Conference Details

This course explores the many kinds of “time pieces” (e.g., clocks and calendars)—also known as "time tools"—to keep us on track and oriented in the world. Time pieces are also extremely important for students who are deaf-blind. We will cover the use of customized calendars being a key educational strategy for students with deaf-blindness. Calendars help a student learn time concepts and time vocabulary, provide a way for her to understand and have some control over her schedule, and support conversations about everyday life activities. The goal of this course is to begin to give you some insights into how a child with deaf-blindness has different experiences of everyday situations. By understanding some of the impacts of deaf-blindness, an intervener or communication partner can begin to interpret a child´s responses to the environment in new ways and provide supports to the child based on that understanding/p>

Objectives

Participants will:

• Explain why a student with deaf-blindness might have difficulty learning time concepts, time vocabulary, and understanding traditional timepieces.
• List the continuum of time frames in calendar systems and identify several student characteristics that are prerequisites for each.
• Identify ways that calendar systems are individualized for students with deaf-blindness.
• Describe strategies to depict the past events for each time frame.
• Describe how calendars move from concrete to abstract across the time frames to teach vocabulary about the future.
• List example of how calendars support communication for students with deaf-blindness.
• Summarize the crucial role that calendars play in supporting and clarifying genuine conversational interactions.

In this course, you will review the many avenues to maximizing hearing and vision. This includes the use of medical devices like glasses and hearing aids, assistive technology devices, and individualized educational accommodations. You will review the foundation for determining the best devices and accommodations for a particular student is careful, thorough assessment. Much focus is upon the intervener who plays an essential role in helping a student use accommodations and devices and observing how well they work for him. Making the most of (maximizing) any vision or hearing that a student with deaf-blindness has, will help him be as successful as possible in school and life

Objectives

Participants will:

• Identify assistive technology used by students who are deaf-blind
• List instructional modifications and strategies that maximize vision and hearing.
• Explain when you need to adapt a vision or hearing device or strategy to accommodate both sensory needs
• Describe how assessment is used to identify the most appropriate assistive technology for students
• Review possible barriers to the student having full access to instruction due to vision deaf-blindness.

Intervener support is one form of accommodation under supplementary aids and services. This course will review how interveners provide one to one support to address the educational need of accessing information for students with deaf-blindness. Also reviews is assistive technology devices that help students access the curriculum in the classroom and at home.

Objectives

Participants will:

• Examine the role of the intervener in the assessment process and ongoing decision-making practice for assistive technology.
• Review components of both the general education and expanded core curriculum.
• List factors that challenge access to curricula for students with deaf-blindness.
• Identify materials, equipment and strategies that provide physical access for students with deaf-blindness and physical challenges.
• Describe modifications and accommodations that support access needed for students with deaf-blindness and intellectual disability.
• Review the range of equipment used to provide communication access and the factors that influence choices to use/not use specific equipment materials
• Describe how and why assistive communication provides access (communication. learning, socialization, etc.) at school and at home.
• Describe the collaborative nature between family and school team members to ensure access to curriculum.

This course reviews the sense of self and how it is a complicated, multifaceted set of layers that define an individual. Knowing how these layers interact, and what is required to make each layer within a child thrive, will increase the quality of interaction between the individual with deaf-blindness and the intervener.

Objectives

Participants will

• Describe four components of self-determination as they relate to the specific needs of students who are deaf-blind.
• Define basic vocabulary, as it relates to self-determination.
• Learners will identify opportunities for self-determination within video-based case studies.
• Conduct environmental analyses to determine what opportunities there are for students with deaf-blindness to develop self-determination skills with partners in actual school settings.

This course addresses transition and the on-going and personalized process involved in transitioning. The transition process involves people in all areas of the student´s life, all of which are integral to a successful adult life. Additionally, content will explore other facets of life impacted by transition, such as forming relationships and pursuing goals outside of vocation are overlooked by the team. Content will examine how a person led program with full learner self-advocacy and cohesive outside partnerships pave the way for achieving successful transition and a meaningful adult life.

Objectives

Participants will:

• Describe transition for deaf-blind youth as moving towards personally meaningful adult lives with multiple possibilities.
• Define transition as a life-process that takes place over time, and that preparing for transition needs to start well before transition actually occurs.
• Identify the intervener’s role in supporting the voice of the student during the transition process.
• Review need for a student to actively participate in the transition process through self-discovery, self-direction, and self-advocacy.
• Reflect on one’s own values and the student’s values, and how these values impact choice-making.
• Identify opportunities at school, at home, and in the community to facilitate a student’s vocational exploration and exposure to deaf-blind adults who lead meaningful lives.
• List your student’s likes, dislikes, and aptitudes, including conditions leading toward success and barriers to success.
• Describe how recreation and leisure activities are essential to providing a well-rounded life experience.

This course will provide participants each individual circle of the model allows for a more in-depth analysis of what each student needs and how to facilitate that without becoming too involved to the point of disrupting natural connections being made. Through evaluating your own personal circle of friends, a student with deaf-blindness’ own circle of friends is better understood.

Objectives

Participants will:

• Review the important role that social skills play in school and post-school success.
• Compare how deaf-blindness and decreased opportunities for incidental learning can impact the development of social skills.
• Describe how to support natural social interactions based on shared activities and interests within the framework of family culture and local norms.
• Describe how the intervener can facilitate friendships and interactions between the student and others in the school and community.
• Examine how Circle of Friends process can be used to identify challenges and strategies to support social connections.

This course focuses on sexuality and that sexuality is a part of human life. Content will review that by providing information and support about sexuality to students who are deaf-blind, we are helping people have the information that they need to lead a self-determined life.

Objectives

Participants will:

• Define sexuality as a natural and healthy part of the human experience.
• Examine issues of sexuality which are relevant across the lifespan.
• Describe sexuality education content for various ages (i.e., infant/toddler, preschool, school age, middle and high school, transition).
• Distinguish sexuality myths from facts and understand the importance of sexuality education that is factual, medically accurate, age appropriate, and free of bias.
• Describe the important role that self-esteem plays in self-determination and making healthy, informed choices.
• Review the importance of being proactive with sexuality education and providing instruction before it is needed or becomes a problem.
• Identify how sexuality education may be governed by laws and policies and must be conducted in collaboration with educational teams and families.

This course reviews how behavior can communicate what is going on with a child, how to identify the function of the behavior, how expectations can influence behavior, and how the environment impacts behavior.

Objectives

Participants will:

• Examine the purpose of behavior, and how to identify that purpose.
• Define a child´s behavior as a functional strategy to cope with a given situation.
• Describe how expectations, both high and low, impact behavior.
• Identify how the environment impacts behavior, and can be modified.

This course reviews sign language and braille as modes of access to language and printed materials. Learners who are deaf-blind may utilize their modes independently or in combination with other modalities. Participants will identify that sign language and braille are abstract forms of communication and should be considered as higher levels of communication. Also covered is information concerning emerging language users who are deaf-blind and how they will utilize modes that are at a pre-symbolic level of communication prior to moving onto these methods. It is critical that communication partners be aware of the hierarchy of language development and understand how to scaffold the learning of language.

Objectives

Participants will:

• Review language development on a hierarchical continuum.
• Describe the intervener´s role in supporting sign language and braille development.
• Summarize how the consistent use of strategies and modalities across communication partners and environments is essential to the learner who is deaf-blind.
• Explain why students who are deaf-blind are multi-modal communicators.
• Describe the role of touch and how it is re-prioritized as an access point by students who are deaf-blind regardless of the use of functional vision (i.e. touch for communication, touch for information, touch for emotions, etc.).

This course address how touch is a vital part of supporting both language and access to the world. Content will explore the various techniques in the touch development process that the intervener can use to support the learner. Touch skills can be developed before and in conjunction with formal language. Emphasis will be placed on the learning and communication styles of the learner into account and respect their needs.

Objectives

Participants will:

• Identify specific ways a student who is deaf-blind can use touch to gain access to the world that will lead to communication and learning.
• Explain how mutual tactile attention, tactile modeling, and joint tactile attention lead to communication and language development.
• List the variety of ways touch can be used for communicating and learning.
• Review the tactile ways the students who are deaf-blind and the intervener access and engage in communication and learning and especially in conversation even prior to formal language development through touch.
• Identify techniques for supporting language, communication and mutual attention to reduce isolation, and to promote access to environmental information. Learners may explore topics such as Pro-Tactile, haptics, and neuro studies based upon the touch sense
• Explain why, when, and how to use tactile symbols with students who are deaf-blind who may not yet be ready for abstract symbol systems.