TRANSCRIPT - TSBVI Coffee Hour: Resources for VI Professionals - TVIs, COMS, & Paraeducators Ð 12-13-21

>>Cecilia: So the title is resources for VI professionals. However, I know that not everybody here may be a VI professional and that's okay. We welcome you anyways. There is a little bit of information from everybody. The objective of this webinar is to identify some up to date resources for all the professionals who work in visual impairment, become familiar with navigating the LiveBinder and searching for topics when you need it. And the last objective is you will use or share a resource with your team, including a family member within the school year. So hopefully you will be able to find a topic that is of interest to you that you can use for this school year. And before we go to this slide -- actually, I need to go back. I am ahead of myself. The objectives -- so if there are no questions, I'm going to ask David to send out a poll. I want to kind of know who you are. So if you can answer that who you are representing, just a list there. Just check it and submit it. Thank you. Thank you, David. It seems like 64% are TVIs or TDBs. No general education teachers. Some of you are orientation and mobility specialists. There are no family members. Some of you are paraeducators and maybe a few are OTs and PTs and assistive technology specialists as well. And there are others. We have a pretty good representation of everybody, so thank you for filling out the poll. So I am going to switch to the next slide. Here on the slide is a big old question mark and then a bunch of little cartoon smiley faces. And I want to kind of bring to the forefront, like why do we need resources. We are already teachers. We're supposed to know everything, right? But we all know that we do not know everything. So why do we need resources? The plainest answer is we all need ongoing training and information for ourself. The other thing is we live in an ever-changing world. The information changes and the format of the delivery of the information is changing as we speak. In our world, we use the word "assistive technology" but as we know, what is assistive now may not be assistive in two hours. So resources help us to continue to learn. And I know that when I worked with TVIs and school district folks, especially in visual impairment when you are an itinerant staff, you may not know that you need information until you need it. So where are those just in time resources and where are those training opportunities? So resources will fill that gap. When you need information you know where to find it and so on. The other big important resource, what resources can do to us is empower us with knowledge. When we are empowered, we learn something and we feel confident teaching it. Think about students if they have the power of knowledge, how empowered they would be. And I always feel that our job is to continue to build that solid foundation of skills for our students so that when their foundation of knowledge is solid, then you can build upon it and they will feel comfortable continuing to learn. This slide, why do we need resources? Because everything in school is about literacy. As you can see in the pictures, in our VI world, we serve students who are as young as infants and toddlers all the way up to when they are in secondary school and also some of them may still be in the program after they graduate from high school. So they have a lot of time with us and our responsibility is literacy. What does that mean? That means we make sure that our students will learn to read and write, either in print or in Braille. In Texas, the two literacy medium are print or Braille. I'm not sure if you're from another state, whether there are other literacy medium that your state will accept. But basically it's print, Braille. However, we know there are other types of literacy. For example, tactile literacy. How comfortable are some of our students being able to learn tactilely, using cues, symbols, using part symbols and so on. Digital information is forever changing. There is a level of literacy about accessing digital information too. For example, we all know how to read and write and I don't know if any one of you ever gets stuck when you're online looking for information. Like you know how to read and write but what does that mean, right? And then also in the world of assistive technology, when something does not work, I would ask did you read the manual and all those things? Sometimes teachers have trouble finding the online manuals because these days they don't ship a paper manual to you anymore. So, basically literacy covers a lot of areas and then it also goes across different platforms. I'm hoping that with the resources that you're going to see today you remember your students' needs and then how you can use the resources to support the literacy. And, you know, it's something that the conversation needs to go on, especially for the students who are not really on grade level. How would you continue to meet the team in supporting the student's literacy and what does literacy look like for each one of them. So be thinking about that as I go to the next slide. Here are some resources that I have compiled in the LiveBinder. They include a little bit of information for everybody and I'm hoping that it will assist with your learning and collaboration. You don't need to know everything but you might want to pull other people from your team with you to learn about some of this information and together, collectively as a team, can you use some of the resources to support your student. The information is not a complete set of information that you will need. I'm very sure that there are topics that you want but it's not really in there. So right now the LiveBinder information is intended to be used as quick starts to help you kind of poke your interest in a topic and then give you some ideas on what to do. The most important thing is use the information and make it your own, okay? Because it's kind of like working with each of our students. Everyone thinks differently. The way I put the information in and chunk it may not even suit the way your thought process is. So that's why later on when we go into LiveBinder, I want you to hang with me because the way I chunked the information may not be easy for you to find. I need to tell you about why I have some of this information. When the pandemic started, we got, "we" meaning outreach. Outreach received a lot of calls and requests for information. A lot of my requests and also the e-mails and phone calls had to do with some topics that I didn't know that I needed to address. So, anyway, over time I started writing things down because I found myself repeating the same few resources for some of the teachers. So when I go into the LiveBinder, I'll let you take a look at some of those topics. So basically, the resources in the LiveBinder are a compilation of what teachers have asked me or family members have asked outreach about some of the topics. So we are going to take a look at that. I want to check in with you to see if you have any questions so far. Any questions or comments before we go to the next slide? Okay. If you don't, then the next slide -- in your handout there is a link and you can click on that link to go to the LiveBinders. But let me go ahead and stop the chair and let me get to my LiveBinder and then we'll look at the LiveBinder together. All right. If you are clicking along with me you're welcome to click along. But I just want maybe a few seconds of your time to let me tell you what I did and to be a tour guide of this LiveBinder. So the LiveBinder, I am in a mode that you can see the table of contents. I just want to quickly show you the table of contents where you're looking at, where my mouse pointer is moving now. I just want to tell you a few things, like the learning for students without the bulleted items are the same as what you're seeing on here. However, there are some bulleted items which when you click "open" on the left side you will see some of those topics. And then there are also subbulleted items. I want to let you know that there are some with one level and there are some with two levels. Kind of like the level one and level two that we tell our students. And then I'm going to just kind of go through that. The next big chunk is accessible books. And then the next one is expanded core and so on. The way I put these resources together, for no rhyme or reason other than when you click on the LiveBinder, the first thing that I would think most of you might be thinking about is I need something so I can teach my students. Or I need something so I can work with my students on. So under "learning for students" is the first topic and there are some things I put in there and so on. So I'm going to the switch back to the mode that you are seeing. So the welcome is just a little welcome note. If you need -- if you want, if you would like to have some of your core resources included in this LiveBinder, please let me know and we'll do that. And, okay. Without that further explanation, I'm going to go to the learning for students. Under learning for students the first one is self-determination lesson plans. I'm not going to go through everything. I'm just going to guide you through a couple of things so if you want to write it down and make a note for yourself, you're welcome to. But some of this information is like layers and layers. But the self-determination lesson plans are originally created by Christy Cowen and Scott. And they started out helping the students explain the eyes and what's going on. They have different units but the cool things about it is there are topics and also there are lesson plans, overview of what they are. Oops. I think I just lost it. Yeah, and then underneath is the lessons and so on. And when you have time, if you want some ideas on how to teach self-determination, this set of lesson plans I want to say is pretty cool. And I added later on a part on assistive technology. So I just want to let you know that there are lesson plans. There are even down to the vocabulary that you need to address for each lesson and all the lessons are laid out that way. The virtual Excel academic webinar APH put together, so you would want to click on that for a list. I'm not going to go into that because I know that many of you are familiar with that. And the next one is some information from Perkins and they have great information posted all the time. This one, the free e-book is from Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired. If you don't know about Tomas and the case of the missing dog and Scott actually drew all the graphics for that. It's pretty cool. And then we have our media team and a student helped to read the book. If you have not come across this book, I highly recommend that you take a look at it. The free app from APH is a recent webinar that APH had done. I had no idea that there were so many free apps. So when you have time you can look at it. I also put the webinar link. You can listen to the webinar and watch the webinar, the APH webinar there. I put the next one there. Starfall is a website not created specifically for students with visual impairment. However, many of our students and their parents told us that they really enjoy it. So I put it there so you can take a look at it. Audiojack. If you have not had a chance to find out what Audiojack is, you might want to spend a little bit of time learning about it. It's kind of an innovative idea on how to teach students to listen with the sound and everything and help with their writing. It's very cool. I think it's very cool but you might want to experience it. And then I also put some Audiojack information in from APH. Now, this is not an APH product so you do need a subscription. However, they have done some webinars on the Audiojack. You might want to watch some of these to see if it's something you might want to try with your students. I highly recommend that, you know, take a look at it. If nothing else, I think it helps with the student's listening skills and then also how they can talk about it. As you know many of our students are not ready to write with pen and paper or type or anything like that. But Audiojack might be a way to encourage them to talk about it and then through talking can we do something about it. And then I put down a tab on voice recorder. And it goes back to many of our students cannot read or write and during the pandemic I got a lot of calls asking how do we help the students to read and write when they're not ready to read and write. The simplest answer that I could think of was have you considered using a voice recorder? Now we don't have any more Radio Shacks. In the past I would tell teachers to go to Radio Shack. Just buy an inexpensive voice recorder and see if you can try it with the students. But now we don't have that. However, a lot of our smartphones and family members have that too. They have a smartphone and with the smartphone usually there are apps and usually there is a recording feature. The cool thing about using a voice recorder is that voice recording, I think, is not an assistive tech thing anymore. We all use voice recording and voice commands and when you're driving you can record a few notes for yourself and all that. So, you know, it's something to consider. But the most important question is when your student cannot read or write, what is the best pen for the student. The best pen may not be a traditional hardware or the paper pencil or the Perkins and your Braille paper. So are there other best pen alternatives for your students? And that's why I put it there. And then I put down these inexpensive voice recording and they sell it on Amazon. It's like the old style greeting cards. They can record a little message. But it's kind of something fun for those students to be able to, quote, write a card and then send it to their families. And it's inexpensive and it encourages them to verbally talk about it. And if students can verbally talk about it then later on they might be able to write about it or use dictation to record some of those. And then also there is a best kids' recorder option. There are some podcasts for kids. Podcasts for little kids and podcasts for bigger kids. The next big chunk is accessible books. You can always search for accessible books in the Louis database. When you click on this link -- let me see if I can get to it. When you click on Louis Database, you can always click on Louis Plus and get some more information on Louis Plus as well. So anyway, don't forget that you have a good source for check accessible books. Plus, you also have book share and learning ally as well. We're in Texas so I put down some accessible information, textbook information from Texas Education Agency and Bookshare and learning ally. For those in Texas, learning ally also has a Texas website, so if you click on the Texas schools, you can see what they have for Texas. I clicked on dolphin easy reader because it's a pretty good reader and they have different versions for mobile devices as well as for computers. And you can click on these little videos to see how they do it and the support for students with low vision and those with no vision. National Braille Press has some programs for the students. Victor readers are those readers that human ware still carries. It's a good device to help some of our students learn about the interface of a reader, what does this mean. The nice thing about the readers is that when they learn the basic ones like for the younger kids, later on when they move to a smaller version of like, like the victor reader stream, the user interface is still the same. And later on they want to add that GPS to it, the trek user interface is still the same. Oh, by the way, I put down the cover for the victor reader stratus. There is a cover that you can cover some of the keys. It was handy for me -- several years ago I worked with a student with only very limited mobility with the fingers and also that student had some missing fingers. So it was easy for that student to be able to know where to press in order to read a book. So something for you to look at if you have those unique alternative access. Enhancing listening. A lot of times our students need to have access to headsets. You listen to them and I highly recommend it because listening to an audiobook or listening to anything auditory, I think initially you might want to be able to listen to the same information with your students so that you know what they're listening for and then also you can pause it and ask them questions to check for understanding. So the head south side is kind of handy dandy that way. There are some headphones that uses phone conduction and it's pretty cool . Some of the companies that produce readers are using them. So something to think about. Extended core curriculum. There is a lot of information out there and when you click on it you see the extended core curriculum flier in English and we also have one in Spanish. Under "resources" -- I put down a few resources that I think is -- that will take you to more resources. Region 10 education service center here in Texas in Richardson -- Richardson is phenomenal in providing a lot of resources, including ECC resources. So when you have a chance, click on it. And Robin Clark did two Coffee Hour webinars for us. I thought she was so fun to listen to. So I put the Coffee Hour webinar links down there for everybody to take a look at. And when you click on it, you will be able to download the handouts as well. It's fun listening to Robin so if you did not have a chance to listen to her speak, I highly recommend it. And then there is the essential tools -- it's a publication that Texas School for the Blind had put together and you're welcome to take a look at it. And it's about doing assessments and so on. And there is the extended core curriculum for students with a variable impairment, the resources and so on. And there are many, many other resources that you will find out there as well but I didn't want to put too many out there but just something to kind of help you get started. I found this one. It's put together by the Iowa people and a lot of you may know Marianne Siller and Karen Blankenship. They have an interview here. Take a look at it if you want to. There is also another one in Word. At home with APH is just a list of resources. I'm not going to go there. Accessibility. There are a few that I put down here. It's for you to explain accessibility to people. This one from the national center on accessible educational materials, they have like very basic information. What it is and what you can do. So nothing too complicated but it's just easy for you to explain to people what's going on. Web Aim has great information on visual disabilities, what it means for low vision and what it means for people who are blind and what it means for people with color blindness. A lot of our students may have color blindness as well so they did a good job on explaining that. And then paths to literacy has information on accessible as well, so it's a great resource. There are some accessibility posters -- I'm not going to do everything but I'm going to go through the first one with you and let you take a look at it. It's kind of cool to sometimes explain a few things to the general ed teachers when you work with them. I'm going to scroll down and find the poster I need. If I make you dizzy, close your eyes. The first one is [Inaudible] and the next one is screen readers. What I like about these is the dos and the don'ts. Don'ts, it's just showing a little icon on that without any explanation. And then do a linear format. But over here, the don't is the spread out format. General ed teachers tend to have information all over the place. They may not know that the linear format will work better for our students and using headings is always a good idea, instead of using the different fonts and then making the headings all over the place and so on. But, you know, just things like this. It's easy to explain. Very short and precise so if you want to take a look at that. And if you scroll down, there is one for low vision as well. Like using color contrast is the easiest. Sometimes I think in the process of making everything digital, they are also so concerned in making things looking good and looking sharp and so on. However, sometimes it may present some other level of difficulties for our students. So those posters are good that way. And call Scotland has a lot of information about visual impairment as well. TVIs taking videos. This is from the center for accessible educational materials. I'm not going to click on anything. These videos have been out for a while but the cool thing is the steps that I'm sharing with you is the TVI talking about her role in supporting the student. And then also in supporting the other teachers to help the child to be successful in the classroom. And then the student herself uses multiple formats. And then also using effective teaching strategies. So it's nice to take a look at what others had done in this area. Like, it's not just you talking about it. It's really a whole team effort and that could bring some of that to the forefront. The aim navigator is a tool for you to learn about the format. Like decision making. How many times have we sat in ARD meetings and people would say so and so cannot read. Let's give them an audiobook. Now, you should be thinking about like is this the best medium for a child if it is not, why not? And how do we come to some decision based on data or based on the student's needs, rather than someone saying let's give the child an audiobook. I used to kind of cringe when people say social studies, let's give them an audiobook because social studies has a lot to read. You should cringe about that too because, first of all, social studies has a lot of graphs and charts and things like that. How in the world is our student going to get that information auditorially? Something to think about it. But the navigator will allow you to think about the student's needs and come up with solutions. That could be your documentation in making those decisions and if you enter a working e-mail while you're using the navigator, then it will send you back a summary of what you had put in. And they also have offline tools that you can use as well. APH accessibility hub, take a look at it. They have put a lot of great information on there. And then again with the accessibility resources from AFB as well. The creating the document for basic Microsoft Office, Windows, there are some resources for you to look at. And then knowability is a group here in Austin that they have put together conferences and things like that and it's just a good resource to have if you need to learn about it and teach a student some more about accessibility and so on. So I am going to stop here and check with you. Are there any questions so far? Are you still with me? Am I going too fast? Is anyone falling asleep? Am I good to continue to go? 

>>Okay. Everyone is quiet. 

>>Kate: Cecilia, we're hearing in the chat, great info, wide awake, keep going. 

>>Cecilia: Great! Thank you for hanging with me. I'll keep going. All right. Braille. It's just some Braille resources. There are many free resources and I outlined a few of them there. The ones that I want to point out is the Pearson math resources. Many of you may know about it but if you don't, now is the time to learn about it. Through a national effort, there is a Nimeth curriculum separated by grades and there are a number of national figures working on it and you may know some of the authors. But the other one that I want to point out is -- let me see where it is. Accessibility, assistive tech. The equation, the accessible equation editor is fully accessible so if you have a student using that, you might want to take a look at that. The other one is -- let me go back to the Nemeth curriculum. Under Nemeth curriculum there is a Nemeth symbol library. I wish I had that when I was teaching. Here is a list of symbols and the terms. So if you don't know, say, how to write a sign, click on it and then it will have some explanation telling you what it is. And then you can see examples in BRF format and UBE math and also in Braille and so on. You can take a look at that and if you have students who are using Nemeth and all those things, make sure you share this resource with your -- oops. I don't know what I did. I clicked something. Make sure you share this resource with your -- okay. Let me go back to it. Are you seeing the LiveBinder? 

>>Kaycee: We're seeing you, Cecilia. It stopped your share. 

>>Cecilia: Sorry. Let me go through that again. Obviously, I clicked too fast and didn't do that. Hang on. So while I'm looking for my stuff, if y'all would just kind of keep talking, kind of like the Saturday Night Live coffee chat. Like give you a topic and you start talking. Let me give you a topic while I look for that. So the resources, so far is it helping you or do you think you can use it, not use it and so on? 

>>Kaycee: We've had several people share that this is really great information and a terrific presentation. Great resources, thank you. This is great. 

>>Cecilia: Oh, thank you. You are so kind. I think I can do that now. Let me go back -- 

>>Kaycee: Linda asked when do you have time to put all of this together? Thank you for sharing. 

>>Cecilia: The funny thing is you know how we are. We put something together and then it's not good enough and you change it. You won't believe how many times I've switched this around and it's still not the way I wanted it but I thought I'll just take a leap and show it to you and y'all can tell me what I need to do in order to make it work for you. Anyway, you're seeing my screen now, right? 

>>Kaycee: The LiveBinder. 

>>Cecilia: Okay. Great. And there are a lot of resources. I'm going to go to math because during the pandemic there were a number of math questions that came about. So I pulled in my friend Susan Osterhouse and asked her to help me. We did some presentations on calculators and if you click on that that will take you to the presentation. Again, the reference sheets and so on. Iowa education services also had a lot of cool resources. Make sure you click on that. And then a while ago I wrote an AT more math for the TVIs for paths to literacy. If you have time, if you need it, you might want to take a look at it but if you don't, that's fine too. So, Braille. I want to bring up Braille for several things. Braille production systems usually would involve a number of hardware, scanners, printers, computers, software, Braille embosser and so on. I just want to put a little plug there that they are important members of the VI team. We depend on them to do the Braille and tactile graphics for our students. But one thing that I would like for you to also remember is that the checking of the accuracy of the final product before landing into a child or a student's hand, that responsibility, the proofing, the proofreading to make sure that everything is correct is really the TVI's responsibility. So I ask you to kind of -- even if you have a busy schedule, try to make time to at least go over it and make sure that the information is correct. But the Braillists, they create it with our assistance and then I know that things can get pretty crazy and some Braillists connect directly with the classroom teacher and download the document so that they know how to transcribe it into Braille. I want to say that the person missing in this process is the TVI. So make sure you put yourself back in there. If nothing else, check to make sure that everything is formatted correctly and the Braille is correct and the tactile graphics is correct as well. There's some software and Braille tutorials. There's some embossers. I want to put a note there. Many people asked about embossers to create tactile graphics. Now, it's a whole area of learning about tactile graphics, how you learn from like an object, part object on paper and then how you make raised graphics and then the different kinds of graphics. So it's a continuum. But going back to the embossers, if you're depending on computer-generated graphics, that's not the coolest thing to do because by the time that computer-generated graphics are created, your child or your student will need to have pretty good tactile skills and also remember that computers are just computers. It can only create how many types of graphics. Whereas there are other methods you might want to check into. Also, there are printers that will print tactile graphics. But not all tactile graphics, embossers, and printers are created equally. Some require additional software. In general, if you want to print tactile graphics, it just requires a longer time. So if you have a classroom teacher who is handing you work sheets and say I need it tomorrow. That's a big red flag and you need to bring your tactile graphics into your classroom. I'm just kidding. Just let the -- I mean, let the printer run in her classroom. No, that wouldn't work. But sometimes they may not know how long it takes to create tactile graphics. So just so you know there are some things about embossers that sometimes it's really difficult to explain to people. Tactile graphics. I put some information there. You can take a look at that. There is an article that Pat Van Geem wrote and the influence is still pretty much out there and people had called and asked about the articles and so on and arranging the elements to create tactile graphics. This information is really, really cool so if you need it, take a look at it. And he explains it very, very well. The others you can just take a look at it. Assistive tech. There is a lot of information on assistive tech but one resource that I need to point out is Washington state School for the Blind. My friend, Bruce, had done a lot of phenomenal work in this area and when you ask about people who don't sleep -- I don't think Bruce ever sleeps. Look at the amount of resources he had put up there. During the pandemic, he and I had been going back and forth about Chromebooks. There were so many questions that came about Chromebooks. What Bruce had done was this link here. YouTube playlist. He created a lot of cool videos on how to use Chromebooks and what to do and so on. So take a look at his lessons and he even chunked it out in different lessons for everybody to use. So I think his resources are just phenomenal. And then our short-term programs. They put a lot of their videos already in YouTube so when you have a chance to take a look at the playlist or whatever. If you have a topic that you need information about, take a look added what our short-term programs had already put out there. They are another amazing team on campus who's doing so much for everybody. Our little corner is my friend, Belinda. She put in a website of information together and take a look at her information. It's just really, really nice. She and I did an AT presentation for the last low vision conference. It's really for the fun thing. What is a mindset? If you click on it, it takes you to the mindset website and then you can also do some -- like online stuff to check your mindset. It's kind of cool. And but basically, in an ever-changing world, how do we change our mindset to keep learning for ourselves? Belinda and I started looking at technology quick check a few years ago. You know how hour students come to school and then they have to pick up their devices and then what do they need to do and so on. So here's a quick checklist for everybody to take a look at. At the beginning of a semester it's something for you to consider, for you the TVI to take a look at and how you need to talk about your computer -- your students' computer use with maybe the AT person and so on. 

>>Kaycee: I just wanted to give you a quick five-minute warning. 

>>Cecilia: Whoa, okay. All right. Five minutes. I need to be quick. Anyway, just take a look at those little things. Paraeducators, there is information for everybody, like the ones that our paras always ask to do work with the student, do calendars and do routines and things like that. So there are some topics I put together for them. Learning for professionals is a list of stuff that you can click on. I put the guidelines and standards document in there because if you have a question on why you do things the way you do it, here's the answer document that you need to look at. And it's really good. This information is there as well. There's some learning opportunities. Deafblind Project -- Texas Deafblind Project has a lot of cool information and it's fairly new. But the cool thing is you can still go and look at what the last Deafblind Symposium topics are about, and you can do that. For O&Ms, here's your O&M -- actually it's more like Chris Tap's information. Chris put a lot of information together and from his web page you can probably find a lot more information. And he put a LiveBinder link on there as well. There are other resources. And then also this one from the 2021 conference. If you're interested in looking at some of the handouts, it's still there as of last night, so I don't know how long it's going to be there. So if you're interested in downloading the handouts, please do that. During the pandemic, a lot of the TVIs were asking, the gen ed teachers were asking these things. I put a list together to give to your gen ed teachers. But basically it's when they have a VI student in their classroom, what do they do? You can print it out and say do not panic. Somebody will help you and so on. Just some basic information. Walking them through how to ask for a meeting with you and then while you're meeting, what do you need to ask the TVI. And then during the school year, what do you need to do in order to continue to maintain the information and the communication. Something I also put in there is a Word document. If you like the information and you want to make it your own, by all means, please do that and just give TSBVI outreach credit for that. You can make it your own. You can just put your school's banner on there as well. Also, I find myself explaining all the descriptions to the TVIs to explain to the gen ed teacher what that means. Y'all get a lot of videos and those videos, all the sighted kids are supposed to use it but our VI students may not be able to use it. So there is a little information on audio description and then also about captioning versus audio description. What does that mean. Because, you know, when you work with the blind, you don't always know sign language. You just happen to know sign language, right? And then I thought in order to help them, you can give them some cool clips to look at. There is one on Lion King and there is one on the Hunger Games. And then the ECC fliers. That's a quick tour of the LiveBinder and I'm going to stop right here, stop my share and let Kaycee take over from here.