Class #4

Class #4
Today we jumped right into a few activities and completed a group assignment...it was very productive, fast paced and informative!

I am choosing to give an overview of the three activities we did as well as a description of our group assignment. Here goes...

Activity #1
We were directed to go to the website simulator.seenow.com using our phones. The website is a simulator that allows people to see what it is like to have 4 different types of eye conditions:

1. Glaucoma
2. Cataracts
3. Macular Degeneration
4. Diabetic Retinopathy

It was very interesting to see what may happen to your vision if you develop one of these eye conditions. For each we were able to slide a severity meter up or down and I have to say, it was distressing to see what it would be like to have these conditions. I was imagining what it would be like to be going through your day like this and on top of it all, if you were a child, in a busy school environment, what it would be like to navigate that. 

Here are the screen shots I took with the simulator...

Glaucoma-Severity Level (max)                  Glaucoma-Severity Level (mid)

                                                                                                                       











Cataracts-Severity Level (max)                        Cataracts-Severity Level (min)               

                         

                                         

                                              
                 


Macular Degeneration-Severity Level (max)      Macular Degeneration-Severity Level (mid)
                                                                

Diabetic Retinopathy-Severity Level (max)                



                 
                                             


















Diabetic Retinopathy-Severity Level-(mid) 












I chose to show these varying levels of the impairments as I was thinking about how a child may develop and throughout their schooling, their vision could deteriorate to the max level.


Upon reflection and in thinking about how classroom or school environments/ materials could be adapted to suit the needs of someone with these visual impairments, this is a short list:
1. Access to environment and materials in the classroom
2. Adapt books and materials (make tactile, interactive books)
3. Digitize text for the student!
4. UDL needs to be in place and being implemented for all, especially when considering 

***A note about the formatting of these pictures...For some reason, they did not format properly when I published the blog so still learning how to navigate this technology thing I guess!!

Activity #2
https://abledata.acl.gov/
--able to search devices assistive tech wise--what's out there besides digitizing text to support students with visual impairments---
Top 3 AT devices found here---talk about one in particular.


Note Taker:
-Designed for students with low visual impairments to listen, watch and take notes simultaneously.
-Has a split-screen that can allow students to watch a live video pf presentation and their notes. 

-Requires no installation in classroom and is user friendly, easy to set up and is a portable device.

Animated Educational Animals:

-Designed for students with cognitive, communication, physical or visual impairments. User activates a capability switch and the toys will speak and say facts about the animals

-This product made me think of the "Blue Bee Pal" that speaks pre-recoded messages or songs for students.

-Easy to use, playful and children would love to interact with the product, high interest product

Street Sight:

-Go pro type interface design that uses GPS

location to let user know where they are,

what street they are on or address they are

approaching

-Takes photos and sends to a phone every 2-3

seconds that users can then zoom in on (street signs,

car plates, schedules)

Activity #3

Describe the Visual Impairment:

Nystagmus- Is a condition where the eyes make repetitive, uncontrolled movements. The movements can cause reduced vision and depth perception, affecting balance and coordination.

How would this affect students?

-Cannot be cured and glasses can help but not always (magnification can help)

-Reduced vision, depth perception, affecting balance and coordination (danger factor)

-Environment of classroom design in a way that could support the student (open space, being aware of chairs and tables, positioning of big furniture pieces, classmates)

-Alternate space where student could complete arrival/departure routines safely

What to do to support students?

-Larger print availability

-Increased lighting

-Magnifying devices

Video about CVI
-The video was watched was from perkinslearning.org and it focussed on CVI (Cerebral or Cortical Visual Impairment). Perkins is a school for the blind that has an elearning component or capabilities for people to access. 

Main points or takeaways:
-Research focus has been concentrated on learning about the brain and brain function and how to apply research as to how images are being processed in order to better plan, program and assess how to teach children with visual impairments.
-Red and yellow text--infuse color into things: we want children to look at, highlight words and things we want children to see what we are showing them
-Movement is an early visual behaviour so sometimes children will only be able to see something and pay attention to it if it is moving
-Latency problems...leave materials in location for long enough time for student to actually turn head and eyes and attend to it
-Need to use visually stimulating products 
-Auditory processing also plays a factor in child attending to visual processing...
-Child needs to be anchored in space, feet on floor or harnessed properly to be able to attend to visual tasks
-Lighting placed behind or use light to instruct child.
-Playing with an item at the same time as looking at it, this is extremely difficult or nearly impossible
-Early intervention is very helpful and people have varying degrees of CVI and can benefit and do improve with intervention. 

Assignment! 
--->Create an adaptable book for a user with visual impairments using widgits (images and words) from widgitsonline. We also had to add audio to the book and think about a particular student profile for whom we were making the book for. 

My group (Amanda, Wendy, and Allison) created an "I like Cats" book. We decided to focus on teaching colors with this book as well as an added literacy feature of the sight word or core vocab word "like". Our student was a six year old grade one student with astigmatism. 




We chose to do our book on google slides and found some inspiration on the website 
Tar Heel Reader for the story. Google slides was very easy to use and adapt and add widgits into. We had a glitch of not being able to out an audio file into the slide so we had to take a video with no picture (covering the camera)  and do it that way. 

-After we presented we were discussing in class other ways to make this type of book on google slides accessible with audio and it was suggested that we could enable Google Read and Write to read the book to the student if we typed the words to the story into the slide and then put the widgit picture into the slide after instead of all at once. Great to troubleshoot these things right away!

The other groups that presented did a book using adobe spark, book creator and keynote so it was really nice to see 4 different applications of the same assignment and gave me lots of ideas to try!