“Since I am unable to come to the room, the room must come to me”

On January 12th, 2023, from 04:00pm to 05:00pm CET, ENVITER had its first webinar of the year, this time about Active Learning.

Active Learning is an intervention for children and grown-ups who are – due to their impairments -, not able to explore their environment with their hands, feet, or body. They learn to be a passive rather than active participant, waiting for adults to provide activity rather than seeking it out on their own. We see this kind of behaviour mostly by young children with severe visual impairments, and by people with PIMD (profound intellectual and multiple disabilities) and visual impairments.

Active Learning emphasizes creating a developmentally appropriate and enriched environment so that children and adults with multiple special needs become active learners.

This webinar provided more information and examples about Active Learning and how this intervention challenges persons to make physical contact with materials and objects in their nearby space.

The webinar was developed by Martien Rienstra, from our Royal Dutch Visio member. You can have a look at her presentation using this link.

This year, the theme was 3D, on October 25 and 26.

Over the two days, the Berufsförderungswerk Düren was the location of an advanced training course for nine colleagues from seven European countries. These colleagues are trainers from seven European educational institutions for people with visual impairments. The topic of the training was the production of tactile teaching materials for blind students using 3D printing . The highly condensed course, focused on the operation of 3D printers, as well as the basics of design using CAD software.

All participants were surprised that the operation of a 3D printer is relatively simple. The motivation of the participants to use this technology in their companies was correspondingly high.

The 3D printing technology is regularly covered in the media. The possible applications of this technology seem limitless and are increasingly finding their way into the private sphere, e.g. for upcycling of everyday objects or the production of spare parts that are no longer available. 3D printers are becoming more and more powerful and user-friendly and are now affordable for everyone. In fact, 3D printing offers many advantages for many creative home- and model makers. In the field of education for people with visual impairments, tactile teaching materials can be produced easily and affordably.

However, there is still a prevailing opinion that 3D printing can only be done by IT specialists and technicians.

This introductory course aimed to provide answers to these very questions. Contents of the course were:

• • Private application areas of 3D printing
  • Different 3D printing processes and materials
  • Costs and effort
  • Advantages of 3D printing compared to conventional manufacturing methods
  • Obtaining parts from databases, 3D scanning and design
  • Demonstration of various printing processes
  • Practical operation of a 3D printer
  • Basic construction with Autodesk Fusion360

This trainng event was held by our member BFW Düren (Germany) with the support of ENVITER. To have a 360° view on the training area, where the course is taking place: Click here

Once a year, we wish our member’s professionals to meet so they can have a training experience usually focusing on content about new and innovative methodologies, practices and tools that often resulte from our projects. It is a perfect time to exchange ideas, train our professionals, create some links between them and develop smaller internal networks of specific professionals working in the same areas.