Browsing by Author "Lourens, Heidi"
Now showing 1 - 5 of 5
Results Per Page
Sort Options
- ItemOpen AccessTEDI 3 Week 1 - Conversations About Our Schooling as Visually Impaired Children(2019-06-01) Watermeyer, Brian; Leteane, Benedict; Lourens, Heidi; Botha, MichelleIn this video, Brian Watermeyer, Heidi Lourens, Benedict Leteane and Michelle Botha form a panel to discuss the topics brought up in Week 1 of the Teaching Children with Visual Impairment: Creating Empowering Classrooms MOOC. The members of the panel discuss their experiences of attending schooling in South Africa, both in mainstream education and the special school system. The panel members discuss the ways in which they were socialised and the kinds of anxieties and prejudices revealed in the social aspects of education, as well as the importance of the emotional aspect of care that can be ignored in the technical approach to 'fixing problems' that can become dominant in special needs education. Michelle discusses how she 'performed' sight in order to appease the emotional needs of her sighted teachers and classmates, and how these practices became increasingly maladaptive as she became an adult and she required additional assistance. The panel then discusses what they needed from their educators and the educational environment and members of their community in terms of dialogue and support, and how the educational environment could be improved to better support their learning environment.
- ItemOpen AccessTEDI 3 Week 2 - Conversations on Empowering the Visually-Impaired Child(2019-06-01) Watermeyer, Brian; Leteane, Benedict; Lourens, Heidi; Botha, MichelleIn this video, members of the TEDI-VI MOOC panel discuss the Expanded Core Curriculum (ECC) from a critical and personal point of view. They discuss their experiences of being taught certain skills (such as walking with a cane) and how these educational techniques often did not take into account the emotional needs of the learners. They reflect on the ways in which the teaching of the ECC can appear to be designed to fit people with visual disabilities into the existing societal framework rather than transform society to be more accepting of difference and diversity. Michelle reflects on the ways in which career opportunities are discussed with visually-impaired individuals and how best to have those conversations in a productive way.
- ItemOpen AccessTEDI 3 Week 3 - Conversations on the Experience of Accessible and Inaccessible Learning Material(2019-06-01) Watermeyer, Brian; Leteane, Benedict; Lourens, Heidi; Botha, MichelleIn this video, members of the TEDI-VI MOOC panel discuss their experience of accessible and inaccessible learning materials. Benedict reflects on his experiences as a learner in the special school system, in which there were not sufficient braille books for the number of visually-impaired learners in the classroom, and insufficient tools (such as Perkins braillers). He explained the difficulties of having to rely on partially-sighted learners in the classroom, who had to take on additional responsibilities in the classroom, and the anxieties this could induce in the classroom. Heidi, who had full access to accessible learning materials, discusses the difficulty of submitting assignments which were scoped in inaccessible ways (such as requiring images and photographs) for visually-impaired learners. Michelle discusses the difficulty of advocating for her needs and negotiating for assistance with different teachers, which she had to do herself, and the experience of feeling singled-out as the only child with visual impairments in the classroom. She discusses the experiences of shame of asking for consideration from her teachers and the sense of imposing on their teaching techniques, and how her school experience and grades were very dependent on the willingness of her teachers to accommodate her learning needs. Heidi discusses the lack of accessible leisure reading material in the school library and the lack in general of recreational activities for learners with visual disabilities. The panel closes by discussing the transformative potential of assistive digital technology while being aware of the pitfalls, particularly with the focus on audio at the exclusion of braille.
- ItemOpen AccessTEDI 3 Week 4 - Closing Conversations on Key Insights for Teachers(2019-06-01) Watermeyer, Brian; Leteane, Benedict; Botha, Michelle; Lourens, HeidiIn this video, the panel members discuss the most important things or 'learnings' that they would like educators of children with visual disabilities to take away from the TEDI-VI MOOC. They discuss how educators can provide nurture for children with visual disabilities in talking about their future potential and their lives beyond school; the need for collaboration between parents and teachers around the educational situation for their child and the need to avoid confrontation and blaming; the need for educators to listen to the needs and problems expressed by children with visual disabilities, and other improvements that could be made to make education more inclusive.
- ItemOpen AccessTEDI 3 Week 4 - Conversations on Listening to Children with Visual Impairment(2019-06-01) Watermeyer, Brian; Leteane, Benedict; Botha, Michelle; Lourens, HeidiIn this video, members of the panel discuss the emotional adjustments they had to go through once they entered the special schooling environment, from learning new skills (such as Braille) to receiving little to no emotional support. They also discussed how they as people with visual disabilities felt that they needed to manage the emotions of their friends and family members, and how their educational and home environments didn't encourage honest emotional conversations of the difficulty of living with visual disability. They also discuss the similarities between the way in which people with disabilities are treated and the segregationist policies that structure South African society in the past and continue to influence South African culture in the 21st century.