[blindkid] Technology and Little Kid

Heather craney07 at rochester.rr.com
Fri Feb 19 01:24:52 UTC 2010


Wow, what a long post.  I love it, as I usually write very long posts my 
self and feel out of place when others are jotting down one paragraph 
responses.  A lot of good points and some points I do want to address.  For 
one thing, we are not taking into account the most important thing here, 
which is not a blind or sighted child, it is the sort of learner they are. 
It outrages me when educators start discussing multiple intelligences and 
different learning styles and jump right to, Deaf children are always visual 
learners, and Gardiner's strongest multiple intelligences for them are 
visual spacial and bodily kenesthetic.  And that blind kids are all auditory 
learners, and their strongest multiple intelligences are verbal linguistic 
and interpersonal.  Bull----.  I am blind and I am a visual learner, which 
means that I cope in ways that many sighted people would be very confused 
by.  Of the see it, say it, write it school of thought for learning facts 
and spelling words, I was the see it person, then the write it, then the say 
it.  So visual, which can be in your head or tactially, not just with the 
eyes, then physical, the write it.  I have had to develop good verbal skills 
and auditory skills, as a blind individual, but were I sighted, they nmight 
not be nearly so strong.  I know deaf people who are clutses in their 
everyday lives and in their signing, so, not bodily kenesthetic, and who are 
not inharrently visual learners.  There are also blind kids with deslexia 
for whom a slate and styalis would be like the seventh circle of hell.  As a 
visual learner I did not do well with these dots make up that letter.  Not 
because I wasn't taught.  My TVIs were open-minded, well-rounded and taught 
me many technologies in many ways, but for me the P is like a print P, the X 
is like a print equals sign, the word many is a moved over L then an M. 
And, it is not because I am not intelligent, I can figure out in less than a 
second that W is dots 2, 4,5,6, but it has never come easily to me, because 
I am a visual learner.  Auditory learners tend to prefer screnereaders, 
visual learners tend to prefer braillenotes, braille displays and perkins 
braillers, and physical learners tend to prefer, I am sure slates and 
braillers to computers, and so on and so forth.  Even at the beginning of 
this whole discussion, I never and many others, never said, that the slate 
should not be taught at all, but rather, they questioned that perhaps it was 
not entirely appropriate for a four year old, and also begged that games, 
books and toys are more important socially and emotionally and 
developmentally at this age.  One more thing.  My mother was once sitting at 
a lecture at a camp for blind children and their families that was hosted in 
Cleveland Ohio, when this guest speaker woman got up and started preaching 
that anti braille crapola to a room of well-intentioned, but in the matters 
of technologies and adaptation, ignorant sighted parents.  My mom got up and 
told her that she was full of, insert four letter word, and that if she told 
parents this, they would be sentensing their children to a life of perfectly 
avoidable hardship, frustration and achievement far below their individual 
potentials.  She told them that it is more stigmatizing to not be compitant 
in school or a job, or to not even be in a school or a job, than to stand 
out a bit because they use braille.  The lady tried to keep talking, but the 
other parents made her leave, and asked my mom, the only blind parent there 
questions for over an hour, and she, was the one who laughed when I 
mentioned a slate to her.  She has one, can use it quite well, but rarely 
does.  Point being, just because someone isn't over the moon for the slate 
does not mean that they do not value braille literacy.
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "H. Field" <missheather at comcast.net>
To: "NFBnet Blind Kid Mailing List,(for parents of blind children)" 
<blindkid at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Thursday, February 18, 2010 6:41 PM
Subject: Re: [blindkid] Technology and Little Kid


> Dear Richard,
> The young child has no difficulty with the mirror image concept of
> braille because he/she doesn't have one. The reason is simple. If a
> child, is taught that "l" is dot one, two, three,then, wherever the
> child is told he/she will find dot one, two, three, there they will
> push the stylus. In over 30 years of teaching young blind children to
> write braille using a slate and stylus, I have never had a child who
> experiences difficulty with reversing things. I myself was first
> taught braille as a five-year-old using a slate and stylus. I was not
> given a braille writer until third grade. I can vividly remember
> learning to write with both devises and reversals was never an issue.
> If a child clearly knows the dots required for each letter then all
> they need is to be told where to press each dot, given some practice
> and feedback and reversals are a complete non-issue. I would strongly
> encourage you to work with your daughter on developing at least basic
> competence with the slate and stylus.
>
> This idea that writing on a slate is fraught with the problem of
> reversals is, in my experience, a problem suffered by sighted learners
> who are used to picturing things in their heads. Indeed, this very
> fact is a major reason why adult teachers don't want to teach the
> slate. They think the child will have the same problems with reversals
> that they do. But, as usual, it is plain stupid reasoning when one
> makes the jump from "I as an adult have trouble with braille and the
> slate and stylus" to "so I won't ever teach it to a blind child." I
> have met one extremely competent blind person, a braille user, who
> doesn't like the slate. Guess why? She lost her vision around age ten
> and her sighted braille teacher said that to write on the slate she
> would need to reverse everything in her head. What an impossible and
> totally unnecessary task. Of course no one could achieve any speed or
> accuracy using that method, and, after such torture, would not have
> any fondness for the slate and stylus.
>
> But, even if a young blind child did experience some initial trouble
> with reversals when writing on the slate, does this mean that the
> child should be deprived of the nonvisual equivalent of a pen or
> pencil? Just because some young print writers sometimes write "b" and
> "d" or "q" and "p" the wrong way, do early childhood teachers across
> the nation abandon the use of pencil and paper for young sighted
> children? Of course not and no one would be so irresponsible as to
> suggest that we do so. Yet, this is largely what has happened
> regarding the slate and stylus. The decline in slate usage was aided
> by the rise of the "print at any cost" philosophy among sighted
> teachers of children with low vision. Though many of these children
> were Functionally Blind, they were told to use what sight they had.
> completely nonfunctional strategies, such as the following, were, and
> still are, taught to children with low vision. "well, you can use
> print because, provided you have the right lighting, a very specific
> kind of very dark ink pen, the correct dark line paper, can write
> slowly and are not having trouble with eye-strain today, you're a
> print reader. You don't need braille and certainly don't need a slate
> and stylus to take notes." The fact that many of these students never
> manage to write fast enough and rarely experience the perfect
> conditions required to enable them to cmpete on equal terms with their
> sighted peers/colleagues, does not appear to be a concern to the
> teachers taking this stand. Somehow, in some strange, deep part of the
> human psyche, having the student act sighted and using print, even
> when they can't read what they write, when the student is complaining
> of eye-strain and head-aches and print is not working for a student,
> seems to be preferable to calling a child blind and giving them
> totally competitive tools, like a slate and stylus and braille. Sadly,
> because of the misconceptions about blindness, many parents would
> rather have a print using pretend sighted child than a real, braille
> using blind child as well.
>
> Why have I gone onto my antiprint rant you may ask? Because I believe
> that there are psychological reasons, such as seeing the slate as
> old-fashioned and low tech, too hard, too slow, too blind, and too
> hard to teach, that influence teachers who don't or won't teach it to
> today's blind children. There's no real data on slate usage among
> those who are profficient users. I've never seen a survey seeking real
> data on the value, or nonvalue, of slate and stylus to blind people.
> Yet, somehow the decision that slate skills are no longer necessary
> has been made.
> This is sheer foolishness, the kind of logic that says because we can
> now drive cars we don't need bicycles, or because we have replaced the
> outdoor Main Street shopping experience with indoor shopping malls, we
> don't need umbrellas.
>
> I cannot imagine the innumerable inconveniences I would experience
> without recourse to my slate. I Write shopping lists on the bus, I
> take notes quietly in meetings, I jot down phone numbers and addresses
> of new contacts, I write or retrieve information in extremely noisy
> environments with ease, I have quickly made notes for an impromptu
> meeting, written down doses and instructions at the doctor's, copied
> out a recipe I found in a magazine in the dentist's waiting-room,
> noted the name and number of taxi drivers whom I wished to report for
> good or bad reasons, written down info a bus or train clerk gave me on
> my next connection, and who knows what I may still use it to write.
> The
> possibilities are endless... rather like the excuses that people give
> why young children should be denied the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity
> to learn to be competent slate users.
>
> As for technology for a young child, it depends on many factors but
> should include games and teaching/learning devices that offer the same
> exposure to the concept of what techology is and does that sighted
> children are given. The child's preferences, parents' preferences and
> the available budget as well as the co-operation of local educators
> are all factors that will influcnce choices.
>
> Warmest regards,
>
> Heather Field
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Richard Holloway" <rholloway at gopbc.org>
> To: "NFBnet Blind Kid Mailing List,(for parents of blind children)"
> <blindkid at nfbnet.org>
> Sent: Wednesday, February 17, 2010 11:42 PM
> Subject: Re: [blindkid] Technology and Little Kid
>
>
> Certainly the slate and stylus (as someone else mentioned) is not a
> bad idea, but a child in this age range is probably not going to have
> the fine motor control to master the tool's use easily or likely be
> ready for the whole mirror image concept.
>
> A child of nearly any age can begin using a Perkins Braillewriter-- I
> know we were using one by at least age three. At the very least a
> braille novice can "scribble" on a braillewriter, just like my sighted
> almost-4-year-old scribbles on paper with a crayon all the time.
> Braillewriting skill with a young child emerges at least somewhat like
> writing emerges with a sighted child-- not all letters at once and at
> first, just like penmanship is typically pretty poor-- this after the
> child has first just pressed the keys at random-- indeed "scribbling"
> just like sighted kids. Getting the feel of the tools to use is an
> important first step. It is hard for small hands to properly press and
> form braille mechanically with a Perkins, but you are building hand
> and finger strength and forming braille concepts all along the way.
> Many schools can provide a second braillewriter for the student to use
> at home for free once the child is in school.
>
> I think that often the way to go is to immerse the child within all
> the options that can be gotten as the child appears ready to take to
> them-- at least that was our theory when our daughter was born, and in
> fact, it continues to be the same way to this day, then we focus on
> what she seems ready to take to-- she'll ultimately use most all of
> these things. There is also an entire range of tactile graphics
> solutions and manipulatives. You can produce these with pipe cleaners,
> and a bottle of glue, or you can use a multi-thousand dollar
> thermoform; quite a range of options exists.
>
> Now at age 7, Kendra uses a BrailleNote and PAC Mate daily but still
> uses a Perkins often, as well as an abacus for her math, JAWS on her
> computer and so forth. She also works well with refreshable braille
> and that can be a really handy option. The next big challenge I see
> for her is needing to learn a qwerty keyboard, so there can be a lot
> of technology in use by an early age.
>
> It is also really important to expose the child to braille as much as
> possible. A sighted child sees print everywhere. Make certain this
> child runs across braille often. Now in first grade and a proficient
> braille reader, our first grade daughter still runs across the braille
> stickers on things all over the house-- refrigerator, dishwasher,
> table, drawer, oven, door, bed-- you name it. This will cause the
> child to ask questions-- just like a sighted child-- "what is this"
> and later "what do these letters say?-- what do they mean?" Also, use
> twin vision books-- sighted kids look at letters while parents read
> most every time. Blind kids can do the same-- that's why it is best
> when adding braille to a print book to always put the braille below
> the print-- a sighted reader can still read while small hands are
> exploring the braille.
>
> Screen readers can be used at that age as well as a victor reader.
> Things like Mt Battens are expensive but potentially useful, but be
> careful that an electronic (and expensive) solution like a Mt. Batten
> or a PAC Mate is not learned at the expense of being able to use a
> mechanical braillewriter as that need will almost certainly come up
> all of this child's life, at least from time to time.
>
> I'd like to rework this link, and our site is about to get a facelift
> overall too but here are some technology ideas that you might direct
> her towards. Let her see a range of options and then she can decide
> which way she wants to proceed.
>
> http://www.gopbc.org/gopbc_technology.htm
>
>
> Richard
>
>
>
>
> On Feb 17, 2010, at 10:01 PM, David Andrews wrote:
>
>> I got asked a question, the other day, and since most of my
>> experience is with blind adults -- I didn't know quite what to say.
>> A woman said she had a four year old totally blind daughter, and she
>> wanted her to keep up with her peers in technology, so what
>> assistive technology/technology is there  -- should she start using
>> with her child?
>>
>> Dave
>>
>>
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>
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