Orientation and Mobility Sharing Days

O&M Sharing Day - October 2018

Photo shows an O&M Specialist holding an instructions page in one hand and a Victor Trek in the other.

On October 19th, 2018, Orientation and Mobility (O&M) specialists from around British Columbia gathered to learn about the Victor Trek from Steve Barclay of Canadian Assistive Technology. The Victor Trek combines the functionality of a Victor Reader Stream with GPS capabilities for wayfinding. The Sharing Day was held at John Oliver Secondary School in Vancouver so that the group would have a diverse set of landmarks and routes in residential and semi-business areas in which to try out the Trek. 

Steve began the session with an overview of the device and has shared the presentation:

A group of O and M specialists stand around one O and M specialist who is holding the Victor Trek.Following the presentation, Steve provided the group with a list of tasks to perform out in the surrounding community. O&M Specialists used the Trek to explore landmarks around the school, set landmarks, record and reverse a route, and find a business by street address. 

The presentation concluded after lunch with some questions that came up during the community experience and some further discussion. Huge thanks to Steve and Canadian Assistive Technology for a great day of professional learning! 

The rest of the O&M Sharing Day was devoted to new or useful resources that members of the group have encountered in their practice.

List of useful apps for O&M instruction

  • Blindfold Racer - app that can be used to teaching students alignment and maintaining a straight line of travel. 
  • First, Then Visual Schedule - app that allows the user to create activity sequences using images taken with the iPad of locations/objects that are meaningful to the student. 
  • Lightbot Jr. - app where students can plan and create routes through coding. For a coding app that is VoiceOver accessible, consider Swift Playground
  • See, Touch, Learn - app that allows the user to create games and activities (e.g., safety signage identification) using images taken using the iPad. 

New and established resources for O&M instruction

In addition to apps, participants shared new and established resources that they have found useful in their practice of late:

  • Partners in O&M - a new title available from APH Press. Not yet available in the PRCVI Library. This book is intended to help other professionals on the educational team better understand the scope and purpose of O&M. 
  • Treks - a board game intended to support students' use of cardinal directions. 
  • Teaching Street Crossings to Students with Visual Impairments - a professional resource intended to provide O&M specialists with strategies for teaching street crossings across age/developmental levels.
  • Crossings with No Traffic Control - a digital resource from APH (not available from PRCVI) with both professional and student content for teaching strategies for uncontrolled street crossings. 
  • Code and Go Robot Mouse Kit from PRCVI - an adapted version of a commercially available kit to teach the fundamentals of coding, this kit can be used to teach and reinforce route planning, execution, and evaluation/ problem-solving in an O&M context. 

 

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