[nabs-l] Need Guidance: Several Heavily Visual Labs Coming Up

[Steve Jacobson]

Tina,

There are a lot of considerations in figuring out how you deal with this.  Let me start by saying that when I was in school, I took a general physics class 
because it was an area I wanted to learn.  The instructor was not happy and he did not want me to take the class at all, let alone the lab.  My compromise 
was to take the class without the lab and receive one less credit.  After taking the class, which was near the beginning of my college experience, I learned 
about other blind people who took similar labs.  Since I took the class because I wanted to learn the subject, I have always regretted the fact that I didn't 
take the lab.  I also saw students strike up friendships in the less formal settings of a lab.  I say all this to contrast my response with one other response to 
your note that wondered why you have to do all this when he didn't.  Probably the first thing you need to determine iswhether you want to get in there and 
experience what the other students are experiencing, or whether you just want to meet a requirement.

When I read the materials, it seems that there are a lot of things you will be able to observe.  The rings in a tree won't be as expressive to you in terms of the 
information they convey, but you will likely be able to feel them, and probably even judge relative thicknesses with your fingernail, and while I'm no gardener, 
I know from firsthand experience that you will be able to tell a good deal about the differences in soil by feeling it.  This sounds like a set of courses where 
the labs contribute a lot to what is learned, and if your instructor has taken this time to discuss your participation with you, I have to think this is a good sign.

Here are a couple of things that occur to me.  It appears that some of your activities occur in a group.  Understanding which activities are in groups might be 
important.  One thing that sometimes works if you are in a group or a team is that you might be a good person to be the taker of notes.  I don't mean you 
wouldn't do anything else, but some of the functions you can't easily do could be done by other members, but you can still feel you are pulling your weight by 
doing something that many others will not want to do.  Maybe you are less squeamish than some.  I know a blind person who won a lot of points with her 
biology lab partner because the blind person didn't mind coming into contact with the white rats they were observing.  Her partner couldn't handle that part 
of their lab and was glad to handle some of the other things that the blind person had some difficulty in handling.  How are you with earthworms, for 
example?  <smile>

If a lot of these labs do not involve groups or teams, having someone work with you on some of this as a reader is also an option.  If you were to advertise in 
your clas that another student could earn a little something extra working with you while being able to get their own work done might work.  If the college 
has a DSS office, they may know of people who do reading who may have a particular interest.  In the old days, before DSS offices, advertising within the 
class itself or on bulletin boards did work pretty well, if the DSS office either can't help or doesn't play that role.

Finally, establishing with the instructor what it is that he or she wants you to get out of this experience is important.  The instructor may not be concerned if 
you dot every "I" and cross every "T" if the instructor feels that you are making a serious effort to do what you can and that you are indeed sharing the 
experience and learning the basics.  Especially when students work in teams, the experience is never exactly the same for every student.  This will depend 
upon the flexibility of the instructor, and I know that some might not be all that helpful, but it is likely that many would be.  Make sure the instructor knows 
you are honestly curious.  Anyone present can tell you what color occurs when a chemical is poured on the soil, physically seeing that color isn't important 
unless you are going to make a career of this, and then there really are some options.  You would, in that case, talk with Mr. Supalo, the blind guy who has 
worked with others to develop audible instruments for measuring colors resulting from chemical reactions.  But you might also wonder if there is a sound to 
the reaction.  You might let the instructor know that you are curious about what you can determine by feeling the slice of the tree's rings that are displayed 
from a core.  There might even be some alternate experiments that you might be able to do to bring home some of the same points if it is important to you 
and the instructor.  The instructor would have to guide you on this because I'm just an old math major, but it occurs to me that observing soil that is wet and 
then observing it after it has dried for a day might yield some information about the makeup of the soil, maybe different information, but perhaps useful 
information.  

As you can probably tell, I hate to see blind people left out of experiences like this even if one can't learn every single thing in the same way as we would 
with sight.  I hope that there might be some ideas here that help.

Best regards,

Steve Jacobson

On Tue, 4 Jan 2011 10:26:57 -0800, Tina Hansen wrote:

>You probably know that during the past quarter, I have been taking an environmental science course at my local community college for a General Studies 
degree. I'm in the second course in the series, and there are a number of labs coming up that either use chemicals, or are heavily dependent on 
measurements. I don't know if the lists accept attachments, but I felt the best way to give people an idea of what these labs are like is to send the 
information about them that I've gotten from my instructor. The instructor and I are not sure how to deal with these labs, but I figured that if you got a look at 
them, you could give me some ideas on how I might be able to participate and not just sit on the sidelines. So if you have any ideas on how I might deal with 
these labs, I'm all ears. Thanks.