[blindkid] computers as school credit

Sun Sep 16 04:41:59 UTC 2012

Please forgive the length of my post to follow:

With respect to all on this list, a farming-knowledgable parent pressing a blind child to do farm chores or the like (to keep pace with siblings) is somewhat different than a parent (in some cases with limited computer knowledge) trying to compel a blind child to become computer savvy with JAWS or any other current technology-- especially without proper support from the school system. Most kids in our area have computer studies taught in Kindergarten or even earlier at school. Why in the world would we expect less for our blind kids? I say the above without disrespect for people who farm in any way. It is just a different matter. Surely I would hope someone teaching a blind child (or ANY person) to fire a gun knew much about gun safety before they started to teach. Therein lies the rub, so to speak, with technology, especially blindness technology. From the teaching side, this effects both parents and schools, but I'll get back to that.

For myself, I am quite computer savvy, but JAWS is sill confusing to me, and we've had it here at home for something like seven years now. Yes, we bought our daughter's home copy of JAWS but the bulk of her knowledge of the product she gained through school. I am a very visual person, and adapting many things for my daughter can be a real struggle for me. I cannot imagine trying to effectively teach her some of these technologies without proper TVI (and other) support from her school. In any case, I would point out that there are rarely "one size fits all" solutions for these needs. I think too often, parents on this list are driven to feel like they are doing things "incorrectly" when they don't do just what worked for someone else. What exactly IS the "correct" way to raise or educate a child... ANY child? I guess I never got my official copy of that manual....

From what I can observe, school-in-general has chanced a LOT in the past 40 years (give or take a few). I suspect the change rate has been increasing rapidly since long before I was attending school as a child. These kids today are covering FAR more ground much more rapidly and earlier than many of us did as children. Personally, I think this puts a much heavier workload on our blind kids. If there are multiple times the workload and homework for our elementary school kids these days, and if it takes blind kids on average substantially more time to deal with some of the adapted aspects of their homework, it is clear that the time demands for blind kids to keep up with schoolwork have been increasing faster than for their sighted peers. That is simple math, and surely it will continue in that way, especially if more and more standardized tests and other criteria must be met and demonstrated over and over again. By comparison, we had relatively few standards to be tested on "back in the day".

I'm a huge fan of notetakers because they work very well for OUR our daughter in HER scholastic situation, and (we have since found) they work well for Kendra's lifestyle-in-general. For others, iPads seem to serve the same purpose. Our daughter has built a lot of her lifestyle AROUND her Apex and her PC at home, just as I have similarly adapted my life in recent years such that I would be quite lost without my various desktop machines, my laptop, iPad, my smartphone, and without GPS devices in numerous locations. Think of just the internet and how it effects everyone on this list... Adults and kids alike grow to rely on these technologies, but 30 or 40 years ago, these things were virtually non-existant, at least for all but a very elite few in the world, and the power of these tools grows continually. There is no stopping it...

Kendra also uses JAWS with a braille display and braille keyboard as well as a qwerty keyboard. She uses an abacus, and yes, even a good old fashioned Perkins Brailler. She has all manor of adapted equipment at her disposal. Scanners, embossers... even thermoforms and such. In that regard, she is lucky. Some parents cannot access these items through school or afford them on their own. Blind kids in years past got by without these technologies largely because the technologies didn't exist, and the argument that schools "cannot afford" these items so parents should buy them isn't especially valid for a couple of reasons: First, the IEP process prohibits decisions based on budget concerns. The IEP committee decides what the child needs, then the system finds a way to get the needed technology. Second, much of this technology ultimately SAVES the school money. Even a year at the lowest pay rate for say, a braille transcriber, is going to cost a school system several times the cost of a BrailleNote, for example, and the BrailleNote should (on average) last for several years with only moderate operating expense. In most cases transcription needs can be greatly reduced with these machines, so hours assigned to transcription drop and fewer transcribers are needed. They also save boxes and boxes of braille paper and reduce the space needed to store printed braille work. Properly handled, use of notetakers decreases the turnaround time for lots of work. It makes things easier on classroom teachers, and simply put, it makes it harder for schools to turn work around too slowly and claim there is no way to improve the situation. (Okay, maybe that wasn't so simply put.) Same thing with JAWS reducing the workload needed for a para-pro in some cases while offering increased access tovarious applications, documents, and the internet, among other things. There are many similar examples.

Lifestyle 100 years ago, or even back on the '70's is very different for ALL people, and while technology does seem to have "closed the gap" in many areas for the blind, it has also created somewhat of a "financial gap" along the way. Once upon a time, it seemed outrageous for parents to need to buy a $700 brailler. Now we need to be buying $7,000 notetakers plus $1000 copies of JAWS and various other pieces of gear, and while a $700 Brailler may last 10 or 20 or even 40 years with basic maintenance, we'll be replacing the $7,000 items far more often and paying huge service SMA costs on JAWS software each year. If the law requires school systems to pay (with OUR tax money) to support our kids needs, why would we NOT demand what we've paid for? I grimace when I think of the local school budgets for football teams vs. what they spend on a few braillenotes not and then. I have no intention of apologizing for their having to provide certain equipment to educate my daughter more effectively.

A great many, perhaps even most, of the things we use for our daughter would work well for other blind kids and many blind adults too. That doesn't mean everyone needs to follow my advice or our daughter's example, and it certainly doesn't mean that anyone is doing a bad job for not doing things "our" way. When possible, let's encourage all parents of blind kids to see what equipment and services can be appropriately gained through our school systems.

When it comes down to it, this isn't so different from dealing with sighted kids. Different typically sighted kids have different needs as well, both in the areas of technology and otherwise. This isn't speculation. I have children right now ranging in age from a first grader to a young adult in college. Two of my kids are typically sighted, while the third has no light perception. Things are very different for all three of my kids when compared to growing up in the 70's as I did myself.

As a fairly involved parent on this list, I would suggest that many parents come here for support and ideas as to what has worked for others so they may explore their options. This is certainly true for myself, and it concerns me when comments start to fly which may make parents-- the very parents who are actually the ones who ARE involved and exploring their options (which can be rather overwhelming) want to withdraw from these discussions.

Apologies if it sounds like I'm on a soap box here. I can't speak to the use of IEP's in the 70's, but noting all the leal changes since then, I believe we are looking at a different matter entirely, and parents of today's children need to focus on current (and future) remedies and options which processes like utilizing an IEP may afford them.

Richard

On Sep 15, 2012, at 9:29 PM, Pat Renfranz wrote:

> I regret falling to temptation, but I am indeed offended, Mr. Donohue. You
> have no right to imply that I have not taught my blind child.
> 
> Do you and Ms. Silverman think our utilizing the IEP to achieve special
> education goals is inappropriate? What do you know about my child? Believe
> me, we did pull in blind tech users to help with training and there's been a
> computer at home with JAWS, and all the other bells and whistles, that she
> was not interested in using. And perhaps you don't realize that there are
> families that don't have computers with JAWS at home and have poorly-trained
> TVIs who have no idea how to get that blind child on the computer, so our
> pushing the system a bit might help with another child.
> 
> This thread was starting by a parent whose very bright child is failing a
> tech course. Something needs to be done now, and, in my opinion, not by
> throwing him in a pool and telling him to swim.
> 
> Sometimes, I think the NFB has a very bad attitude towards parents. Sorry,
> but that's my 2.
> pat
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On 9/15/12 5:02 PM, "Peter Donahue" <pdonahue2 at satx.rr.com> wrote:
> 
>> Hello everyone,
>> 
>> For Arielle Silverman amen, amen, and amen. Parents are a sighted child's
>> first teacher. it needs to be the same way for blind children.
>> 
>> Peter Donahue
>> 
>> 
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "Traci Wilkerson" <traci.renee27 at gmail.com>
>> To: "Blind Kid Mailing List,(for parents of blind children)"
>> <blindkid at nfbnet.org>
>> Sent: Saturday, September 15, 2012 4:37 PM
>> Subject: Re: [blindkid] computers as school credit
>> 
>> 
>> I understand your question Arielle, but I know my kids are young and we
>> already experience time crunch now at 5 and 7 after school, by the time we
>> get home, let the kids chill and play for a bit, do homework (which can
>> take sometimes an hour if its a battle), make dinner and its then bedtime.
>> I'm sure older kids may have some more time but I'm sure homework also
>> takes longer.  I would love to do more tech with my kids but I also want
>> them to enjoy being kids.  They have computer lab time at school, so in my
>> eyes the school needs to be teaching them the skills they need at that
>> time.  They shouldn't be sitting there letting someone click through
>> screens "pretending" my child is doing something on their own.  Yes, we
>> have already had this.  So if they are in the class, yes! the school should
>> be teaching it in a way relevant to what they need.  No excuses for them
>> not too.
>> 
>> Traci
>> On Sep 15, 2012 5:26 PM, "Arielle Silverman" <arielle71 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>>> Hi all,
>>> Forgive me for beating a dead horse, but I  just don't understand why
>>> we are waiting on school personnel who aren't very tech-savvy to teach
>>> blind kids JAWS when the JAWS program has excellent user
>>> documentation, enabling any blind student to learn JAWS on their own?
>>> Why are blind kids having to do a boring tech tutorial at school when
>>> they could be playing online games, using Facebook or looking up cool
>>> things on the Internet at home, like their sighted peers are?
>>> I believe that the way a sighted child first learns to use the
>>> computer is by sitting down in front of it and looking around the
>>> screen, eventually learning to identify the different icons, the start
>>> menu, programs on the desktop, etc. A blind child can learn the exact
>>> same way. Turn on JAWS, have them sit down and press the tab key, or
>>> arrow around the desktop, so they can hear all the different programs
>>> that are available to them. Have them open up a program like Word,
>>> tell them to press the Alt key and they will be able to hear all the
>>> different options located in the menus or ribbons.
>>> JAWS is not much more complicated than using Windows as a sighted
>>> person. If a sighted person wants to move around the screen, they use
>>> the mouse; the JAWS user presses Tab or the arrow keys. If the sighted
>>> person wants to click something, they click the mouse; the blind
>>> person presses the Enter key. There are more advanced keyboard
>>> commands that a blind computer user can eventually memorize so they
>>> don't have to go looking all around the screen, but these more
>>> advanced commands aren't necessary for basic computer use. A blind
>>> student who has basic computer knowledge, gained from exploration,
>>> should be able to learn the more advanced commands independently from
>>> a tutorial.
>>> I learned JAWS twenty years ago when computers still used command
>>> prompts and were much less user-friendly than they are today. Plus,
>>> there wasn't much funn stuff to be done on the computer then, like
>>> there is today. With all  the free screen reader options out nowadays,
>>> I just don't understand why any blind child is not
>>> technology-literate. Why wait for a student to fail a computer course
>>> when so many self-teaching opportunities exist at home?
>>> Perhaps there are some kids who don't have the motivation or attention
>>> span to self-teach technology, but I suspect that will be a minority
>>> of students. Why not have them start on their own, and then ask the
>>> school to help if they get stuck?
>>> If there is something I am missing please let me know. I do not intend
>>> to offend anyone, but I really just want to better understand what the
>>> issue is and why parents aren't able to address it on their own.
>>> Best,
>>> Arielle
>>> 
>>> On 9/15/12, Pat Renfranz <dblair2525 at msn.com> wrote:
>>>> Hi Rosina,
>>>> My daughter was in a similar boat: sluggish tech training, required
>>>> computer
>>>> tech class, etc. One thing we did to force the issue was to use the
>>> course
>>>> requirements to lay out what had to be done by the TVI during the year,
>>> and
>>>> put those as goals in the IEP. The goals were very specific. The tech
>>>> teacher was great at making sure the TVI knew the material and knew what
>>>> needed to be taught. The district, knowing the TVI did not have the
>>> skills,
>>>> purchased training materials to lead the TVI step by step; the materials
>>>> were from a company called DeWitt and Associates. I have no idea if this
>>> is
>>>> the best stuff out there (probably not!) and it was boring as heck for
>>>> my
>>>> daughter, but it got her through the class. Because working through this
>>>> took some time (why should anything be worked out before the school year
>>>> start?), the teacher allowed my daughter to work on the class into the
>>> next
>>>> semester.
>>>> pat
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> On 9/13/12 3:56 PM, "Rosina Solano" <colemangirly at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> Okay, so I just got a notice that my 9th grader is failing computer
>>>>> applications and it is a required course.  WOW, possibly because they
>>>>> haven't
>>>>> taught him ANY computer or tech skills at all.  And here is the
>>> clincher,
>>>>> if
>>>>> he does fail it, he has to repeat it next year.  Gee, if they don't
>>>>> give
>>>>> him
>>>>> the education to use JAWS and such I don't think it will matter how
>>>>> many
>>>>> times
>>>>> he repeats it.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Maybe this will be the sign that I am not the only one who knows that
>>>>> they
>>>>> should be teaching him technology. Sigh
>>>>> 
>>>>> Rosina Foster
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
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>>>> 
>>>> 
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