Over the years, I have worked hard to become an independent, successful young woman with dreams of helping children who are blind or visually impaired grow into successful adults. Florida School for the Deaf and Blind (FSDB), my family, Iowa Department for...
Blog Posts
Below are recently created blog posts.
By Daniel Downes
With three young children, silence in my house means one thing: trouble. Last week such an event occurred. Peering into the living room, the image on the television horrified me. My arch enemy, Mr Magoo, was brushing his teeth with his glasses. He is...
By Pinar Safak
Busem is a young girl in Turkey, who was born at just 26 weeks. She was 700 grams and she spent her first 3 months in an intensive care unit. Due to Retinopathy of Prematurity (ROP), she lost vision in both eyes and surgery was not able to restore her...
By Linda Choy
My daughter Kara was born on 10/14/1998, at 6.5 months gestation. She weighed 1.2 kgs, and had an extremely difficult survival course. As a result, she is blind due to retinopathy of prematurity, she also has mild cerebral palsy and has global...
By Charlotte Cushman
Many teachers around the world struggle to meet the divergent needs of students who are different ages with very different needs and abilities. Not every school has the luxury of grouping students by age and ability, and this can be a challenge for both...
By Carlie Rhoads
Constant time delay, or CTD, is a technique that has been shown to be an effective intervention strategy to teach braille contractions to dual media learners making the transition from print to braille. A research study was conducted at Vanderbilt...
By Linda Hagood
Katrina loves Frogs and Braille. During the past school year, she has become an authority on her favorite frog, Kermit, especially in his Sesame Street role as "News Flash Reporter." She has created a series of fantasy stories in which she and...
By Liamsmom
This year for my son's birthday, we sent out invitations for his party at the park. I asked that, if people wanted, for them to email me a birthday message for Liam to make into a birthday book at the party. Once they emailed me the messages I...
By Charlotte Cushman
Renee Toy, who is the librarian at Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired (TSBVI) recently sat down with Outreach Director Emily Coleman to discuss summer reading. Their conversation is part of the podcast series A Sense of Texas. Listen...
By Liz Eagan
As TVIs, therapists, special educators or family members, we never have enough time to create all of the books that we want to. Happily APH came out with a cool new product called Tactile Book Builder Kit and I ABSOLUTELY LOVE IT! This...
By Peggy Sinclair-Morris
While working as a teacher of the blind and visually impaired, one particular teaching moment has really stayed with me. A six-year-old student of mine was learning how to read braille; she had a nice little braille book in front of her and I was...
By Charlotte Cushman
Recently there has been a large amount of publicity about the development of Lego Braille Bricks. While we applaud anything that promotes braille literacy, we also wanted to be sure that people are aware that Kevin Murphy created TACK-TILES®...
By Stacey Chambers
As the current school year winds down, we begin to anticipate our learners’ transitions to new campuses and classrooms for the fall. What a great time to work on some Self-Determination skills as part of the ECC (Expanded Core Curriculum)! I use...
By Patti Fahle
As a TVI do you have middle or high school students that are struggling to keep up with the mainstreamed, fast-paced classroom? Math is often visual and the instruction consists of teachers quickly scribbling equations on the board and verbalizing...
By Krista Owens
Picture symbol programs such as Boardmaker, SymbolStix, LessonPix, etc. are wonderful and very convenient programs for teacher to use to adapt material for students, but have you considered the appropriateness of these programs for our students with...
By Leslie Edmonds
Braille Lego sets coming out next year are the talk of the town this week amongst Teachers of the Visually Impaired. I personally will be counting the days until they are released. I’m a self-described Lego fanatic and any time I can...
By Cierra Brettnacher
It seems as if braille blocks are the hot topic, thanks to LEGO announcing that they are going to be releasing a braille set. I envisioned this about three years ago and set out on my own to find a way to make it happen. My son, Anthony, is now 7 years old...
By Claudia Swapp
A fun part of the recent Oregon CVI Conference was a “Make and Take” portion that included producing over 180 CVI adapted books to get out to students with cortical visual impairment in Oregon . The conference was held April 4 – 5, 2019 and...
By Scott Wall
By Scott Wall and Claudia Swapp
A conference on Cortical Visual Impairment (CVI) for Teachers of the Visually Impaired was held in Bend, Oregon April 4-5 of this year. The conference was prepared and presented by a team of professionals from Columbia...
By Kaycee Bennett
I have been using Pinterest to help with lesson plan collaboration using shared boards. I am a DeafBlind Specialist and I have shared boards with a teacher that teaches in an elementary life skills classroom that our district calls Structured Learning...
