A Step Forward

We all have those moments where we participated in different webinars, presentations, and perhaps the most recent O&M Symposium, getting all that information coming but once they’re over, you find yourself sitting in front of your computer like “Now what?” Don’t worry, I got you there.

In this week’s episode, I will be sharing about how you can turn strategies that you learned from presentations into actual O&M skills. For this, I will be talking a little bit about one of the presentations from the Symposium that I find particularly interesting. Presented by Dr. Fatemeh Amiri and Mehdi Basirzadeh, TRIZ is the Russian acronym for the "Theory of Inventive Problem Solving," a structure with innovative philosophy, methods and tools. You will learn about the six different types of resources and how you can implement those knowledge and create three different lesson plans.

Interested to find out more? Join us now!

Welcome back my friends! I have a question for you today. Do you ever find yourself in a situation where you had to create one or multiple tactile maps for your students but you just don’t have the time and energy to go to the store, get the materials, draw every street and lines from scratch, while trying to get you other tasks done? What if I told you that there is a faster way to do that?

In this episode, we are so excited to have Greg Kehret who will be sharing information about the TMAP software which could help you create tactile maps more efficiently. Greg is the director of the Media and Accessible Design Lab of San Francisco Lighthouse for the Blind (The MAD Lab). He got into this field because his best friend was blind. So now he makes sure that visual information could be as accessible as possible.

This episode is filled with information that could help you understand what the TMAP software actually is, what it does, how you use it, as well as where you can get it. You will also get to learn about the process of using TMAP and the possible hurdles that students or users will face.

Get all these information now by tuning in to the podcast!

Links:

It’s January, my friends, the month of this familiar cycle where we make new resolutions, we break them, and we make them again. Most of us tend to struggle when it comes to sticking to a new habit or anything new in general. But in this week’s podcast, I will be sharing with you on a few hacks that can get you out of the cycle.

This episode is all about productivity hacks that can help you get things done efficiently. You will get to learn about how you can better manage your time and make better plans to make sure that by the end of the day, what you intended to work on is completed. You will also learn about the concept of batching as a way to complete your tasks more efficiently and it’s also something that I often implement in my work life.

Ready to grab these hacks and implement them in your life? Listen now!

Welcome back and welcome to 2021! Can’t believe we are finally here. 2020 is filled with so much changes and events happening around the world but it has also brought us so much clarity in everything we do. Starting from coming up with new ways of living our lives, new ways of coping, new ways of teaching, of communication, and so much more new ways of what we have been doing before 2020.

With all the things that are happening, we could all use some understanding and kindness from one another. As Martin Luther King Jr. Day is coming, I will be sharing a few ideas that you can use to teach your students in order to support acts of kindness. These ideas are not only for O&M specialists but also for teachers in general.

Listen now to find out how you can engage your students to acts of kindness!

Navigating the world around our everyday lives can be tricky at times. It’s even trickier when it comes to new places that we are unfamiliar with. This is where the importance of spatial awareness and mental mapping came to play. How exactly do we subjectively assess and teach mental mapping skills to our students?

In this week’s podcast, we are so excited to have Lil Deverell with us. Lil has been an O&M specialist since 1993, starting out with a full caseload, in Australia. She then focused on clients with brain injury and children with multiple impairments. She’s well-known for her vision research where she will be sharing in detail about how she structures her research especially on mental mapping and how it correlates with orientation.

You will get to know how to subjectively assess and teach mental mapping skills as she shares her thoughts and experiences in the podcast. Other than that, Lil also has her own website which is filled with resources that you can use in order to better teach your students.

Excited? Join us!

Links:

Change is something that most people fear. But what if I tell you, a huge change is not necessarily needed in order to make an impact and that you can make a bigger impact by just implementing small adaptations?

Well, this episode is all about that. We are so excited to bring Kirsten French, programs manager, sport’s adaptations at Camp Spark and co-camp director at Camp Spark for Northwest Association for Blind Athletes in this week’s podcast! She will be sharing a lot of information regarding sports adaptation on how it could open up more opportunities for your students who are visually impaired, and to utilize it as a teaching mechanism in order to make teaching more accessible.

You will also get to understand more about how her sports adaptation program works, general adaptations that teachers can implement in their teaching and classrooms, as well as how the current situation around COVID-19 brought up different opportunities when it comes to teaching.

Sounds exciting? Join us now!

Links:

It’s always interesting to hear people blame everything that’s happening right now in 2020. But perhaps we are the one who’s stuck in the old paradigms where everything around us is affected. Our education systems as we know, started with the industrial revolution where indoctrinating children to be industrial workers is the norm. While that hasn’t changed, we can agree that all of us have changed. Nowadays, all of our needs are different.

While our education system is not fixed, perhaps it’s getting better. We, as educators, should also do our part by staying open-minded, network and learn from each other in order to forge a new way forward. In this week’s episode we will be sharing some highlights from the webinar that happened on November 12. You will get to hear from Tara Bowie, Jeremy Hill, and Sarah Moreau as they share the struggle that they experienced ever since COVID hit.

Get on in the podcast to hear what they have to share!

In a year full of bumpy roads and uncertainties, many of you can’t help but wonder where remote teaching is taking us? What’s going to happen to O&M teaching? As some of you are probably transitioning back and forth from remote teaching to in-person teaching, or even to hybrid teaching.

In this week’s episode, we will be talking exactly all about the future of remote teaching. I will be bringing in some new perspectives on how you can view remote teaching and fully utilize remote teaching in order to teach O&M more effectively.

Last but not least, we will be sharing more about the upcoming CEU Webinar on November 12. So stay tuned to find out!

Links:

Friends, I’m sure most of you experienced working or planning on something for a while, only to realize that you could’ve lessen your work had you worked more efficiently. I’m here to say don’t worry, I’ve got you.

In this week’s podcast you will get to know how you can work in a much simpler way with less work and less stress where the focus this week will be on creating IEP goals. You will get to learn where IEP goals actually come from, what are the components of IEP goals, and how you can adapt IEP goals regardless of where you’re teaching remotely, in-person, or hybrid.

Join now to find out!

Most of you have probably adapted to online teaching while some of you might still be struggling to adapt well. This week, we will be bringing back our best of episode where we will be talking about how we can make distance teaching easier with Jennifer Reeder. Jennifer is a teacher of the visually-impaired and an ACVREP-certified Orientation & Mobility Specialist. She will be sharing tips on how she teaches distantly and how to make online teaching more effective and fun.