Melbourne, Australia

April 10, 2007

Step 5: Hit the Road, Jack!

This was a short week working on the project because they have a four day Easter Break; Good Friday and Easter Monday are both public holidays, so all of the WPI students had a four day weekend to explore other areas of Australia or relax and enjoy Melbourne for a few days. Myself and 8 other WPI students road tripped along the Great Ocean Road and had a GREAT time!

Project Update:

This week, our team went through all of our interview notes and began to look through all of the information that we have received from various people in the United States and in Australia. Our interview notes are 78 pages typed, so we had a lot of great information to sort through! After taking the most important and useful information from our interview notes, we started typing up the “Findings” section which is a compilation of everything we have learned from the people that we have talked to. This section of our report contains information about the Australian Educational System, barriers faced by students with disabilities, general accommodations for students with disabilities, and disability specific accommodations.

We outlined barriers that we saw present in the CSIRO programs that we all observed and wrote down possible solutions that we saw fit. To follow up with that, we spent this week interviewing the CSIRO staff to get their opinions about the ideas that we had about the programs. In the interviews, Lynn, Nick, myself, and each staff member bounced ideas off of each other about what barriers are present and what possible solutions existed. These were great because the CSIRO presenters became more aware of the barriers that existed and started thinking about modifications that could better include students with various disabilities.

Next, we began brainstorming the format that our framework will take the shape of and this is the skeleton of what it will look like:

	Low Vision	Blind
Task #1	V1	V2
Task #2	V3	V4

On the top of the matrix, the spectrum is present because there are different solutions for different levels of every disability. Enlarging text will work for students with low vision, but not for blind students and we recognized that this needs to be accounted for in the final framework, which is why the spectrum is present along the top. On the left side, different tasks are listed that we have identified as barriers. Using the matrix, you match the task and the level of disability and there will be a code such as “V1” which will correspond to certain adaptations which will be found in the pages following the original matrix. On the following pages, more information about adaptations can be found. We felt that this would be an easy way to find the accommodations and adaptations that will best provide for students with all different ability levels.

In the following weeks, we will be filling in all of the tasks and solutions. We are using the information that we have gathered from our interviews to produce the solutions list, which we plan to do next week.

Bells Beach/Torquay:

We had Good Friday off from work, so the 9 road trippers drove down to Torquay for the day and went to the Rip Curl Pro surf competition. The competition was on Bells Beach, which is one of the most famous surf beaches in the world! The weather was gorgeous and the waves were great! We got there just in time to see the United States vs. South Africa in the Foster’s Team Challenge. It was AWESOME! We all sat on the beach with a lot of other people and watched the surfers, who were incredible! When the surfers were done, they came right next to us on the beach, so we got to talk to them and take pictures, which was a lot of fun! We drove around the rest of Torquay a little bit and the entire stretch of beaches in Torquay are great for surfing so there were people surfing all over the beaches and in the waves! We were all inspired to become surfers!

Drive on the LEFT?!

The next day, we woke up early and hit the road again for our Easter weekend road trip! Let me tell you that driving on the left side of the road is quite an experience. When you first sit in the drivers seat on the right side, it is such an awkward feeling and I felt really out of place and I kept thinking that I was on the wrong side of the road, but after a little while of driving, I was fine! And the girls in the car made sure to remind me to stay on the left hand side!

Great Ocean Road Day 1:

We drove along the Great Ocean Road, which is a road which stretches along the coast on the southern tip of Australia. We stopped at a few more beaches because we are all in love with Australian beaches and then we continued to drive along the road, stopping at every turn out possible. At every turn out, we were amazed at how gorgeous the scenery was because it was all breathtakingly gorgeous! I have never driven along such a beautiful coastline! I always imagined Australia as gorgeous beaches and scenery and Great Ocean Road gave me just that!

We caught the 12 Apostles at sunset, which was probably the best part of that day!! The 12 Apostles are gorgeous to begin with, but watching the sun set on them made them even more spectacular!

That day we saw koalas in the wild, too, which was awesome! Granted, they basically just sit in the trees all day and sleep, but they are still absolutely adorable, so it was really exciting to see a whole bunch of them sitting in the trees.

Hostels:

I had never been to a hostel before, but there are a lot of them in Australia! It was an interesting experience because I was sleeping in a room full of bunk beds and I didn’t know everyone in the room. There is a common living room, kitchen, and bathroom facility in all of the hostels and they were surprisingly nice! We all hung out together in the common room, watching TV, and planning out our next day! We also had the chance to meet some other travelers which was a lot of fun! We met some people from Melbourne, Germany, and the United States, and it was really interesting to talk to them and share a room with them after we had just met.

Great Ocean Road Day 2:

We woke up early the next day in time to catch the sunrise, which was absolutely GORGEOUS! There were 2 rock formations that were similar to the 12 Apostles and we watched the sun rise on them and it was the perfect Easter sunrise for all of us! Afterwards, we drove even further down the Great Ocean Road. We saw the London Bridge…well, it used to be a bridge, but the part of the rock formation that connected it to land fell down a few years ago, so now it is called the London “Arch.”

We spent the rest of the day at a beach, because the weather was perfect for it! The water was a little chilly, but we all had a great day at the beach! Later that day, a few of the girls and I went horseback riding on the beach, which was INCREDIBLE! I was galloping on a horse with the waves hitting us, which was such a great experience!

Great Ocean Road Day 3:

The last day of our road trip, we drove a little further on the Great Ocean Road before we headed back towards Melbourne. We stopped at a place called Tower Hill, which is an extinct volcano. We hiked around the rim of the volcano and had a really nice walk! While walking, we saw an emu in the wild as well as some more koalas! It was really interesting to be hiking around the rim of what used to be a volcano!

All in all, this was a great week for the project followed by an absolutely fantastic Easter vacation along one of the most beautiful coastline drives in the world!!

Things I’ve Learned this Week:

1. Great Ocean Road is one of the most beautiful places I’ve seen in Australia!
2. They drive on the LEFT in Australia!
3. It is illegal not to vote in Australia.
4. Cotton Candy is called Fairy Floss.
5. Braille follows a pattern but the “W” does not follow the pattern.
6. There are not 12 Apostles. (You will have to go visit it for yourself to find out how many there are, though!!)
7. McDonald’s is referred to as “Mackers.”
8. Hostels are for everyone (teenagers, uni students, families, etc.)!
9. Essentials for a good road trip: good friends and good music!