The Dakotas' AER Conference is held annually, alternating locations between Aberdeen, SD, and Grand Forks, ND. I attend this conference each year, as I find it to be a great networking and learning opportunity. It also enhances my ability to work with families and providers of students with visual impairment and deaf-blindness. Attendees are comprised of outreach consultants from Schools for the Blind, Teachers of Children with Vision Impairment (TVI's), Vocational Rehabilitation Counselors, Certified Low Vision Therapist (CVI's ) Orientation and Mobility Specialist (O7M's), and administrators and teachers working with children/students with vision impairment. You do not need to be a member of AER to attend this conference or to apply for the scholarship (for those taking coursework related to vision loss) that is awarded to attend this event.
Highlights of the training for me were the following speakers:
Tanni Anthony,
PhD., Director of Colorado's Deaf-Blind Program; provided a session on Orientation and Mobility for very young children. She recommends that the following components be included:
- Sensory Skills
- Concept Development
- Motor Development
- Environment and Community Awareness
Tanni noted that a game changer for her in how she addressed O&M and worked with families/providers, was learning about the stages of development gleaned from work done in this area by Far West Laboratories, in California. The stages and related themes included the following:
Stage 1: The Young Infant-Theme Security
Stage 2: The Mobile Infant-Theme Exploration
State 3: The Older Infant-Theme Identity
Several employee's from Manitoba Services for Students Who are Blind or Visually Impaired shared information about their alternative format resources in their loan library. They have an assortment of adaptive books for loan including braille books, large print, audiobooks, and touch books. I was amazed at the number of touch books and was quite envious, as these can be time consuming and expensive for teachers to develop.
To learn more about the different types of touch books mentioned, you may wish to join Brandy and me at the
2019 Summer Educator Conference
(details below).
