is a guidance document IÕm going to bring over the outline for just a second. IÕll review the outline real quick. This is a document. It doesnÕt have any authors listed, but thereÕs been contributors, and IÕll share how you can contribute if you have any information would be great. So this is just a collection of considerations from across the field of orientation mobility, both from comps and NOMCs. The first part talks about remote instruction in general. It does get into some things about risk, which weÕll talk about and considerations. It has some examples of instructional activities that are specific to -- it doesnÕt show it. I donÕt know how to make the outline bigger there, but weÕve got instructional activities that can be done, letÕs say, without the need for additional assistance, with assistance recommended and then strongly recommended. Then beginning to develop categories about helpers. Is it untrained family member? Trained family member? If itÕs untrained, how do we train? Looking at tools and resources. ThereÕs only one term, but there is a growing document. So IÕm going to hide the outline for just a moment. Again, hopefully these documents will develop so that youÕll have them as resources both for yourself, but also to share the rationale behind this document or the motivation for it. There were lots and lots of people who had questions about my administrator asking me for guidance or assistance. Nothing existed. There wasnÕt anything that occurred before because we hadnÕt been willing to open the door to remote instruction. It was opened for us by COVID. So this is just being developed as we speak. Those didnÕt exist. Now weÕre making efforts to develop them, which is just as the other documents that are already been shared, same idea. ThatÕs where these are coming from. So this particular document, again, work in progress. This is giving some information about what is remote instruction, where did it come from. Talks about what O&Ms do. Then it gets into risk. It talks about risks in somewhat general terms. It talks about some legal concepts, like the reasonable man or due diligence. What is our part as a professional? What should we be thinking about and considering? ItÕs not to cast a shadow on all of -- everything we do in remote instruction, but itÕs to help us have a healthy respect for things that can happen so that we can be preventive in our planning. Just like previewing routes to make sure theyÕre safe before a traveler goes, this is like previewing our virtual route. As the statement says, ultimately, the responsibility for outcome falls on the O&M specialist. So weÕre just trying to mitigate liability as much as possible while still providing effective instruction. So these are some instructional activities. They are not required. They are not mandated. They are just ideas or places to start from thinking, hopefully to get the creative juices flowing. These are some examples of instructional activities that can generally be completed without need for additional precautions or on site assistant. It says generally because all of our learners are different. We have some that are ready to do marathons and be world travelers and others that are just beginning with purposeful movement. Maybe just starting with simple hand movements or maybe not even that just yet. YouÕll have to decide as the O&M if your learner at that moment is in that general category and adapt accordingly to the needs of the individual learner. WeÕve got -- IÕm going to read through some examples here. We have got connecting via phone, video conference, other sharing to discuss and demonstrate concepts that do not require ambulation. In this category, weÕre just saying this is the safest, lowest risk category. Just to go back to our original document from the working group, this would be in our low risk category. Sending print and tactile materials via U.S. mail that can be reviewed by the learner and used for instruction. Tactile maps, intersection diagrams, transit schedules, reviewing smartphones, reviewing and identifying different types of intersections, discussing components of the ADA that impact the built environment and IÕm going to pause to kind of make some new connections. When we think about the activities we would do for O&M such as talk about the ADA, this can really tie into some of the other areas of a studentÕs general -- their core curriculum, their general curriculum -- I forgot my wording -- the expanded core curriculum as well as what youÕre focusing on for O&M. So the ADA, maybe they have a government class. Now, you can tie into the government class because weÕre talking about legislation. Lots of different ways to be able to tie into what the English language arts teacher is doing or other areas which probably would make them very happy to re-enforce those skills. WeÕve got basic skills, room familiarization, wall trailing, upper and lower body protective techniques, identifying landmarks. That could be in their home or community. It could be trying to remember landmarks from their school routes. Lots of different ways to use that information. Finding places to store personal items that can be retrieved from a known location in the house. ItÕs the same thing as going to their cubby or finding their locker. WeÕre just starting with the simple and they can expand that when they are able to be back in schools. Organizational strategies, dropped object retrieval, these are all basic skills that can be used whether they drop their pencil under their desk or they drop their penny in the cafeteria. ItÕs the same idea. So developing those basic scanning patterns to be able to find a dropped object. Another activity that can be done safely remotely. WeÕve got map skills, discussing map activities for developing and finding and using landmarks, practicing your cognitive mapping skills, developing mapping skills in the home. Can they make a map of their room or house? It might be that they are using -- if they are totally non visual, that youÕre using things that you can glue on paper. If they have wiki sticks, there are lots of ways to do that. It doesnÕt have to be fancy equipment or expensive items that are purchased. We can just make homemade maps. Continuing on through, weÕve got understanding map space compared to physical space. There are some -- thereÕs a link here for a tool for drawing. If you happen to have the ability to produce maps with an embosser, you can use this to do that. You can use tactile image enhancer or a PIAF machine, pictures in a flash. It might be you are a service center that has the machine to be able to produce it. You make the map at home. You pick it up or they mail it to you. Now you have a consumable item to give to that student. If it gets lost or damaged, it costs $1 to replace it. ItÕs a reasonable expense. WeÕve got sensory development skill. We have listening for environmental sounds in the backyard or front porch. You can have them listen for either nature sounds or automobile sounds to be able to develop the auditory sense. Beginning echo location, can they walk past certain open doors to hear the door thatÕs open or hear the door thatÕs closed? Can they practice getting really close to a wall line and then moving back away from it to hear the distance? If they really need the beginning, you can start with a bowl in the kitchen and hold the bowl up to your ear just like the shell. It changes the sound and the way we hear that echo. ItÕs helping to highlight the use of sound. Those are things we can do very easily remotely. We have proprioceptive awareness for them to be able to even sitting at a chair flexing their ankles or putting some books under their feet so that they can feel the tipping point. ItÕs the same thing we would do feeling the edge of the step, but this is a much safer environment to do it in. If they are using a telescope. IÕm going to jump over to the chat because it looks like we have some things there. Just to check in. Okay. LetÕs good. Looks like we have a question here from Angela. How do you work on IEP goals previously established and based on travel school environments or using equipment that is not in the home? So if we have a goal that isnÕt something thatÕs very much focused toward the school environment, we need to do task analysis to break the goal into the parts that would be used to support it. So as an example, if the goal is that the student will travel from the front door of the high school to find their classroom at the third floor, if the student is taking stairs, we can begin to develop some of those stair concepts to talk about where do you want to be on the stairs? Where do you want to be looking when you travel on the stairs if the student has vision, to talk about the cane watching the floor and the vision being up ahead. As theyÕre ascending, theyÕre looking for travelers coming toward them. They are scanning the steps for backpacks and things like that. By breaking down into our task analysis, we can begin to use those things. If itÕs the route, we can include tactile maps to include those in. LetÕs see. Angela, hopefully I got to some topics you were asking about. From Laurie, where would I find information on echo location in the LiveBinders? ThereÕs information about echo location in the expanded core curriculum binder under sensory efficiency. So one of the nine areas of expanded core curriculum is sensory efficiency and echo location is part of using our audition and so thatÕs where thatÕs going to be found. ThereÕs resources there from APH, resources from the internet, some YouTube videos, lots of different ways to do that. LetÕs see. IÕm going to jump back into sharing. Okay. WeÕve got orientation. Many of our students are not being taught the clock face anymore. So those are very helpful concepts to have when weÕre doing things like street crossings. So using our orientation techniques now while we have the time to develop those skills again, helping to develop things like clock face orientation, cardinal directions, lots of different ways to do that. Our advanced students, latitude and longitude to tie into GPS, address systems, in Austin, Texas, all the street numbers get smaller the further south you go. It might be a system of streets in a different direction with different naming systems and different naming conventions or talking about central streets whereas the east and the west begin, where does the north and south begin? How can we make detours downtown? How can a one-way street impact our travel? Technology, we have smartphones, planning travel with smart transportation, using route planning apps. Even if youÕre not familiar with these yourself, you can introduce them to the student. You can watch training videos on them together. ThereÕs different places like Hadley school for the blind has terrific videos on learning to use apps and different accessibility features. You can do some Google searching for whatever app youÕre trying to learn. Sometimes thereÕs podcasts to be able to learn some of that information along with the student if you donÕt know how to use it yourself. ThereÕs talking about aspects of public transportation: Though you may not be able to jump into an Uber with them. It might be youÕre talking about, well, how can I compare whether it makes more sense to use a transportation company like an Uber or Lyft or a taxi or walk. Either of those are helpful. If they love koala bears, weÕre going to take a trip to the zoo virtually. We can plan a route. They have virtual tours that you can watch as a fun video. You can plan the route. As a reward, you do the virtual visit to the zoo. There are basics of GPS. Beginning to use those landmarks, talking about how close they have to be. You can even do some GPS right at home. Mark something in the front yard. Mark something in the backyard. ItÕs not a huge travel, but it begins to give them the sense of how close the GPS can get you to what you want to find and how much you have to do using your noggin. WeÕve got the self-determination and advocacy for more advanced learners, talking about APS who owns the road, how do I make those changes? How do I fill out an application to have one in installed? There are by the way some LiveBinders on things like this for pedestrians, too. Lots of different features that we can use in here to help a learner to develop those self-advocacy skills of being an adult. Even down to ordering their own cane. They donÕt know their own cane size. So they might not know, well, how do I change my tip or find the cane I want to that when youÕre no longer working with them, theyÕll know how to get that as an independent adult. Reaching out to university -- IÕm sorry. IÕm skipping a few here. University offices of accessibility, disabled student services so theyÕll begin to know how do I communicate with them? What kind of questions can I ask them? How do you interview to find out if this is the right place for me? What supports will they provide? WhatÕs going to be different from all the assistance that I get in public school now to when I go to college? Those are very important things for our students to learn. This is an ideal opportunity for them. Concepts for intersections, you can use tactile features. For students who have residual vision, you can use things like Google street maps where you can Zoom right into that to be able to look at the intersection, talk about whatÕs happening at that intersection. You can also videotape intersections yourself. When itÕs nearby and you know theyÕre going to encounter, talk about the corners and what the uniques challenge would be for those travel areas that are relevant for the student. WeÕre into the next category now. WeÕve got examples of instructional activities that can generally be completed with some additional precautions or an on site assistant. This is generally. WeÕre going to have some students attempting to do the task from the first category will really need assistance. So this is just a generalized set. YouÕll have to be making that determination as a professional whatÕs appropriate for each one of your learners. So this might be travel to the mailbox and back. For some students, this can be easy. They might not need assistance. For others, they might need a parent standing at the door watching. For others, they might need someone to reach out and touch that shoulder if necessary because of steps in the environment, because of traffic near the house, any number of reasons. So that will be a determination that you have to make. It could be just something as easy as a sibling going with them if thatÕs appropriate, based on the student and the environment and the sibling. Walking around the block, traveling to a nearby intersection, setting up a folding chair to practice listening. You might not be willing to have that student travel on their own for safety of lots of different concerns, but it might be that if a parent goes with them or an older sibling, that you would feel comfortable. You can actually have their smartphone with them, having a conversation with the intersection together, or you might give them a set of assignments to go and take data collection on their own. How many times was there a right-hand turn? How many times did the left-hand turn lane go? Did the -- did both the north and south parallel traffic go at the same time? Lots of different ways that you can begin to get them thinking critically about the intersection to help them begin to think about whatÕs going to happen next so their brain is engaged in the process rather than just being passive every time they get to the intersection someone tells them what to do. We want them to go beyond that. IÕm going to jump back to our chat for a second here. LetÕs see. Which binder is that in? I donÕt know when that section was. So weÕve been talking about the remote instruction guidelines. Joann has a question here. LetÕs see. Reaching out to guide dog schools, what questions do I ask? Those are great topics. Lots of different information about guide dogs is available and helping students to begin to make those choices. LetÕs see. Jump back over again to the binder. So examples -- I donÕt have much in this category yet. YouÕre last category of whatÕs going to be requiring on sit assistant. When I say required, itÕs generally required. Everyone is different. We have very, very independent travelers, and we have some travelers who you may not want anyone to be there other than you as a professional. As an example, street crossings at high volume intersections, thereÕs some other information here. This is on site assistance. Is this an untrained family member, paraprofessional or team member? We usedded to have an oar generaltation mobility assistant. It was an OMA program. There was actually training, a curriculum of skills that an official orientation mobility assistant would have to meet in order to be receiving that level of orientation -- to be a certified OMA. Those are things that we no longer have but maybe they will be revived because thereÕs definitely a need especially in our current situation. So this is just a way of thinking about how much do I have to provide? Another example, trained family member, maybe weÕre thinking about a student or a young person at least 18 years old has reviewed the list of safety precautions to be aware of. There might be some areas where we need no training and other areas where you want them to be aware of certain things especially in regard to individual travelers and their unique needs. These are some special tools and resources for providing O&M instruction. WeÕve got bone conduction headphones. WeÕve got straps that go on the chest to hold the smartphone so that the -- if the traveler is able to have that, you have the view of what the traveler sees, whether thereÕs an assistant there with them or not. So lots of different resources that are here. IÕm going to pause for a minute on this document, jump over into something else. Lots more for you to explore if youÕd like. There is also a link here for you to add input to that document. So if there are things you would like to know more about, please, please, please add your thoughts, add your comments. If there are things you would like added, this is meant to be collaborative. This next document is -- IÕm going to read this disclaimer. APSEA is the Atlantic provinces. They were created an an in-house resource to provide some general guidance and structure to TV Is or O&M training regarding the delivery of O&M programs in a team capacity. This document was written before COVID. This is about role release, but you may find that it can be helpful in thinking about how you would conduct team member involvement in O&M and that team includes families as well. At the time the guidelines were created, there was no intention of sharing them externally. Although we are now most happy to do so. In doing so, we would like to acknowledge while the guidelines were closely vetted by our team of O&M specialists, they are not peer reviewed. These are ways -- again, IÕm sorry. I canÕt do the colors. I think weÕve got green, yellow, and I donÕt know whatÕs next. WeÕve got our teaching category in the description. WeÕve got re-enforcing categories and the beginning areas would be something you would be much more likely to role release to somebody else. Yellow weÕre in the middle. And this third area understanding categories, this is the more advanced level where you as the O&M would want to retain it for just the times where you are present with that student or that learner. Just as some examples, weÕve got attending behaviors. ThatÕs in the category of teaching where posture and gait were more in re-enforcing. So the O&M is going to introduce it. ItÕs reinforced. IÕm going to jump back up for just a second to explain a little bit. The description of the teaching categories is here that describes the levels. I think I have about one second left. ThereÕs also a video here thatÕs of parents providing some of their own input about how remote instruction has gone for them and their experiences of what itÕs like on the receives end of remote instruction with their children. You may find it very interesting. Toward the end of the video, itÕs a little more free form about feedback. ItÕs well worth watching. It was a terrific experience as a professional to know how things were seen as a family receiving the instruction being provided. I think I have to zip my lips and let our leaders take over. >> Thanks, Chris. That was so much great information. I want to give a reminder we have different times for Thursday sessions and Monday sessions. Mondays are at 3:00 p.m. central daylight time and Thursdays are at 12:00 noon. Check our website for updates and registration for information for upcoming sessions. This Thursday, the 24th, we have active learning space resources for learning with Charlotte and Kate. Then Monday we have learning Nemeth code Pre-K through first grade with Susan O sterhaus. The recording from this session will be available through a link on our coffee hour page. Once youÕre on the coffee hour page, youÕll scroll down to under the list of sessions where it says visit the new outreach coffee hour archives. It has a link and it will take you to the recordings, handouts, transcripts, and chat information from our sessions. On the evaluation that youÕll receive this evening from ESC works, thereÕs two boxes on there numbered 10 and 11 that say additional comments you would like to share with the presenters or event planning committee. Let us know other sessions and ideas that you have for future coffee hours. We look at those every single week and use them for planning. Thank you guys so, so much for joining today. Huge things to Chris Tabb for coming back and sharing this great information. >> Thanks, everyone.