TSBVI Coffee Hour: Eye Anatomy to Empowerment Ð 11-8-21

>>Cindy: My name is Cindy Bachofer. I am the low-vision consultant at Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired and I happily call myself an eyeball geek. I am always looking for more little nerdy eyeball facts to add and Kathi and I, I think came to this topic both having an interest in it and figuring out we had a joint interest and doing more activities together on this, so I'm going to let her introduce herself before we jump into more slides. 

>>Kathi: Yeah, I'm Kathi Garza and I have been at TSBVI for a while and I met Cindy at a bus stop and we got to talking about both of our visual impairments and after that we started working together a little bit here and there on classes and so I've been really excited to have the opportunity to do some of these lessons and help build this idea of empowerment, starting with eye anatomy, and so I'm excited to share this with you guys today. 

>>Cindy: On our title slide we have a picture of a young lady using a telescope to look across the quad -- that is hard to say -- at a building to see if -- we have them on a scavenger hunt. We can tell it's a very updated picture because she's wearing a mask. And we really appreciate feedback in the chat or questions if something is not clear or if we can expound a little bit on it because our presentation actually has very few words. We have a lot of pictures where we wanted to share how the students were involved in these lessons that we've developed and we've been able to add a lot of documents that we each have developed in putting these lessons together. And wanted you to have those as resources. So and I'm not advancing. There it goes. So we have three general objectives kind of umbrella ideas over the whole presentation. I think we've each found out and attendees who are working with students on learning more about their eye anatomy that it's leading to that sense of self-identity in that I have something that's unique about me. And if I understand that thing that is unique and I learn the language around it and the vocabulary, it's kind of like I own it. I've taken ownership in that idea and that's leading then to -- then I can talk about it. When people ask me when it's appropriate and in age-appropriate ways that I can explain, when I want to, what is my visual impairment. How do I see things. And, finally, leading to that tools and strategies. These are things that I use to help me get to the information I want. And through these lessons I think each of those has come out as a benefit and we've divided the presentation into three areas so firstly, looking really specifically at eye anatomy and then moving into visual access, and then more that kind of what I call inside the head, that social/emotional learning and lessons that bring more of that out. So in this slide we have a young boy is looking at a 3-D eye model. And I found that -- I think we all know the kid that when the vision teacher walks in, that barrier goes up. They cross their arms, they lean back. I'm not going to engage. And I found that when I can just bring in, for example, a 3-D eye model. We're just talking about the human eye. It's not your eye. It's not visual impairment that they will start to get engaged. And there are some very affordable options on these online and I find the ones that get students more engaged in it, especially if they have more removable parts like the cornea or the lens where the students are kind of getting a sense of how the eye is put together. That has been frequently been an opening lesson when I'm just trying to get to know a student and get them to open up a little more. That then leads to -- so if we're looking at that 3-D eye model, being able to label the parts. So where is the cornea located? And we have a picture of a student here on the left. By taking those words like cornea, vitreous, retina and splitting them into syllables, then we do a build the word activity where the students are learning that. And it can either be on printed cards or Braille segments of the eye syllables, because I think it's important, whether the student is blind or has low vision, that they can talk about that, that eye anatomy aspect for them. So he is putting the words together. And we talk about it as the beam of light enters the eye, the words go in the order from front to back. And then Kathi kind of expanded that and we have some students here on the picture on the right. One of our activities this August weekend that we have students on campus, they're putting together the definition with the word itself. Like retina, back wall of the eye that receives the electrical impulse. So the students are matching that together and Kathi had really expanded that list to give more learning for students in the specifics of the eye. So when this, the visual system, especially I think both of us had done this in short-term program classes where we can make this even an assistive technology lesson where the students are reading about how the visual system works or even their specific visual impairment and doing activities on the computer along with keyboard commands that gives them -- they're getting down into that detailed information about the eye and they can do it individually or as pairs or a small group, learning about that. This next slide is labeled life-sized eye model and, again, from our weekend program one of the resources that we have in the handout is there's a table that lists, like the cornea, and there are regular just household items you're going to find around the house that represent that part of the eye and then a really quick kid-friendly definition that goes with it. So one of the students here on the right is holding up a clear, just from the Dollar Store a clear big plastic salad bowl which represents the cornea of the eye and the phrase that goes along with that, the cornea of the eye, and like a windshield I stop things from getting in it. And they're just giving a student a sense of how the eye works. We have a student on the left holding up a -- it's a pool toy. It's a soft squishy cloth pool ring but it's doughnut-shaped and so it represents the iris of the eye. And when the students do this as a class, they line up, kind of like they're actors in a play where they are reading a part. She has a card that says "iris" and the definition is in bold print on the back of that card. So she's playing the iris. And when I've done this with just a single student, I just spread the items out around a horseshoe table and they move around the table with each of these parts. And Kathi can describe -- like she'd added in things like photos or -- or the photoreceptors, the rods and the cones. So depending on how many students you have playing this life-sized eye model or if you do it in a larger class, multiple students can get involved. 

>>Kathi: Sometimes we added those parts because we had a student in the program that specifically had like cone rod dystrophy or something that was related to the rods and cones and how they functioned and so it kind of made them feel a little bit like, oh, hey, this is kind of what's going on here with me. But this is my favorite, this slide is talking about the edible eyeball and so this is something that we came up with where we just took some different kinds of confectionaries, or candy, as the kids call it, and made an eyeball. We didn't use all of the parts. We only had certain parts we represent and you can use this as an informal assessment after you do a lot of these eye activities and say, okay, let's see if you remember now how these parts fit together. Or you can use it as an opener and, you know, kind of just walk kids through it and then move into more -- like where you're discussing. So the images on this slide are the front of the eyeball, which is a marshmallow. I buy the large campfire ones because they're larger and easier to work with, with a gummy lifesaver and we have a student in the middle holding up her creation and on the right is a picture of what it looks like from the back and there's a little sour belt for the retina. I even get those because they have the sugar on the ends so I say those are your photoreceptor cells on there, and then a Twizzler for the optic nerve. It's just a really fun thing. And we have the lesson plan in the handout. You know, the important thing to remember here is you just want to make sure and check for allergies before doing something like this or even if you're doing it in the classroom where other kids may have food allergies. We also added a vegetable version of this that some teachers have created on our campus, and so there's both of those lessons, depending on which one you choose to do with your students. So warning here, this is a cow eye picture. If you're squeamish, you may not want to look at the slide too long. Another thing I love doing with kids is the cow eye dissection. When Cindy was talking about the model eye and the removable parts I was like, well, just wait until we get a few slides in because this definitely has removable parts. So I was going to say for $7.95 you too can dissect. But, yeah, we did a super science class and because our grade level standards have dissection for middle school kids in life science, I thought this would be an appropriate activity to get them talking about and learning about the eye and so we would just get these cow eyes and the image on the left you've got some different parts spread out on the tray as the kids are taking them out of the eye. And on the right we have a student who is just kind of cutting the cornea off and about to dig into the middle of that with all the other parts. It's really neat because everything comes out in layers the way that we build it and so they're able to kind of see what part of the eye different pieces are from. So another thing that we kind of move into after we've, you know, done a lot of talk about the different parts of the eye and their function is actually then by this time we've spent enough time with the kiddos that we can -- you know, they're kind of warming up to these topics and they have had some fun activities and so they start talking about their own eye conditions. We have students researching eye conditions using different technology and assistive technology and a picture of a student who is composing all the information that he's found into some sort of a letter or statement that he can then hand over to his teacher or use to help advocate when he needs some additional support. It's kind of nice, especially if there's a group of kids when they start talking about their eye conditions and connecting what is similar about their condition and other person's condition and which parts are affected. And I think Cindy does this too but I typically would leave the model eye out and about or connect back to that model eye and say, oh, yeah, remember the rug at the back of the eye, the retina? Yeah, that's what's impacted by your visual impairment. And so maybe things are working okay in the front but it's the back of the eye that has challenges for you. And so it helps them kind of reconnect back to that. So, you know, all of these -- this particular activity, there's a student here holding a giant beach ball that looks like an eyeball. And at the end of one of the classes they got together and, you know, shared something, passed this ball around and then shared something that they learned. And so they named it raise your eye-Q just to bring it all back together and help kids connect what they learned and to share out about the things that maybe they didn't know before that were new. 

>>Cindy: There are different versions of that that I have done, Kathi, is we throw out the questions, define the lens. What does the lens do? And the person who has the ball can do that and then throw the ball to another person and kind of gives the challenge of optic nerve or it can, just like Kathi said, your specific eye condition and one thing I found that students can get really interested in is other animal eyes, other types of eyes and how they see. And I was impressed with, you know, when we threw that question out, how many factoids, little bits of trivia the students could share. And it's just a different way to be talking about the eye. And they have -- you won't be surprised -- a ton of fun tossing this beach ball around. 

>>Kathi: It's nice too because you're not even getting into the emotional stuff of what are some limitations you have or what are things that are hard for you or what do people say to you. If you could spend a significant amount of time just doing these types of activities to help kind of build that relationship that you have with the student, which I think, you know, goes a long way into later thinking about like optical devices and building trust for why is this tool helpful and what is this person doing here every week or whatever. So I think it's kind of a nice, like non-threatening way to get in there and start talking about important things without it feeling heavy. 

>>Cindy: And I heard the -- what is it? Statistic that it takes six times to hear something before you really get it. And I know when Kathi and I have done these low-vision tool classes, we'll get a group of, say, 12 kids asking them what do they know about their eye condition. And it can vary quite a bit where students, I don't remember to they can name it, define it, and even give you more details. So I think that just finding more ways to review that information and keep building that comfort level in with students is it's been a safe area to get to know the student. We're moving into a new section. 

>>Kathi: We're going to talk about moving into some of those more functional -- eye functional topics, access to visual tasks. And so this picture on here is of two students. What we did in an elementary version of this class is we just started by having them create a concept web. And so at the center of our concept web was the word "visual tasks." And we just wanted them initially to just brainstorm. What are some things in home and school in your community that you have to do every day where you use your eyes? And so it was just -- we weren't talking about are your eyes, do they work well, do they not work well? It was just let's just list out all of the things that you use your eyes for on a daily basis. Which allows us to then move into something like this, this variable access self-survey. And so we have a student here, students working on this task of taking some statements about these visual tasks. So like, you know, reading the print on the TV Guide on my TV screen or reading the numbers on a microwave or reading textbooks at school. So we have a list of tasks that students could cut out and sort into categories for things that I do by myself, things that I need a device to do or need a tool to do, and then things that I'm not able to do or that I have to ask somebody for help to do. And so it starts to help kids understand -- again, it's set up in a very judgment-free way. So it's like you're going to have things in each column and, you know, hopefully the goal is that you will end up moving some of these things into new columns as you learn about tools and devices or as you learn new strategies. Another way that we accomplish basically the same thing was to build these current access books. And so this was just for young elementary kids. We gave them some prompts, the same kinds of prompts and then had them make a book, again, sorting them into I use a device for this, I have to ask for help, I use regular print or large print and then they have a book they can either share with their peers or share with classroom teachers as a way of talking about their access. And so these two pictures are just of students who are glueing, cutting and glueing those different prompts into their books. For older students, like secondary age, we've done these visual access charts where we put chart paper all around the room with different prompts and then the column headings are how I handle this and what are some other ideas or problems I have with this. You can do it a couple of different ways. But it's kind of a way of saying, like, the problems I have with this task, reading the whiteboard from my seat is this. And here's what I do to handle it. And it's nice because as the kids go around the room filling out the different charts that have different tasks written on them, they're also reading what other kids have written and getting some ideas of what might work for them without us having to be the ones that say, you know, that long black thing I gave you a couple of weeks ago that helps you see things far away, maybe you should pull that out and use it. It's coming from their peers. So, you know, it's just helping them to kind of brainstorm different solutions to problems. And also to recognize that other kids struggle with the same types of tasks that they do. You know, it's not just -- you're not the only one. 

>>Cindy: I think what the charts also do is -- because there are multiple prompts, it gives that range of tech. Because there are some high-tech questions and we know in classrooms now there is so much -- there's so many more options for visual access than we had ten years ago. So looking from that, what am I more often high-tech using in the classroom and when we think about everything else. All of the ECC areas. At home, when I'm hanging out at my buddy's house, in the community. And it is able to bring up that art of low tech, such as optical devices. And we've got several pictures here of showing students are exploring items from nature. Seashells and even fossil bones and that idea, you know, you're trying to raise that visual curiosity. We always use the phrase "if they can't see it, how do they know it's there?" and so by putting the tools in their hands and getting the chance to access all of these are near tasks. On the bottom left we've got a student at one of our activities -- actually low-vision on the road program where we go out into a region and bring a day of activity. A person from a nature center brought in reptiles and snakes and there's a tarantula sitting on her wrist where the student is I don't want to touch this thing but I can get a better look at it by using the magnifier and being willing to do that. On the top right we have a student -- we were able to take them to the Texas State Capitol and it was an elementary program and everything was entering to those elementary students. And this boy is reading a playback with a hand-held magnifier and of course those plaques, it's the raised letters and he's wanting to figure out what's on this plaque. On the bottom right, one of our low vision on the road programs, we just spread out a range of near devices and a bunch of food packaging, especially the kid-appealing food packaging where you're looking at nutritional information and, you know, you're getting different points of information in with any of these lessons. But talking about the different nutritional components of, say, two different kinds of crackers. And doing it, even with just one or two other students, can be so much more engaging and it gives them, although I may not use my magnifier in a couple of my classes, in these two classes I typically do. Or for these specific tasks at home. And that's where we want the students to be talking to each other as a group about how they're using tools. And then just a few more pictures. This is with a telescope or monocular. We have a student on the left, we're at the San Antonio Museum of Art. It sometimes gets forgotten that a telescope -- I typically call it a scope with students, trying to get that a little cooler idea of it. You can do a mid-range distance. So the student is looking at a display case of -- I think they were Egyptian vases and wanting to see the detail on that. And by setting mid-range distance, which is not the shortest when it's closed all the way, but opening a little bit, you can do mid range. On the bottom a student is doing the same thing by looking at a jewelry display case. So instead of not always able to get a store clerk attendant to unlock the case, I still want to examine that jewelry. On the top, a couple of students were at the zoomie store and a lot of skateboards and T-shirts can be high up on the wall. Because they had a couple other friends that were there, I am more willing to use this telescope. This tool in a store that I am trying to become more comfortable with, more accepting of that tool. And then, finally, we have on the right we have taken kids to the dinosaur park and they actually -- there's some detailing on these dinosaurs. You know, we would ask does the dinosaur head or teeth showing? What's the snout look like? What are the details on the eyes? And the students were able to use their devices for that. So trying to just present that. There are so many places that are visually rich that have more information that can enrich your understanding of it and we want you to, you know, develop that skill and have a comfort level in taking your tool into that space. So our third and final section, moving into the social emotional learning part. There's a student here on the right holding a magnifying mirror and I think that is one of those -- have our students see a clear view of their eyes or an enlarged view of their eyes so they're getting a better idea. And the students would literally sit there for a couple of minutes and just examine it and move back and forth. And one more step that you can take on this, if students have a hand-held magnifier -- and this is of course with permission only -- but find a buddy who's willing to can I examine your eye? And so they're taking that magnifier up to -- they have just examined their eye -- up to that other person's eye and doing, okay, so maybe with different eye conditions and it shows in the iris, wow, that's what that looks like. It's just that more how do I feel about how my eye looks? Now I know what others are seeing. And always having the chance to talk about it a little more. 

>>Kathi: And I find that so interesting, especially with nastagmus. People used to make comments about it and I had no idea what they were talking about. When I would spend time looking in the mirror at home I wouldn't see it happening because it doesn't happen. And so it wasn't until you could start, like, videoing yourself or until I got more active in the community and was around more people that I was like, wow, I really notice that and whatever. I do think that's a really neat, you know, way to kind of give kids that opportunity to be aware of that if they want to, if they're comfortable with it, you know? I think that's really awesome. 

>>Cindy: And I've heard some students in these kinds of activities where, really? That's it? That's what everybody's talking about? I thought it was this huge massive weird thing. No, it's not. And it's just that, okay. I know what this is now. So this next activity, it bugs me. Kathi and I have both done different versions of this and Chrissy cowan, one of our colleagues in outreach, helped to develop this game where we know that phrase -- you know it really bugs me when people say how many fingers am I holding up? There's so many -- we first started doing it where there were just 30 of these little examples. It bugs me when. A student would pull that out of the jar. Has this ever happened to you? How did you respond? And then others in the circle or the other students in this activity, yeah, that happened to me and this is what I did. And sometimes it brings up the I got really upset and really mad at the person. And then the group kind of talks about it, reflects on that. Well, if you had the chance to do it over, how would you do that? And, Kathi, I'm going to let you talk about it because you've done the more very colorful chart. 

>>Kathi: The kids, on this particular picture on the right, they wanted to make sure that we wrote a lot. It bugs me a lot. And they wanted all capitals underlined because they were really into it. You know, I just switched -- what we did was we just talked as a group. Because they were elementary kids and we just talked as a group and I wrote down what they said and kind of asked, you know, it sounds like what you're saying is -- I made sure that I confirmed what they were saying. And so we wrote these down and I just alternated colors because I like to use different color markers. But then at the bottom we kind of talked as a group. First we went through and did all of the things that bug us. Let's just get it all out in the open. You know, tell us how you're feeling. And then we went back up to the top and started brainstorming as a group. What can you do about this? What do you have control over in this situation? And we really tried to use language that would be empowering for them. Can you control how much information the teacher puts on the board? No. But what can you control? Well, you can advocate for somebody to help you take notes. You can use a device. You can, you know, all of the different solutions that kids might have and it was surprising to me to hear them so emphatically angry about some of these things as we were writing them, and then after you've kind of taken a deep breath about it, got it out of your system, to really give them the opportunity to think like they really had all of the answers. You know, they just in the moment we acknowledge that in the moment sometimes it's hard to, you know, to think about that. And so, you know, we gave them sticky notes or wrote on sticky notes for them all of the solutions to these challenges and stuck them up on the chart just to show, like, this is all the stuff that we came up with. And, you know, we really have a good collection of things that can help us or help our friends in these situations. 

>>Cindy: One more piece we added to this was we literally got little plastic bugs and so as they each, you know, threw an idea out or answered, responded to a scenario, kind of we're collecting these bugs and it was more than just the elementary students, even the secondary. It was kind of a silly way, just like Kathi was saying, yeah, I got this. I can respond to these situations. And especially in the group process of hearing how others handled it, how they had already reflected on, you know, I didn't like what I said but here's what I would say now. So it gave that chance to go through that. So another way I like to -- or that we have done this in the low-vision tools weekends when we could actually take students to the low-vision specialist office or have the low-vision specialist come to our campus and talk with the students. When we're able to take them to the office, this picture on the right, the student, the doctor is letting her look -- the student is looking at Dr. Miller's eye through that. And I think that one is the retina scope. So we're in her exam room and it's, you know, the clinic is closed for an hour and a half while we're there with the students and they're like what's this? How do you do this? Everything that they have sat in an eye exam or low-vision exam year after year and not had an understanding of what the tools are. How it works. And Dr. Miller does a really great job of very kid-friendly language. And I think when you can find that low-vision specialist or the eye care provider. And sometimes we kind of get to train them on making it kid-friendly language. Because they're so used to, in their profession, they're using a lot of -- throwing the terminology around. But the students then on the right, Dr. Miller is showing the D15 color test that you would do in a low-vision exam. And it's just that familiarity of, oh, okay, so I have my low-vision exam next week. This is what the doctor's going to do. We're looking at the contrast sensitivity chart. And when I don't have, you know, it's a one-on-one lesson and I might be doing it with a student in a classroom, if I can just borrow the tools for a day or show pictures from, say, Google Images of what that contrast sensitivity test looks like. And if we're not able to get a doctor, you know, in the moment for us to go to that doctor's office or her to come to us, even over Zoom where it's that ask the doctor, stump the doctor with your question where I think a lot of eye care providers are really willing to do 15 minutes or a half hour. I have a small group of students and they just have questions about their visual impairment or the eye in general. And once the students get warmed up, I have seen them keep the doctor occupied for an hour when we are able to allow that kind of time. 

>>Kathi: You know, Cindy, in the chat Beth is saying that they've done something similar like with a dentist and it made me think, yeah, this could be with any professional or medical person that, you know, I was thinking -- my brain of course, as we were talking about this morning immediately with the concept development and I'm like, yeah. I think this is good for any professional that our kids are going to have to engage with, just to help with that what to expect and what does this do and that do. 

>>Cindy: And I think both of those examples, that's pretty invasive. I just had my -- I call it my teeth criticized last week, at the dentist appointment and it's not an appointment I look forward to. And I think eye exams are the same. You are having bright lights shown in your eyes. I can remember sitting there with my parents and I could feel their stress. 

>>Kathi: Or you already think you're going to fail when you get there. You know, try so hard, it raises anxiety. When I was go in they would say, we don't need to do the color test. I'm like, no, we are going to do the color test because I know that's the only one I'm going to pass with 100% accuracy so you're going to let me do it so I can have some glory here. 

>>Cindy: Just to make sure this year. Yeah. This next picture we, in the low vision classes, would want students to hear from -- typically it was young adults. Sometimes we would have maybe a senior in it. This was the year that Kathi was actually on one of our panels and, you know, this was towards the end of the weekend where we had gone through a lot of activities. The students have had a couple of nights together. Even if this is just like once a semester where a district is able to bring a group of students together, having a component that is talking about either eye anatomy or visual impairment, how one varies from another, how I feel about my eye condition where they have gotten to the point of I want to ask this out loud. And it can be vulnerable feeling of, well, what if anybody thinks my question is dumb? And by this point, that relaxation of everybody in this room gets it and they really -- anybody who works with me knows Cindy loves having a panel because I think it brings out so much honesty and often surprising. And humor. I can't think of a panel where there hasn't been humor in the room because we need to be able to not be so -- feel stressed about this but finding humor in it. 

>>Kathi: Yeah, so, you know, another thing that we think is really important when you're doing something like this is getting kids together. And so this is where I'm always like, yeah, I know that it's like Disneyland at TSBVI. This is what we do. We bring kids together with visual impairments and I recognize that, you know, in the itinerant world you case load varies but any time you can get kids together to do these activities but also just to have fun. In this picture we have several kiddos who are hanging out, playing Uno at the end of their instructional day at school at TSB for summer. There's actually kids behind them as well who are playing a different game and it kind of just allows them to recognize that, you know, they like to do the same things that other kids like to do and kids with visual impairments can enjoy these games and have fun and kind of recognize that they're not the only ones in the world who are visually impaired, even though they might be the only ones in their school. And I think it helps them. It's also a nice balance for, you know, when you're having these conversations that are often sometimes very personal for the kiddos and maybe they're not -- they're at different stages in their acceptance or in their abilities to have these conversations. I think it's a nice balance for them to just kind of hang out and enjoy just being elementary kids or tweens or teens together, you know? And then, you know, just kind of -- it's also nice to spend some time at the end summing it up with everyone. This also goes back to raise your eye-Q which I think more specifically is about the eye and the eye anatomy but the summing it up is allowing students -- like in this picture we have a student who has a pointer at the eye diagram, which is in your handout, and just kind of, you know, sharing what they've learned and kind of going back and teaching it back to the class, you know, and how do you -- how does this all fit together and how can we now have the opportunity to practice sharing it with other people in this group and, you know, hopefully that translates back in your home community or in your school community or with your family as well. 

>>Cindy: And I think we all know, if you offer to video a student, hey, you know, we want you to practice. We're going to rehearse a little. And for a minute and a half, can you talk about here's how the eye works. Here's where my visual impairment occurs. They were very willing to get up and I have a telescoping rod there that if you just -- surprising ways that you can get students to, okay, it's my turn now to get up and do that. And I think this is part of the -- culminating from that earlier picture where the young -- the teenager had the notebook and was writing down facts about his eye and Kathi has commented on doing an ability statement. That can go in that notebook, actually we called it a portfolio when we had the secondary students where a section for resources, like with Albinism. I'm going to have some of the best things I have pulled from the Albinism.org website or types of print that works for me. So you can determine what your students' needs are, what that portfolio notebook might hold but this chance to talk it out loud where they feel like I've developed this. I now feel smooth and very capable of sharing that information. 

>>Kathi: In the chat we were getting some ideas about taking ECC trips with kids in your district or in your area and how they often -- they really enjoy it but also they remember each other from one year to the next and try to find ways to get together in between too. And another teacher was saying that they were having a hard time getting kids together but created a cahoot for students who really liked talking about football, so they were connecting on a topic they liked that was unrelated to vision but they both happen to be able to have that in common as well. 

>>Cindy: It's that social/emotional. When I have somebody else that I can connect to, it reinforces that self-esteem. And so so many options now with whether it's Zoom or whatever other online platforms that we're using that you don't even have to be in the same room, let alone the same district where we can use that, take advantage of it to bring students together. Hopefully with the chance of somewhere in the semester that we can do an activity with them face to face. Where they come together as a group. So we have about five minutes left that we can have some Q&A or, Kathi, if we want to talk about some of the documents. I think more than ten pieces of lessons or resources have been included in the handout that we didn't want it to be too overwhelming but wanted to be sure we could share what we have developed for these lessons. 

>>Kathi: Yeah, I'm flexible. You know, in the handout we have, like Cindy was saying, we have the eye diagram and we have some templates for printing out the words and definitions. We have the edible eyeball and the cow dissection and some prompts for the visual access tasks. You can set those up in any way you want. If you want to set them up to make a book or do the charts on the walls or do the tri-fold page of sorting, you can do it that way. 

>>Cindy: The table is in there on the life-sized eyeball. I typically do seven or eight, from cornea, an object that represents the cornea, iris, the lens, the vitreous, the eye muscle as an exercise band where the students can make the eyeballs go up high, go down low, move to the left, move to the right. We have a inflatable ball for the vitreous that, better yet if you can get some sequins or sparkles, a bath mat is the retina. A big thick pipe cleaner is an example of possible optic nerve. And then a bigger textured ball for the brain, because that's the part that I think it's fascinating where medical research is moving into how we're learning about how the brain processes vision. So that was another of the documents. 

>>Kathi: Yeah, my favorite destination for brains -- no comments from the rest of you that work with me about my brain. But like five below or Walgreens because they always have those silicone squishy brain balls that light up. And so I always like to go there and get on the hunt. I also found a giant iris ring that I could use there. It was pretty big. I mean, it pretty much covered my whole kid when he held it up. That was cool too just to have something large like that. In the chat people are talking about adapting games over Zoom as well for their VI students. And Linda was saying her middle school student is going to go down to his former elementary school and show off his monocular skills for some of the younger low-vision students that are at that school. 

>>Cindy: Wonderful to hear. And I think our kids are more knowledgeable when we've been able to do these eye lessons -- and after a weekend we'll ask what are you going to take home? What fact do you think your family doesn't know that, hey, did y'all know, you know, how these parts work together or that in my eye the retina may have tears in it or the rods -- or the rods that see movement and see better in the dark. I think a lot of adults don't have that kind of detailed information. 

>>Kathi: And I also want to just acknowledge that we are speaking very heavily about kids with low vision in this session. Most of our pictures are of kids who have low vision. But these topics are also very important for all kids with visual impairments and can be adapted in such a way as well. You know, we want our students who are tactile learners or who have less vision to acknowledge the things that they need to access and that they have trouble accessing and what are the solutions for that as well. It's just that in the context of TSBVI this is where our experience has been with these kiddos with low vision. But these lessons can be adapted. And I've done the cow eye dissection with, you know, all kids with visual impairments and so we've had totally blind students doing that as well and we just adapted materials accordingly and those conversations happen accordingly for those students. If you get the materials and you're having a hard time generalizing it or you need some help adapting it, don't hesitate to reach out. I put both mine and Cindy's e-mail in the chat to reach out about that if you need any other templates or anything. 

>>Cindy: It's been fun. All together and we were scouring folders for, oh, I've got a great picture of blah, blah, blah. And it's just the enthusiasm that the students can bring to these lessons because they're willing to get into it when I want to learn more about my eye and my eye condition.