[nabs-l] introduction, and a few questions

Wed Dec 9 07:22:29 UTC 2009

Hi kerri,
  Welcome to the list.
  My name  is Darian Smith, I am a  board member  with the national
association of blind students and a student at city college of san
francisco.
    Please don't feel like any question you ask here is a "dumb
question", as  we are all students and  learning  about school,
blindness and life.
  i would have to agree with what everyone's been saying in regards to
accomidations.  I've had instructors that have either  E-mailed  me
the  handouts, or I've gotten the handouts to scan myself.  I use a
braille note to  take notesin class and that works just fine for me
and I also have a  digital recorder that I baught from radio shack and
it has worked rather well in some situations for getting the lecture
down for me to refer back to  it and note take.
  I know I am probably not going to be able to answer all of your
questions, but I hope i've answered some.  Just  know that  there is
always a way to tackle  a situation; some ways people suggeston how to
go about things may work for you, others may not and that's all fine.
 Just know that you have  options and tools, and now a whole group of
successful blind students just like yourself who are here and happy to
be of assistance, as you yourself will be to other students.
  Again, welcome and thank you  so much for your questions!
 Please don't be a  stranger and post as frequent as you like!
 Best,
  Darian

On 12/8/09, Ben Peters <myangelblessings at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi Keri, welcome to the list. I'm Ben, and I just graduated with my
> associates and am now going to be working on my BA in psychology.
>
> It is very reasonable and appropriate to ask professors for handouts to be
> emailed. I do this all the time, and try to have them emailed before class
> so I'm on the same page. I had one professor willing to email everything
> including exams at one time, but he was the only one that went to that
> extreme.
>
> I take notes on a braille note. I don't get everything, but I try to make up
> for this by doing a few things. 1. I record the lecture. 2. I take notes
> when reading the book jotting down definitions etc that are important. 3. I
> team up with a friend or someone I know in the class so I can always ask
> them questions (or vise vera) about stuff I didn't get written down. 4. I
> ask the professor about specific definitions or whatever. 5. I will google
> it. I don't do all this at once, I use what I think is useful at the time.
>
> In regards to the powerpoint slides, talk to your professor and explain the
> situation. Ask him or her to provide them in blackboard or to you privately
> in a different format like PDF or word. Generally I've found these formats
> to work better than powerpoints. Just make the case for it. I had a
> professor last semester go out of his way (thankfully for me) to provide me
> word files of all the matterial posted to blackboard while the other
> students got the regular format. If the professor won't assist, consider
> talking to your disability services office and see what they suggest. They
> might be able to reformat them for you. But you should have the same access
> to the powerpoints as everyone else.
>
> I'm sorry, but I can't help with your biology question.
>
> Ben
>
> myangelblessings at hotmail.com
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Join me
>
>
>
>  On Dec 8, 2009, at 5:50 PM, Kerri Kosten wrote:
>
>  Hi All:
>
>  I am new to the list. I just recently joined the NFB after listening
>  to the convention in July.
>
>  My name is Kerri Kosten. I am a student at West Virginia University
>  majoring in Journalism. I also work at a local radio station, doing the
> sports page for one of the stations websites among other things.
>
>
>  I had a couple of questions. I wasn't taught very well in high school
>  about college, so I hope these aren't dumb questions.
>
>  First, if a professor hands out material in print, is it appropriate
>  to ask for them to email you an electronic copy? I have Kurzweil at
>  home, but my scanner is really big so haven't set it up in my
>  apartment yet. I use and love the Iphone so don't really want to have
>  to switch to a Nokia just for the KNFB reader, so that's not really an
>  option so I've been just asking the professors to email a copy of the
>  handout but wanted to make sure this is appropriate and okay, and not
>  asking too much.
> How do you handle taking notes from powerpoint lectures? At WVU, the
>  professors always use powerpoints up on a screen so the other students
>  can copy the notes down from the powerpoints. They post the
>  powerpoints on Blackboard after the class, but I haven't found them to
>  be accessible from the Blackboard's website unless I am doing
>  something wrong.
>  I have been just listening for key things the professor says and
>  writing stuff down that way that I think is noteworthy but if the
>  professor gives a really long definition sometimes I forget part of
>  the definition. The other students can of course look at the
>  powerpoints to make sure they have copied the notes correctly...so I
>  was wondering how you guys handled that.
>
>  I am also going to take a class next semester in Biology. When we
>  study genetics, how did you do the whole punnett square thing to
>  understand genetics?
>
>  Thanks so much, and like I said I hope these aren't dumb questions.
>
>  Kerri
>
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