Two documents, an overview and a more in-depth report, examine Queensborough Community College's pre-college orientation program for visually impaired students. The overview, by Patricia J. Evanoski, ...describes the program's rationale and procedures. The second document focuses on the 1980 summer program, and examines the following program aspects: staff orientation, academic course content, student orientation and mobility efforts, resource workshops (in which students learn about such aids as readers, agencies, and guide dogs), study skills workshops, library/research workshops, psychological workshops ("rap groups") career workshops, parent/family meetings, the educational/recreational program, special seminars, and the residence life program. Additional program features, such as optional scheduling, braille workshops, and workshops on athletics, acting, and typing are reviewed. Extensive appendixes include sample forms and letters and information on sources for books, magazines, and educational materials. (CL)
A Comprehensive Employment Training Act funded program of prevocational summer work experience for young blind adults was established to teach job-seeking skills, to develop decision-making ...processes, and to explore interests and capabilities for potential future employment. (Author)
Describes graduate teacher education program at University of Northern Colorado emphasizing full and equal training in three competency areas: academic instruction, orientation/mobility, and needs of ...severely/profoundly handicapped blind children. Finds program serves rural/small schools and districts lacking sufficient population of visually impaired children to hire more than one teacher. (LFL)
The relationship between chronological age, social age, motor, sensory and concept skills, and the orientation and mobility skills of mentally retarded visually impaired children and young adults was ...examined using multiple regression analysis techniques. A regression equation composed of the five independent variables was found to provide an explanation of the variability in mobility skill performance. Further analysis was conducted to determine the individual contributions of the independent variables to the full regression model.
Randolph Technical College (RTC) and the Division of Services for the Blind of the North Carolina Department of Human Resources have cooperated for two years on a program to provide blind students ...with the opportunity to receive instruction in a traditional classroom setting on a college campus. Problems encountered in the early stages of the program, before and immediately after it was instituted at RTC, included: difficulties in administrative coordination, the financial burden, securing a classroom and transportation, and recruiting students and staff. Through the efforts of Randolph's Learning Resources Center, the Office of Continuing Education, and other campus departments, instruction is provided to 16 legally blind students by four Braille instructors and one aide. One morning a week, classes are offered in Braille, and Communication Awareness, which includes vocabulary, listening skills, and public speaking. Special learning units cover the metric system; manual dexterity through rug-making; daily nutrition, including shopping and actual meal preparation; and mobility training. Since many of these blind students live alone on limited incomes, programs are designed to help them become self-sufficient. Instruction is supplemented by numerous field trips with the financial assistance of local community organizations. The ultimate goal of the program is to fully integrate blind students into Randolph's Continuing Education Program. (DR)
Intended for parents and teachers of blind, multihandicapped children in special schools; the booklet outlines practical suggestions for teaching children with varying degrees of handicap. Sections ...cover the following areas (subtopics in parentheses): visual handicap (degrees of blindness); motor development and mobility (suggestions for development of head control, sitting, further motor development, and play); sense of smell; use of hands (suggestions for encouraging purposeful use of hands, dropping, tactile scanning, throwing, opening and closing lids, and hand muscle tone and fine finger use); the development of visual ability and interpretation from infancy to 2 years; visual efficiency training (visual attention, fixation, tracking, convergence training, accommodation, eye contact, hand/eye coordination, scanning, and eye/foot, eye/body coordination); auditory training (interpretation of sounds, rhythm, and orientation); language and speech (suggestions to encourage an interest in making sounds); play; toilet training (suggestions for planning and establishing a toilet training routine); feeding (general hints and hints for feeding children with feeding problems); drinking; self help skills (dressing); behavior difficulties (head banging, screaming, the child who doesn't want to be handled, hyperkinetic children, "remote" children, obsessions, and discipline); instructional objectives; and education. (SBH)
The booklet presents a compilation of informal checklists and inventories to help in assessing the developmental skills of visually handicapped students from birth through senior high school. Part 1, ..."Informal Assessment of School Age Visually Handicapped Students," covers the following areas: visual functioning; unique academic needs (such as tactile perception, braille, and typing skills); orientation and mobility (including gross motor assessment, spatial reasoning, and body image screening); vocational skills; and a behavior rating scale. Among the areas covered in Part 2, "Informal Assessment of Developmental Skills for Younger Functioning Visually Handicapped and Multihandicapped Children," are self help (including feeding, dressing, grooming, and toileting); psychomotor; social-emotional; language (including tactile communication, gesturing, fingerspelling, pictorial communication, written communication, imitation, and spontaneous nonverbal); and cognition and the sensorimotor period (including object permanence, causality, and development of Piagetian schemas). (Author/DLS)
Using an itinerant team of professional rehabilitation personnel, a three-year project was conducted in West Virginia to provide the older blind in three counties (Cabell, Wood, Kanawha) with ...comprehensive rehabilitation services in both the home and community so that they could become as independent as possible, and, if possible, obtain gainful employment. The first nine months of the project dealt primarily with development of referral sources and inservice staff training. Out of the 408 referrals provided, 133 cases received services. Fifty-nine clients were trained in mobility skills, ninety-seven chose to receive instruction in homemaking, and 114 participated in communications training. Clients were referred on an individual basis to community resources such as the Division of Vocational Rehabilitation, Goodwill Industries Homebound Program, Library Commission, and community schools. A consumer evaluation of the project showed that the clients were satisfied overall, and a majority of the professionals who had originally referred participants assessed the program favorably. It was disappointing that 128 individuals contacted refused services, and that ophthalmologists provided so few referrals. Recommendations were made for future services, including (1) hiring a third party to evaluate the program's effectiveness, (2) expanding the program to include the functionally blind, and (3) expanding and publicizing the loan of talking cassette books by libraries. (ELG)
The services of the Living Skills Center for the Visually Handicapped, a habilitative service for blind young adults, are described. It is explained that the Center houses its participants in their ...own apartments in a large complex and has served over 70 young people in 4 years. The evaluation section describes such assessment instruments as an administration of living skills evaluation, (for cooking, cleaning, care of clothing, financial management) and on administration of orientation/mobility evaluation (route directions, street travel, street crossings, stairs, spacial terms). The section dealing with orientation and mobility examines orientation to one's apartment and mobility in the neighborhood, (bank, department store, drug store, dry cleaners/laundromat, grocery store, post office, restaurants). Section 4 examines care of clothing (clothes cleaning, organization of closets and drawers, ironing, selection of clothes, and sewing). Such cleaning skills as scrubbing, cleaning floors, making a bed, and dusting furniture are described in section 5. The section on personal hygiene focuses on bathing, skin care, hair care, teeth, nail care, shaving, and care of self during menses. The final section deals with financial management and outlines the following areas of skills: basic math, coin identification, currency, coin operated machines, telephoning, credit, bills, security deposits, source of money, budgeting, insurance, banks, signature, writing checks, keeping a check record, bank statements, reconciling a bank statement. (BD)
Summarized is the first year of an intervention program for visually handicapped preschool children in Louisiana in which a curriculum guide was developed, implemented and evaluated with 12 children. ...It is explained that, in developing the curriculum guide, emphasis was placed on items that would best prepare Ss for mainstreaming in public school classrooms at age 6. Chapters cover the following topics: introduction (including the problem, procedures and importance of the study); review of the literature; development of the curriculum guide (behavioral objectives and implementation process objectives in the areas of reading readiness, development of residual vision, orientation and mobility, social skills, and daily living skills); presentation of validated criteria (results of student performance in each skill area). Among major conclusions cited were that the data suggest that classroom intervention had a positive effect and that the curriculum guide provides the structure necessary to teach preschoolers with vision from zero to normal. Also included are the following appendixes: a glossary of terms, a criteria referenced checklist used to measure program effectiveness, the Maxfield-Bucholz Scale of Social Maturity, class composition information, and an extensive task analysis of the 5 skill areas taught. (LS)
