1. Technology – Starting with the Basics
Caireen Sutherland
QTVI, QTMSI
Senior QTVI Peterborough City / NatSIP Associate

2. Content Background and role of NatSIP Young people engagement Impact
F’app’tastic
What’s next…

3. What is NatSIP
NatSIP is a unique national partnership of professionals and voluntary organisations working with children and young people with sensory impairment (SI) and their families
The purpose of NatSIP is to improve outcomes for children and young people with sensory impairment through promoting collaborative working between education, health and social care professionals
Details, published guidance and outcomes from the NatSIP workstreams, including from the contract programme, can be found on the NatSIP website:

4. Contract with DfE 2016-17 to establish: Technology used by SI Services
Contract with DfE to produce:
1.4 Development of face to face training and support materials for SENCOs - working with national SENCO qualification providers and SENCO forums to deliver awareness training and develop training materials
1.6 Support for mainstream workforces – technology for sensory impairment
This may have been explained but if not…see above
Current contract and overall Objective 1: To enhance the capacity and knowledge base of the front line workforce
Refer to website and mention some key features of website.
Sensory Learning Hub – SLH
Find an advisor
Resources
Research and papers etc.
May want to have website up and ready to show…explain registering is free and allows access to other specific downloadable materials.

5. Hearing Impairment - technology
Funding – who may provide what? Who pays for what?
All agreed the most common technologies…what was interesting…some wait over 6 weeks for CI CYP in one borough.
Another borough issued HA for APD
Hearing aids – A hearing aid is a digital processor that collects speech amongst everyday environment sounds and makes them louder. Some achieve this through boosting the sound coming into the ear; some do this by transmitting vibrations to the skull (BAHA) and some do this through the use of implants inside the inner ear.
Baha hearing aid system –
Radio aid system - A radio aid works by making the sound the deaf child or young person needs to hear, such as the teacher’s voice, clearer in relation to unwanted background noise. A radio aid system consists of a transmitter microphone, worn by a teacher for example, that sends a wireless signal to a receiver worn by the student.
Soundfield system – Loudspeakers are fitted around a classroom, and are linked to a microphone worn by the teacher. This allows the teacher’s voice to be heard over the general noise of a classroom by all the pupils.
Cochlear implants – A cochlear implant is a type of hearing aid that converts sound into electrical signals. Cochlear implants are for children who would gain limited or no benefit from hearing aids. Instead of simply making sounds louder as with a conventional hearing aid, the cochlear implant provides a sensation of sound from speech which is manipulated and represented as a small electrical stimulus within the cochlear that the auditory system interprets as speech.

6. Young People have their say…HI

7. Vision Impairment - Technology
You Tube Link is embedded here…click on black box to show video.
4 mins . MSI student but showing her VI access and a range of uses of iPad to aid visual access

8. Young People have their say…VI

9. Multi-Sensory Impairment - Technology

10. Young People have their say…MSI

11. Impact of training

12. F‘app’tastic

13. F‘app’tastic

14. What’s Next… WCMT Fellow
Travel to learn – return to inspire…
We fund UK citizens to investigate inspiring practice in other countries, and return with innovative ideas for the benefit of people across the UK.
In 2015 I read an article from the International Development charity VSO, about schools in
India using ‘What’s app’ to support teachers and teaching in schools and the improved
impact this had on reading skills (VSO 2015). This article made me think that with everreducing
budgets in the UK in education there is scope to do more with the technologies we
already have, without spending more but extending their potential and positive impact.
This led to my WCMT application in October 2015; a project to identify innovative uses of
digital technology in the field of education and sensory impairment in Northern Europe and USA

15. What’s Next…
Training

16. Thank you for listening