Hurd,+Jordan,+Visual+Impairment+Including+Blindness

** About Me ** : My name is Jordan Hurd and I grew up right here in Southern Oregon. I went to Phoenix high school where I spent most of my time running. After high school I went to college at the University of Oregon where I had no major because I didn’t have a clue what I would do with my life. I only went there because it is an amazing running school and it was not too far away from home. After two years at U of O it became clear that I would not excel in my education as long as I was at such a big school with such little professor involvement. I then made the decision to come back home to the valley and be close to home at a smaller school again. ** Education and Career Goals: ** I have always known that I would not stop with my education until I graduated from college with at least my bachelor’s degree. No one in my family has ever graduated from college and I am determined to be the first. My track coach was a big inspiration for me when I was deciding what I would like to be when I graduate from school. In high school my coach told me that I would be a great teacher and when I came back from U of O I resorted back to him for advice. Now I know without a doubt that I will be a great teacher, and I will love it. ** What Brings Me Joy ** : My family, boyfriend, animals, and running bring me joy and I don’t know how I would get through school without those things. I work at a dog kennel, Dutch Bros, and volunteer at Wildlife Images (which is where the above picture was taken. I am always really busy and usually take on more than I can handle but I love being around people and animals. I am usually smiling from ear to ear and I love everything I am doing.  ** Biggest Fear About Being a Teacher: ** My biggest fear about being a teacher is finding out one of my students is being abused. I plan on putting my heart and soul into these children and knowing one is hurting would break my heart. I suppose that a normal fear would be failing or not doing my absolute best but I know myself better than that. I will not fail and I will always do whatever I possibly can for my students but there are some things that I just cannot do and that is what I am worried about.   ** Difficult Learning Experience ** : When I was in elementary school I had a really hard time learning to tell time. I remember when we used the little clocks that you could manipulate when the teacher told you a time to display. I would get frustrated and embarrassed enough that I would look at clocks around me so that I wasn’t always the one needing help. I dreaded that activity every week. This memory will make me a better teacher because even something as basic as telling time is challenging when you first learn it and if a teacher doesn’t handle it with patience it will make a permanent impact. When I get frustrated as a teacher I can remember how frustrating it is as a student. ** What I want To Learn from This Course: ** I want to gain enough knowledge and understanding about children with learning disabilities to be able to educate them in a positive manner. I don’t really know what to expect from this course but I am really excited to admit my own ignorance and fill in the blanks in my knowledge of teaching children with special needs.

I chose this topic because it is something that I have always been very curious about. Without my contacts in I am very near sighted and I remember trying to sit in the classroom and focus before I had my glasses. I was falling behind in my note taking, I got headaches, and I got easily frustrated and that was all just because I was having a hard time seeing. I could only imagine what it is like for someone whose vision is not correctable. I also feel that your vision is such a big part of how you live your day to day life and I wanted to educate myself further so I could make my students with visual impairments lives easier.
 * Topic: Visual Impairment Including Blindness **


 * __5 Things I Have Learned: __**
 * __1) __**Vision loss can result in delayed concept development which, without effective intervention, severely impacts the student's social, emotional, academic, and vocational development.


 * __2) __**Low vision is a significant reduction of visual function that cannot be fully corrected by ordinary glasses, contact lenses, medical treatment and/or surgery.


 * __3) __**285 million people are visually impaired worldwide: 39 million are blind and 246 have low vision.


 * __ 4) __** An estimated 19 million children are visually impaired. Of these, 12 million children are visually impaired due to refractive errors, a condition that could be easily diagnosed and corrected. 1.4 million are irreversibly blind for the rest of their lives.


 * __5) __** Vision loss can be caused by damage to the eye itself, by the eye being shaped incorrectly, or even by a problem in the brain.

* ** [] 4.5 out of 5** This was my favorite resource out of any others that I looked at and if you only have time to view one site from my wiki this should be it. This site seems very updated because it used people first language and discusses how to have an inclusive classroom with a child who is visually impaired or blind. The site lays all of the information out in a way that is very easy to understand and find what you are looking for. A lot of my other resources are targeted at people who just need information on visual impairments including blindness but this site targets how to have an inclusive classroom with students who have visual impairments. 1)  [] **3 out of 5** I liked this site strictly because it has good information as far as definitions. You don’t have to go through a ton of reading to find the definition of visual impairment, legally blind, partially sighted, or low vision. When I first started researching this topic I found that I did not have a strong understanding of how many levels there are of visual impairments or which word meant which level. This sight however is not the best for a ton of information past the definitions which is why I rated it a 3.
 * __Top Resource: __**
 * __<span style="color: #b2a1c7; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 16px;">Additional Resources __****<span style="color: #b2a1c7; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 16px;">: **

<span style="color: #ffc000; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 16px;">2) <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 16px;"> http://teenshealth.org/teen/diseases_conditions/sight/visual_impairment.html- **4 out of 5** <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 16px;">I really liked this site because it is geared towards kids but also has great information on visual impairment. There is also a feature that allows you to listen to the article which makes it a great sight because if a mother is researching for her child she can use that feature instead of reading everything to her him or her. The sight is easy to follow and gives not only definitions but also the causes and some explanations of what is affecting the sight of the person.

<span style="color: #7030a0; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 16px;">3) <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 16px;"> [] **3.5 out of 5** <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 16px;">This site was very informational and easy to follow. The site had information clearly marked such as; definitions, causes, treatment, and changes in the past years. I liked how the information was presented but it wasn’t hugely extensive which is why I gave it a 3.5.

<span style="color: #c00000; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 16px;">4) <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 16px;"> [] **4.5 out of 5** <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 16px;">This is my favorite site that I found about visual impairment because it had examples of how people with different visual impairments see. It is really hard for me to imagine how it would be like having a blurry spot in the center of my vision, or having everything look distorted in one way or another but this site shows you. In addition to the examples the site had a great deal of information that is worded in a way that is easy to follow. This is an all-around great site for someone looking for information on visual impairments including blindness.

<span style="color: #943634; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 16px;">5) []- **3.5 our of 5** I really liked this video because it leads us through some activities that I would consider routine but it is through the view of a person who is visually impaired. I am a very visual person and it is hard for me to understand something until I see it and this video helped me understand how a person could get through their day.

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This was a really interesting article for me because it specifically targets visual impairment strategies in the classroom, which since I want to be a teacher is very informative. I think this article had some great advice and tips that I will try out in my own classroom if I ever have a child who is visually impaired in my own classroom. Now that I have a greater grasp of what the term “visually impaired” means I learned a lot from an article on how to adjust your classroom for success of that child as well as everyone else.
 * 6) ** []- **4 out of 5**

<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 16px;">This site is devoted to classroom adaptations for students who are visually impaired which most of them I found to be really informative. I think that one of the keys to really helping students with visual impairments is knowing that there is not a cookie cutter solution to all of their learning needs and finding lots of adaptations is a great way to broaden your “book of tricks.”
 * 7) __http://www5.esc13.net/vi/docs/TeacherPackets/14_classadapt.pdf__ [|-] 3.0 out of 5**

<span style="color: #ff33cc; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 16px;">8) **__<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 16px;">[|https://askjan.org/media/sight.html-3 out of 5] __** <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 16px;">I liked this site because it has a ton of information that is quick and to the point. I don’t want to have to read through pages and pages of materials to find what I am looking for. I really like facts and when I see a list of them I can begin to wrap my mind around a concept. This site provides facts and questions to commonly asked questions which is really nice to have.