[nabs-l] Learning to learn faster

Tue Feb 25 00:52:34 UTC 2014

Hello ladies,

Sophie, I am happy to see you keep up with your classes in braille while in high school. That time is when I think we need to develop great braille skills that will indeed allow you to spell, retain information, and dare I say, keep certain areas of the brain sharp by the unique experience of the interaction between touch, and language.

I believe, and there may be research to back this up, that neuro pathways are built that would never be built otherwise when you have language input through the fingers. This type of experience must be very different, if not deeper and more meaningful than hand-eye coordination. I don't know what to call the language learning through touch experience, so I'll leave it to one's creativity to name it.

There is no electronic equivalent to solving math problems, learning geometry, trig, geography, and the like. These things involve manipulating the information. These tasks require you to interact with the page. This comes naturally and sooner to a sighted student, and we do ourselves a favor to allow ourselves to explore geography, geometry, trig, and higher power forbid, actually solving math problems.

There is a beautiful thing taking place when a blind person can access these types of subject matters if for no other reason than to break through the common misconceptions among blind people themselves that geometry and the like is hard, and impossible, and no place for blind student to go playing in.

I see your point, Sophie, when you say you can search for text in a braille file, but the same can be true for otter electronic formats. I still haven't managed to use search features with bookshare material in the Read2Go app, but electronic content is electronic content no matter what. I mean that if it in a digital form, you can search it, copy, paste, and the like.

the point you make that sounds most important to me is that you retain more when reading in braille. I've felt the same way, but I can only support this argument anecdotally. I read very little braille, even though I use it every day on the braille sense. Braille is on at all times, and I always read my braille sense content in braille. I don't go out of my way to download and read something off of BARD, Bookshare, etc, but I seem to relate to the material I do read in braille a little better.

There aren't simply enough hours in a day to justify a lot of braille reading for me, even if one could prove I retain better with it. I prefer listening to a spoken article at double speed, and speeding my thought process than slowing down to 60 or 70 words a minute in braille to spell better, and retain more.

I benefit more from retention and comprehension at 400 to 500 words a minute over days, weeks, and years much more than my 70 words a minute with braille.

No doubt I'd increase my braille reading speed a lot with practice, but it would never come close to how fast I listen to something.

Antonio

PS: For more articles like this one you can listen to read by a human at double the speed, check out an app called Umano in the app store.

On Feb 24, 2014, at 5:40 PM, Sophie Trist <sweetpeareader at gmail.com> wrote:

> Courtney, I have to disagree with you on braille textbooks. I actually find them more useful than audio textbooks. Granted, I'm in high school, so I'm probably not moving at as fast a pace as college students, but still. If you read a braille book in an electric format with a notetaker (I use a braillenote apex), you can use the Find command to search for important keywords if you're trying to look up something quickly. You can also move by paragraph and by page if you wish to skip irrelevant material. For me at least, I comprehend more when I read braille. I do okay with audio, but when I read it with my fingers, I tend to absorb more of the information, whereas when I'm listening to it, I occasionally zone out and miss something. This is more important for some classes than others, but reading braille tells us how to spell things. Braille also allows us to see what's underlined or italicized, which may be important for some lessons. These are just my thoughts. Have a great day!
> 
> Sincerely,
> Sophie
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Courtney Stover <liamskitten at gmail.com
> To: National Association of Blind Students mailing list <nabs-l at nfbnet.org
> Date sent: Mon, 24 Feb 2014 14:20:35 -0600
> Subject: Re: [nabs-l] Learning to learn faster
> 
> Antonio,
> 
> I'll return with more thoughts later tonight when I've properly read
> the article, but I thought I'd answer your questions, because they
> interest me on a philosophical level.
> 
> This is one of the ways that, frankly, my life experience simply
> hasn't jived with NFB philosophy.  NFB philosophy emphasizes the
> importance of fast Braille reading, which I agree with; practice
> absolutely must be maintained.  However, they also seem to strongly
> insist on Braille textbooks, which I don't get behind so much.  Doing
> college-level reading; I have never had to consume material as quickly
> as I am right now.  And, at least for me, reading textbooks in Braille
> is simply impractical, even if that Braille has shifted to electronic
> instead of hardcopy.  I can read loads faster, even with something
> like RFBD and the Bookmarks function on my player to find important
> material again, than I ever thought about with Braille, particularly
> because I can quickly skim over superfluous material like map
> descriptions, vocabulary I already remember, or excerpts from outside
> documents that are meant to enhance the readings, which are always
> located at the end of the page, by simply going to the next one with
> the press of a button.  With books read by a screen reader,
> particularly if they're from somewhere like Bookshare and have Daisy
> navigation, this is even more true.
> 
> I think your point is very true, about Braille readers only reading at
> the pace of sighted ones.  I went in recently to take a test in
> Braille (the one reason I keep my Braille skills sharp; my test
> performance plummets when I have to have a reader), and was noted as
> one of the fastest Braille readers the proctor had ever seen.
> However, someone was taking the same test with a screen reader, and
> was finished in half the time I was.  So, learning to take tests with
> screen and human readers is something I wish to become proficient at.
> After all, I may have Braille accommodation now, but I doubt a
> workplace, such as a call center, that has a training process before
> proper work begins, is going to allow me to have a Braille display.
> 
> Now, this says nothing about leisure activities, in which I vastly
> prefer Braille to audio, save in rare cases.  If I'm going to read a
> book, I want to actually be reading it.  Also, any proofing task would
> be made immensely more difficult without the use of Braille.
> 
> I hope this at least provides an interesting perspective on your
> questions, as you certainly provided a very interesting article I'm
> looking forward to diving in to.
> Warmly,
> Courtney
> 
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