How to Make Paper Balloon Lanterns

As fans of lantern making and lantern-making, I bet you already know how to make paper balloon lanterns. If you don’t, you can follow the instruction here, or attending our workshop:

http://www.ehow.com/how_4797962_paper-balloon-lantern.html

Once you master this basic balloon lantern, you can make lovely puffy fish, angry bird, monkey, rabbit, bee, flower, eerie robot or insect!  You name it.

Here are some examples what others start with balloon lantern:

Send us the picture of your creation too so we can post it here :>

Posted via email from Ann Reflection

Making Lanterns from Milk Jugs!

Running short of time and idea to make lanterns for the festival?

Beautiful lanterns, or bizarre ones if it is the way you want, can be made quickly.

What you need:

Rinse the milk jug and remove label.

Cut opening that is big enough to put  a tea light candle, or a LED one, in.

Cut more shape for your own design.

Give color and patterns to the milk jug by either gluing colored tissue paper or paint.

Here is a collection of what people do with their milk jugs. Start your creativity now!

 

 

Eerie Luminarias – Cat, Dog

http://www.bhg.com/halloween/outdoor-decorations/eerie-luminarias/

 

Spirit Jugs 

http://familyfun.go.com/crafts/spirit-jugs-673388/

 

Universal lamp shade polygon building kit

http://www.instructables.com/id/Universal-lamp-shade-polygon-building-kit/

 

Milk jug Jack-O-Lantern

http://www.instructables.com/id/Milk-Jug-Jack-o-Lanterns/

 

Recycled Milk Jug Lanterns

http://tlc.howstuffworks.com/family/recycled-milk-jug-crafts3.htm

 

 

Other projects:

Recycled Jar Jack O Lanterns

http://www.instructables.com/id/Recycled-Jar-Jack-OLanterns/

 

Milk Jug crafts for kids

http://www.artistshelpingchildren.org/milkjugscontainersartscraftsideaskids.html

 

Milk bottle lamps

http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2007/06/milk-bottle-lamps.html#0_undefined,0_

 

How to Make a Lamp Out of Vintage Glass Milk Bottles

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/165620/how_to_make_a_lamp_out_of_vintage_glass_pg2.html?cat=24

http://www.designswan.com/archives/11-cool-and-unusual-lamp-designs.html

http://www.plantea.com/milk-jug.htm

 

 

 

Posted via email from Ann Reflection

Communition Strategy for hearing impaired: Visualizing the Scenario

Tuesday Tips: Planning Ahead – Visualizing the Scenario

Imagine you were visiting Montreal and you know some French, enough to get by. However, you haven’t used your French in eons. You want to go to a local boulangerie to buy some fresh baguettes. If you’re like me, you would practice in your head exactly what you want to say (I want one baguette, please – en francais, of course). Then you are going to practice what they might say back to you (That will be $4.95 – again, en francais). Of course, you may want to practice something that’s totally off topic (Where did you get that dress), but that wouldn’t fit the context (or maybe it will).

Visualization is a technique that is often used by athletes in preparation for difficult maneuvers. We can use the same when approaching difficult communication situations.

• Envision the scenario that is about to happen. Important visual and aural cues are missing with hearing loss, but the brain can fill in the gaps if you know what is happening.
• Anticipate what is going to be said. In a place like boulangerie, there are certain phrases that are commonly used. Practice those phrases. The practice would help your brain to be prepared for what is about to be said.
• Different situations means different possibilities. So what you might expect in the bakery would be different from what is said in a doctor’s office from what is said in a restaurant. Context is everything.

Visualize the scenario and anticipate the speech and your brain will be warmed up for each and every difficult situation. Just like many things, planning ahead can help you to avoid unwanted pitfalls.

Posted via email from Ann Reflection

Ann's fish lantern will be at fringe festival in Centennial Square tonight :>

Ann's fish lantern will be at fringe festival in Centennial Square tonight :>

See the full gallery on Posterous

Posted via email from Ann Reflection

How technologies shape our health care? Health avatar? Tailored therapy according to dna? Doc get paid by outcome? shaphttp://www.fastcompany.com/1773215/six-major-disruptions-still-to-come-in-health-care

How technologies shape our health care? Health avatar? Tailored therapy according to dna? Doc get paid by outcome? shaphttp://www.fastcompany.com/1773215/six-major-disruptions-still-to-come-in-health-care

Posted via email from Ann Reflection

Communication Strategy for hearing impaired: Restaurants

Tuesday Tips: Restaurants

Restaurants must be the bain of all hearing aids. Hearing aids do well with isolated noises, but with noise from all directions, it becomes quite confusing. A few strategies when dining out, however, can help minimize problems.

• Pick your restaurants carefully. Restaurants with a lot of ambience tend to be bad. Ambience in restaurants usually come in the form of low-lighting, background music, and hard, funky surfaces. The best restaurant from an acoustic standpoint is one with upholstered furniture, no background music, good lighting, and low ceilings.
• Go early for dinner. You can miss the bulk of the noisy dinner crowd and you usually have your choice of any seat in the house. So pick the potentially quietest corner or table in the restaurant.
• Choose your table wisely. If you can choose a table, pick one that’s in the corner. Two walls mean a little less noise. However, make sure you’re not right by the kitchen; otherwise, you’ll hear all the cutlery and chopping emitting from there. If there are booths available, they are often better for communication. The enclosure of your table can reduce the amount of noise that you hear.
• If you do get to choose a seat at your table, pick according to where the noise is. If you have hearing aids, you should set the aids to the noise mode and sit with your back to the restaurant while facing the wall. The wall doesn’t make as much noise as your fellow diners, so it’s better to be facing it. If you don’t have hearing aids, then sit beside the wall so that at least you can hear some of the conversation from one ear.

Sometimes, you can do all the above and still have a difficult time in the restaurant. Be patient and have a good humour about misunderstood conversation. Sometimes the misunderstanding can lead to good joke for everyone to share.

Posted via email from Ann Reflection

Tuesday Tips for communicating with hearing impaired: Reducing Background Noise

Reducing Background Noise

It doesn’t take too much to make a conversation easier to hear. Just reduce the background noise. I’m not asking you to stop the world from turning and getting all the noise out of the world, but you can do some simple things to reduce background noise.

• Turn down or off any unnecessary music or sound. That could be your own TV or the radio. You may have to ask the owner of the device to turn it down. A conversation is lot easier without music covering over all the words
• Close the windows. If the windows are open and you get all the traffic noise, shut the sound out by closing the windows. It’s a tough call during a hot summer day, but less noise makes a huge difference
• Move away from the noise. If you can’t control the sound, at least move away from it. Just stepping a few feet away, or even out of a room, from the noise, it will be a relief to your ears and your conversation partner.

There’s no one end-all answer to reducing background noise. Use your best judgment and reduce any background noise that you can reduce.

Posted via email from Ann Reflection

Using (Land/ Cell Phone) Phone at home: Bluetooth hub / adaptor

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The following info comes from Western Institute for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing:

Bluetooth for home phones
There are a couple of options here.

1. VTech makes a Bluetooth cordless phone system. Item # LS6245. This can be paired to the Bluetooth adapter. If you have the Bluetooth adapter paired and connected to your cellphone, you will need to forward your cellphone to the VTech phone and then disconnect the cellphone from the Bluetooth adapter (the disconnect option is in your Bluetooth menu on your cellphone). The reason you need to do this is that the phone (cellphone or regular) takes priority in the Bluetooth adapters. The two phones will be competing for access to your Bluetooth adapter. So if you are talking on the cordless phone at home and a cellphone call comes in – if the cellphone is not disconnected from your Bluetooth accessory, then the cellphone may kick you off your cordless phone call. It’s best to have just one phone connected to your Bluetooth accessory at a time. The benefit of having the cordless Bluetooth phone is that you can be about 10 metres (30 feet) away from the phone in your house and still be able to get a phone call wirelessly with your Bluetooth adapter.

2. For non-Bluetooth home phones (which is most phones) some of the manufacturer's make an adapter to attach to your phone and convert it to Bluetooth. After some in-house experimenting here, it appears that some of the manufacturer’s Bluetooth phone adapters are compatible with other manufacturer’s products (for instance the Oticon phone hub works very nicely with the iCom and uDirect. While I can’t say for sure – it will most likely work with the other Bluetooth adapters as well.

Posted via email from Ann Reflection

Communication Strategy for hearing impaired: Visualizing the Scenario

Tuesday Tips: Planning Ahead – Visualizing the Scenario

Imagine you were visiting Montreal and you know some French, enough to get by. However, you haven’t used your French in eons. You want to go to a local boulangerie to buy some fresh baguettes. If you’re like me, you would practice in your head exactly what you want to say (I want one baguette, please – en francais, of course). Then you are going to practice what they might say back to you (That will be $4.95 – again, en francais). Of course, you may want to practice something that’s totally off topic (Where did you get that dress), but that wouldn’t fit the context (or maybe it will).
Visualization is a technique that is often used by athletes in preparation for difficult maneuvers. We can use the same when approaching difficult communication situations.

• Envision the scenario that is about to happen. Important visual and aural cues are missing with hearing loss, but the brain can fill in the gaps if you know what is happening.
• Anticipate what is going to be said. In a place like boulangerie, there are certain phrases that are commonly used. Practice those phrases. The practice would help your brain to be prepared for what is about to be said.
• Different situations means different possibilities. So what you might expect in the bakery would be different from what is said in a doctor’s office from what is said in a restaurant. Context is everything.

Visualize the scenario and anticipate the speech and your brain will be warmed up for each and every difficult situation. Just like many things, planning ahead can help you to avoid unwanted pitfalls.

Posted via email from Ann Reflection

Communication Strategy for hearing impaired - Lighting

Tuesday Tips: Lighting

The amount of light in the room is not the first thing you think about when you talk about hearing. However, you can hear better if you see better. Think of the last conversation you had with somebody standing in front of a brightly-lit window. It wasn’t fun, was it? There are often shadows that can fall on people’s faces. That makes it hard to see their facial expressions and lips, which are important to the context of any conversation. Then there’s that awful glare from staring towards the window too long. I can see imprints of light in my eyes just thinking about it.

• Increase the light if it’s too dark. As romantic as conversations in the dark are, it may not be the best for your communication. Turn on the lights and you’ll often have an easier time talking to each other.
• Move away from glaring sources of light. So as with the brightly-lit window scenario, it may be best not to stand right by that window. It can be tiring for all talkers involved and harsh shadows on the face just don’t look endearing.
• Put your back to the window. If it’s not too bright, then the window can provide just the right amount of light. However, you will likely want your back to the window so that the light falls on the face of those you’re speaking to.

Posted via email from Ann Reflection

Assistive Technology Co-operative: Community Needs Assessment

Assistive Technology Co-operative: Community Needs Assessment

A co-operative is a business organization that is owned and operated by a group of individuals who become members for their mutual benefit. In order to become a member, you must make a one time share purchase. To learn more about co-operatives, and how they may apply to assistive technology, click here.

In order to better understand what people with disabilities, their families and supporters think about the idea of an assistive technology co-operative we are launching a community survey using small group meetings in various communities as well as an on-line questionnaire.

Please help us to better understand if an assistive technology co-operative could help you to meet your needs or the needs of someone you know.

Take a few minutes to fill out our online-survey by clicking the link http://bcatcoop.wordpress.com/

Posted via email from Ann Reflection

Bluetooth compatibility – Accessing Technology with your Hearing Aids

Bluetooth compatibility – Accessing Technology with your Hearing Aids

Posted via email from Ann Reflection