[nabs-l] Need Advice: Environmental Science Course

[Anita Adkins]

Hello,

First, I took a Geography course last semester.  I think that counts as an 
environmental science course.  My main piece of advice is to be certain to 
meet with the instructor regularly outside of class to make certain you and 
she are on the same page.  You will need someone to create diagrams for you. 
If you do not have a reader, the college may be able to provide this person, 
or you may need to hire this person by placing an ad up at your college or 
through other means.  I used a drawing board I purchased from The Braille 
Bookstore, www.braillebookstore.com, on which I had my reader to create 
diagrams.  Unlike the raised line drawing kit, one can draw on regular paper 
with a regular pen.  Remember, it is your job to guide your reader.  Think 
of it as you being the employer and the reader being the employee.  Be 
certain to indicate that one must be consistent.  In other words, always 
label a diagram on its left side, or always cause water to be created with 
felt material, for instance.  I also purchased a talking globe from 
Independent Living Aids because I had to know Geography information about 
where certain continents were and so on.  It has a pen that one touches to 
it, and then it verbally announces the location or other information 
depending on how you have it set.  It can do population, geography, time, 
National Anthem, distance, and more.  I am going into teaching, and so I 
felt purchasing this globe would be good for my future classroom.  Remember 
that you can purchase tactile drawings of maps from the National Braille 
Press, and I had one of the United States and another one of the World that 
I found to be helpful.  In addition, the library has a Braille/tactile set 
that is very much more detailed your college mayor you may be able to 
borrow.  My school did that for me.  Also, I think you can purchase it.  I 
believe the individual who created it used aluminum foil and some other sort 
of stuff.  To me, it felt like thermoform, and some of its pages folded out 
to make the map larger.  Sorry I do not remember the name of it.  As far as 
creating diagrams, models and the like for this course and another science 
course, I used, with a reader, string, clay, Styrofome, tape, wikki sticks, 
a ball to create my own globe, other construction paper and fabrics of 
varying textures, creativity, verbal input from the instructor and other 
classmates, etc.  Do not hesitate to raise your hand and ask a question if 
you did not hear something, do not understand it, etc. because most likely, 
you are not only helping yourself.  Do not relax when it comes to insisting 
on placing string/tape or wikki sticks on a globe to create raised longitude 
and lattitude lines and other diagrams as the instructor may want to take 
the easy way out if he or she can do so.  When necessary, ask for diagrams 
to be provided so that they can be produced prior to class.  Ask for your 
reader to be present in the classroom so that he or she can creat on-the-fly 
tactile graphics using the above mentioned items.  In my class, for example, 
we used string and tape on a paper to make a topographical map.  In 
addition, the teacher produced a clay model of the topographical map.  In 
class, we cut this model appropriately because one must first draw the 
highest point, I think, and place this on the board where I, myself, drew 
around it using a regular pen.  Then, my reader created the outline using 
string, which I could feel before we moved on to cutting out the next 
highest piece.  Use a Braille labeler to label each section in a diagram, 
being creative and making up a key where the letter a represents 10 ft, if 
necessary.  Again, you must feel the model before you begin to cut it at all 
and continue by doing most of this work yourself so you will understand it. 
I believe we discovered that Styrofome would have been better to create the 
topographical map with because the fishing line or whatever it was we tried 
to cut with was difficult on the clay.  When we learned about the moon, the 
teacher had a Styrofome ball about the size of a tennis ball.  She created a 
sort of shell that covered half of the ball and that could be taken on and 
off.  I sat in a chair that rotated.  If I was facing the light, meaning I 
was facing the table, I was facing the sun.  The tape shell always faced 
away from me.  So if I was facing the sun, the back of the moon was 
completely covered.  If I rotated around to 3 o'clock, a different part or 
portion of the ball was in viewof the son because now the left side was 
visible, I think.  Anyway, you get the idea even if I am forgetting exactly 
what I was learning.  lol.   For a globe I made as a homework project, I 
purchased a round Styrofome ball in the kraft section at Walmart and other 
items.  If you need to draw, the drawing board or a raised line drawing kit 
will work.  Also, you can place a sheet of paper over cardboard and created 
a sort of raised line that one can feel as I did this for an art class, and 
it worked well.  There is a free program to draw graphics if your college 
has access to Duxbury and a Braille embosser.   The program is called 
QuickTack.  Many times if you ask your instructor and explain that you can 
only obtain the previous edition of the book, the instructor will be okay 
with it because not much changes from edition to edition.  If not, you can 
use a reader to record your book in audioformat or you can use Kurzweil 
software or other reading software to scan it into the computer.  One thing 
I like to do is to look up information on trusted Internet sites to help 
myself grasp concepts.  I am not ashamed to check out the sites for kids 
either because the words and concepts are broken down for them.  Perhaps, if 
you are a member of Bookshare, you can find a kid's science book about the 
type of environmental science you are studying.  When I say trusted, I mean 
a .edu or .gov site.  Well, I have probably given you too much info, and so 
I will leave off for now.  The main thing is creativity, communicating with 
your instructor and reader, and making certain that as much diagrams and 
models are available as possible prior to the class.  Don't forget that the 
college may already have some raised models of which they are not aware, and 
so use your creativity to determine this.  For example, if it were a biology 
course, they would have a skeleton you could feel.  In my class, there were 
models of volcanoes and such I could feel, even though they were not created 
for that purpose.  I'll paste the link for the QuickTack program below:
http://www.duxburysystems.com/product2.asp?product=QuickTac&level=free&action=up

Anita
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Tina Hansen" <th404 at comcast.net>
To: <nabs-l at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Friday, August 20, 2010 1:59 PM
Subject: [nabs-l] Need Advice: Environmental Science Course


> This fall, I will be taking an environmental science course at my local 
> community college. There are two concerns I have, and I was wondering if 
> anyone out there has taken this kind of course before, and how you may 
> have addressed them.
>
> 1. I did the research about the textbook I need, and discovered that RFB&D 
> has the previous eddition, but not the one my instructor is asking 
> everyone to get. If you've been in this situation before, how have you 
> addressed this issue?
>
> 2. Lab work. I know that there is going to be a lab in this course, and I 
> am not willing to have it waved. If you've done lab work for a course like 
> this, what have you done to make sure you're able to participate?
>
> Thanks in advance for any advice you might have on these concerns.
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