QUINQUENNIUM 1997- 2002
ISSUE-IV JANUARY, 2002
The last few months have been quite hectic! We have managed to put together a programme of high quality keynote speakers and respondents that hopefully will reflect the international focus of the conference. It is pleasing that all the first choice speakers, apart from one, are available and very willing to participate. Our only concern is that of translation from Spanish into English - if this is not available then we may have to re-arrange parts of the programme where this is a problem. We sincerely hope that this difficulty is resolved in the near future.
|
Sunday |
Keynote speaker Prof J. van Londen (The Netherlands) |
|
Monday |
Early Intervention Keynote speaker 1.Prof Renate Walthes (Germany) Respondents 1. Marilda Bruno (Brazil) 2. Dr Nurrit Neustadt (Israel)
Keynote speaker 1.Prof Renate Walthes (Germany) Respondents 1. Marilda Bruno (Brazil) 2. Dr Nurrit Neustadt (Israel)
|
|
Tuesday |
School Years Keynote Speaker 1. Nandini Rawal (India) Respondents 1. Gladys Nyaga (Kenya) 2. Jorgan Greve (European Agency)
Keynote Speaker 1. Nandini Rawal (India) Respondents 1. Gladys Nyaga (Kenya) 2. Jorgan Greve (European Agency)
|
|
Thursday |
Transition Keynote Speaker 1. Aubrey Webson (Caribbean/USA) Respondents 1. Rocio Lopez (Costa Rica) 2. Marika Carlborg (Finland)
Keynote Speaker 1. Aubrey Webson (Caribbean/USA) Respondents 1. Rocio Lopez (Costa Rica) 2. Marika Carlborg (Finland)
|
|
Friday |
Keynote Speaker (30 mins) 1. Dr Paul Pagliano (Australia) Respondent 1. Dorine In Het Veld (NL)
|
| No. | Workshop | Workshop Coordinator |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Early Intervention | Marianna Buultjens, Scotland, UK |
| 2 | MDVI | Mike McLinden, England, UK |
| 3 | Parents | Susan La Venture, USA |
| 4 | New Technology | Victor Tsaran, Ukraine |
| 5 | Low Vision: | |
| 5 (1) | Assessment | Lea Hyvarinen, Finland |
| 5 (2) | Low Vision Devices | Jill Keefe, Australia |
| 6 | Personal Preparation--Innovative Practices | Steve McCall, England, UK |
| 7 | Developing Educational Strategies for countries with limited economic resources | Bhushan Punani, India |
| 8 | Technology: | Helene van Harten, the Netherlands |
| 8 (1) | Future Developments | |
| 8 (2) | New Technology for Braille | |
| 8 (3) | Selected high profile company presentations | |
| 9 | Access to Literacy | Sally Mangold (USA) |
| 10 | Vocational Training | Teijo Venema, the Netherlands |
| 11 | International Cooperation | Annelies Feelders, the Netherlands |
| 12 | The "Plus" Curriculum in an Inclusive Environment |
Marlies Raemakers, the Netherlands |
| 13 | The Ecological Approach: Practical Applications for Blind and Visually Impaired Children |
Roelof Schellingerhout, the Netherlands
|
| 14 | Transition on the Road to Social Practices | Sietske Brandenburg, the Netherlands |
| 15 | Deafblind | Anneke Balder, the Netherlands |
Wednesday morning will be devoted to workshops. We expect the conference delegates to choose one workshop from a list of 16 different topics. Again, we have been very gratified by the response of the workshop leaders to organise an interactive and stimulating part of the conference that will attract an international participation. We are very conscious that the workshop leaders may appear to have a 'western' bias. To ameliorate this effect, leaders have been encouraged to involve colleagues from different cultures to assist with the planning to ensure full cultural representation.
It is disappointing that we have not been able to arrange pre or post conference workshops in the tradition of previous conferences. This is due to logistical problems with the conference taking place during the Dutch summer vacation.
We have had an excellent response to the 'Call for Papers' and have accepted approximately 200 lecture presentations, 90 poster presentations, and 10 workshops. All continents are represented but the final number will no doubt depend heavily upon the amount of sponsorship money available to help those presenters who have applied for support. We wish the sponsorship committee every success in this difficult task.
There is still a great deal of work to do. By the time we meet in person as a committee, we will have the framework of the full programme ready and the months leading up to the conference will be the fine 'tuning'. This is the first conference that has relied heavily upon email - all invitations have been delivered and replies received this way so saving on time and money. The conference office received many abstracts 'on-line'. I was able to write to all people who had submitted an abstract giving them corporate judgements regarding acceptance, changes that needed to be made or reasons for rejection. The letters were then emailed to the conference office that in turn sent them out by post. The email system between my house and the office has been very busy during the last 6 weeks but I think all outstanding queries have been resolved. The committee has used email to keep in contact - our thanks to Victor Tsaran and Harry Svensson for their excellent effort in making aspects of this work so well.
Finally, I would like to thank all the committee for their support - responding quickly when decisions were needed urgently and for all the excellent suggestions.
Heather L Mason
Chair, Programme Committee