[blindkid] braille keyboards and such
H. Field
missheather at comcast.net
Fri Aug 20 22:04:12 UTC 2010
Hello Richard,
I've not seen the braille keyboard simply because I thought it was a
bit pricey and decided I could label my own. I had thought of trying
it for one of my little blind students. I thought as an introductory
activity it might be really helpful to have a brailed layout as some
people, and I'm about to start teaching a student who is such a
person - really benefit from reading and memorising from reading. It
is much easier to read and memorise than to learn just from hearing
and doing alone.
I also wondered about finger position. I thought that it might be a
good introductory experience but, I was a bit concerned that for fast
typing one actually uses the very tips of the fingers with the wrists
nicely raised. To read the braille one needs to have flat fingers. I
haven't actually started teaching this little girl but am about to and
had decided that I might mark the home row of keys. I learned to type
in 7th grade but I do like to still mark some keys on the key-board.
These include the function keys, alt, control, shift, enter, delete,
equals, the brackets. This is because I never use them enough for
hitting them to be such habit like the other keys, so I want to be
accurate when I hit them.
I wonder if having Kendra make up an echo song might be fun? She could
sing a key that she intends to press and could then press her key of
choice - or the one she thinks it is - and see if the computer
"echoes" her. It could be fun for her to see how quickly the computer
echoes her. Just a thought. I'm going to try that with my little
student.
If you decide to try the key-board with braille on it please let us
all know how it goes.
Warmest regards,
Heather Field
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