Celebrating the first year of the Children's Voices Centre (2025)

In December 2024, we learned that Charles Sturt University would fund the establishment of the Children's Voices Centre as a CSU research centre for 3 years (2025-2027). During 2025, we have renovated building 1451 to become The Treehouse, recruited 4 staff (2.6 FTE) and had an amazing year with over 60 CVC affiliates, children, families, professionals, colleagues and friends.

Today we held our last CVC staff meeting for the year followed by a 2-hour celebration with CVC affiliates. During the 2-hour celebration 20 CVC staff and affiliates spoke: Prof Sharynne McLeod, A/Prof Tamara Cumming, Dr Carolyn Gregoric, Lorraine Bennett, Dr Shukla Sikder, A/Prof Kathy Cologon, Dr Leanne Gibbs, Dr Lyndsay Smith, A/Prof Suzanne Hopf, Dr Brendon Hyndman, Dr Lysa Dealtry, Dr Jo Grimmond, Dr Sabrina Syed, Sarah Bartlett, Dr Kate Margetson, Camilla Porsanger, Dr Lucia Wuersch, Alam Hossain, Dr Belinda Downey, and Dr Helen Blake. Congratulations to everyone for your accomplishments during 2025 that have impacted the lives of children, families and communities across the world. Have a restful holiday - to get ready for 2026.

Celebratory pavlova

Starting at the top: Alam, Tamara, Lucia, Lorraine, Belinda and Sharynne on the stairs in The Treehouse

CVC members online

Jo Grimmond's celebration of 2025

Kathy Cologon's thank you

Tamara, Belinda, Alam, Lorraine, Leanne and Shukla

Last CVC staff meeting for 2025

Celebratory pavlova covered in edible flowers

The Treehouse in the sunshine

Author meetings - The Oxford Handbook of Speech Development in Languages of the World

The Oxford Handbook of Speech Development in Languages of the World will contain approximately 80 chapters written by 206 authors about 50 languages. Ensuring that all aspects of the project is consistent is a huge task - but made easy by the calibre and care of the excellent authors (researchers, linguists, speech-language pathologists, etc.). We are now up to the point of creating the maps, audio files, conference and online presentations of the chapters - so I decided to host author meetings. They are being held three times to suit as many time zones as possible. What a joy to see so many of my excellent colleagues to discuss this important project.

Author meeting option 1 - May 4 2023

Author meeting option 2 - May 5 2023

Author meeting option 3 - May 9 2023

Dr Helen Blake is working with me to prepare the online conference

VietSpeech Writing Retreat

This week our VietSpeech team are on a writing retreat to write and finalise papers for our ARC Discovery Grant that finishes at the end of this year. It is going to be a productive week.

We had planned to be together at a beach - but with the inconsistency of COVID rules and regulations - we have ended up working at home with beach Zoom backgrounds! Travel restrictions did end up lifting on 1 November (our first day of writing) so we actually could have been together.

Dr Audrey Wang, Prof Sharynne McLeod, Kate Margetson, Dr Van Tran, Dr Sarah Verdon

Celebrating Speech Pathology Week with Bathurst speech pathologists

Travelling the world from my home

Zoom meetings (and emails) enable me to travel across the whole world from my home. This week I have spoken with people in the following countries:

• Fiji - Suzanne Hopf (email)
  
• Germany - Sarah Masso (email)
• Hong Kong SAR China - Carol To
• Iceland - Kate Crowe
• The Netherlands - Anniek van Doornik
  
• Vietnam - Ben Pham, Hang Nguyen, Van Pham
• United Kingdom - Yvonne Wren
• United States - Lynn Williams; Marie Ireland

It is wonderful to collaborate with so many different people and fascinating to learn from each person about the impact and restrictions of COVID-19 on their daily lives.

Carol To (Hong Kong, SAR China) and Sharynne McLeod

COVID-19 test to be taken before going to work in The Netherlands

Understanding the nuances of Zoom - Toddler style

During 2020, many parents have had children on their laps during Zoom meetings. I am constantly impressed by members of our SLM team and how they are able to incorporate their children and their work.

Sadie is particularly adept at understanding the nuances of Zoom meetings, despite her age. The moment we start to wind up a meeting (even when we are not fully aware that that is what we are doing) Sadie will blow us all kisses. I have permission to share this photo that captured the moment during a meeting today!

CSU Accelerating with Zoom

During the past week I have attended two Charles Sturt University seminars about using Zoom.

• Zoom Essentials (88 participants)
• Accelerating with Zoom (68 participants)

Both seminars have been excellent. We have learned about annotating, reactions, scheduleing, polls, screensharing, recordings, transcripts, closed captioning, breakout rooms, document cameras, sharing video files (with sound) etc.Thanks Prue Gonzalez and team.