CVI Scotland

Newsletter 36 - Lessons Course & CPD

Posted by Helen St Clair Tracy Chair of Trustees, CVI Scotland · Newsletters
Published: Thursday, 13th January 2022, 10:08am · Updated: Thursday, 13th January 2022, 10:42am

Hi,

Happy New Year

At the end of last year, after three years of writing, we finally completed our series of lessons. The purpose was to create a step-by-step approach to learning, suitable for anyone from any background, starting with the very basics, and journeying through the world of vision from the brain, to understand areas not working typically, leading to cerebral visual impairments.

The lessons, which are free, are ideal for programmes of continuing professional development (CPD), and for this purpose we have added a page called Course Data (all links at the end of this email).

Included in the final lessons are temporal lobe disorders, like prosopagnosia or face blindness, which is different from facial recognition difficulties caused by other CVIs. Understanding the difference is important, because the best approaches to help may differ depending on the cause. We also explain difficulties resulting from ’integrative agnosia’ where a child may have a broad range of recognition issues.

In our lessons about brain disorders of visual processing, we explaine the sometimes scary area of seeing things that are not really there. For a moment, turn to your left and then look back at this page. You can still see these words because whatever was to your left, your brain has cleared, so you can see this text once more without continuing to see the scene to your left. Your brain discards what you were looking at and replaces it with what you are looking at, and this is a very fast ongoing process. When this process is not working so well, the previous image can linger. From descriptions, sometimes the lingering image can appear transparent, almost ghost like. There are other accounts of different experiences of this phenomenon, including trailing of images. This condition is called palinopsia and is a form of visual hallucination. There are lots of different forms and types of visual hallucinations, and many are a case of your brain trying to help you out, often by trying to fill in visual gaps, but not always getting it quite right.

Our last two lessons look at visual neurological conditions affecting literacy and numbers, specifically dyscalculia and neurological dyslexia. We have extended these lessons to further explain the different reasons why children with CVI may have difficulties with numeracy and literacy. The majority of children with CVI, according to research, have some difficulties in school. Part of our explanation involves creating a very simple teaching checklist for anyone supporting a child with CVI, covering the basics:

Can I see it clearly?
Can I see everything?
Do I see it consistently?
Can I hear you clearly?
Can I listen to you and look at you at the same time?
Do I appear to see less well when you talk?
Do all your words make sense to me?
Can I shift my attention from you, to my work and then to the board easily?
Are there distractions?
Have you given me enough time?
Have I understood the basics of what you are teaching?
Have I lost confidence and do I need reassuring?

All these points are explained with examples in the Teaching Checklist (link below).

The course of lessons starts very simply, so everyone can learn, step-by-step, at their pace and in their time, to gain an advanced level of understanding.

Whether you are learning informally on your own in your own time, or as part of your job or role, thank you for taking part.

Very best wishes for 2022.

The CVI Scotland Team

PS Everything new can be found in our Updates section, and via Twitter @scotlandcvi and our Facebook page. You can also find us on Instagram.

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