[il-talk] Fwd: Article from Braille Monitor Articles Section 201511 01

[Lin H.]

Hats off forI  BRAL!      Braille is the way to go!    Good luck to all the 
students that register!    Sincerely,    Linda

-----Original Message----- 
From: Denise R Avant via il-talk
Sent: Wednesday, November 11, 2015 7:03 AM
To: NFB of Illinois Nfb-i conference call Number ; Illinois Association of 
Blind Students List
Cc: Denise R Avant
Subject: [il-talk] Fwd: Article from Braille Monitor Articles Section 201511 
01



Denise R. Avant
President
National Federation of the Blind of Illinois
Live the life you want
Sent from my iPhone

Begin forwarded message:

> From: NFB-NEWSLINE Online <nfbnewsline at nfb.org>
> Date: November 11, 2015 at 6:36:52 AM CST
> To: Denise Avant <davant1958 at gmail.com>
> Subject: Article from Braille Monitor Articles Section 2015 11 01
>
> iBRAL Is Back! by Robert Gardner From the Editor: Robert Gardner is a man 
> of tremendous accomplishment. He was trained and worked as a mechanical 
> engineer, and when he lost his vision, he simply figured out on his own 
> the alternative techniques he would need to do his job. On retirement he 
> decided that he had the time to really learn blindness skills, so off to 
> BLIND, Incorporated he went. He learned Braille but soon realized that he 
> could use the discipline of other people to help him maintain and increase 
> his speed. Readers may remember an article he wrote that appeared in the 
> October 2010 issue of this magazine entitled "We Are Able. Here is what 
> Bob has to say about a reading contest for young people: iBral? No, we're 
> not talking about iPad or iTunes, we're talking about iBRAL. Say hello to 
> the Illinois Braille Readers Are Leaders, or iBRAL, contest for kids. For 
> the second year the National Federation of the Blind of Illinois (NFBI) 
> has run its own Braille reading contest for kids within the state. And 
> once again the response to our contest to promote the reading of Braille 
> by school children was fantastic. Last year (2013-14), we had twenty-six 
> applicants, and this year (2014-15), we had thirty-two. These ranged from 
> a first grader all the way to students in the twelfth grade. We have been 
> happy with the enthusiastic response to our contest, reflecting the 
> interest in Braille by blind and visually impaired children in Illinois. 
> It also shows how throwing in a little competition can increase that 
> interest. For example, one mother wrote on a registration form, "Thank you 
> so much for organizing this event in Illinois. The iBRAL contest was the 
> single biggest motivator for my son to really work on his Braille skills. 
> Another typical comment on a registration form was received from a teacher 
> of the visually impaired (TVI). She wrote, "This is my first student to 
> take the Braille Challenge, and we are both super excited! Another TVI 
> wrote at the end of iBRAL: "I have attached my students' reading logs.!
  They enjoyed participating in the competition, and it definitely gave them 
more incentive to keep reading. The iBRAL contest was first organized in the 
fall of 2013. Patterning our contest after the former Braille Readers Are 
Leaders contest run by our national center, the NFBI put together rules and 
forms, which are accessible and can be found on our state's website. This 
last year, the reading period for the contest ran for seven weeks, including 
the Christmas school break, to allow even more time for the kids to work on 
their Braille. As always the object of the competition was to read as many 
pages as possible during the contest. Deborah Kent Stein of the NFBI Chicago 
Chapter and editor of Future Reflections  volunteered to be the contest 
coordinator. She created an email account for iBRAL, allowing electronic 
submission of registration forms at the  beginning of the contest and 
reading logs at the end. The email account also allowed easy communication 
between Deborah and parents and/or TVI's, the people who acted as certifying 
officials for the kids. Sometimes the feedback was amazing. One parent wrote 
of her son, "He wanted to make sure he would do well. He just brought me his 
last book to log and told me his fingers hurt. No wonder. He read five 
hundred pages today alone! Sometimes the feedback was touching. For example, 
a TVI wrote about one of her students, "We had a great time reading! Pierre 
has just started reading Braille the last few years and is finally reading 
with some fluency and reading for fun! He is seventeen years old and has 
autism along with his blindness and cognitive delays. He was diligent daily 
about telling people he had to read for the Braille challenge. Hope to do it 
again next year! Thanks!   Cash prizes are awarded to first, second, and 
third place winners in each of the five grade levels. When Joanne Sullivan 
of the National Braille Press was contacted about us purchasing gift 
certificates to use as additional prizes, she subsequently told us we 
wouldn't have to buy them. The N!
BP, a great supporter of Braille, would donate gift certificates to be given 
to all entrants. In addition, the NFB national center has donated slates and 
styluses and Braille calendars to be given to all contestants. When the 
contest is over, each child receives a generous goodie package from iBRAL, 
regardless of their placing in the contest. The Braille Literacy Committee 
in Illinois, along with the entire state affiliate, is proud of their 
accomplishments: they took the dream of having a statewide Braille reading 
contest for children and made it a reality. More information about the 
Illinois Braille Readers Are Leaders contest for kids can be obtained by 
contacting our affiliate president, Denise Avant, at < davant1958 at gmail.com 
 >. We are committed to running the iBRAL contest for kids and hoping to make 
it even bigger in the future. Go Braille! Go iBRAL! .
>
> This article is provided to you as a courtesy of NFB-NEWSLINE? Online for 
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> NFB-NEWSLINE? Online. Please do not forward this E-mail or its attachments 
> to any other person or disseminate it in any manner. Thank you. The 
> NFB-NEWSLINE? Team.
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