[blindkid] Technology and Little Kid

H. Field missheather at comcast.net
Thu Feb 18 23:41:37 UTC 2010


Dear Richard,
The young child has no difficulty with the mirror image concept of 
braille because he/she doesn't have one. The reason is simple. If a 
child, is taught that "l" is dot one, two, three,then, wherever the 
child is told he/she will find dot one, two, three, there they will 
push the stylus. In over 30 years of teaching young blind children to 
write braille using a slate and stylus, I have never had a child who 
experiences difficulty with reversing things. I myself was first 
taught braille as a five-year-old using a slate and stylus. I was not 
given a braille writer until third grade. I can vividly remember 
learning to write with both devises and reversals was never an issue. 
If a child clearly knows the dots required for each letter then all 
they need is to be told where to press each dot, given some practice 
and feedback and reversals are a complete non-issue. I would strongly 
encourage you to work with your daughter on developing at least basic 
competence with the slate and stylus.

This idea that writing on a slate is fraught with the problem of 
reversals is, in my experience, a problem suffered by sighted learners 
who are used to picturing things in their heads. Indeed, this very 
fact is a major reason why adult teachers don't want to teach the 
slate. They think the child will have the same problems with reversals 
that they do. But, as usual, it is plain stupid reasoning when one 
makes the jump from "I as an adult have trouble with braille and the 
slate and stylus" to "so I won't ever teach it to a blind child." I 
have met one extremely competent blind person, a braille user, who 
doesn't like the slate. Guess why? She lost her vision around age ten 
and her sighted braille teacher said that to write on the slate she 
would need to reverse everything in her head. What an impossible and 
totally unnecessary task. Of course no one could achieve any speed or 
accuracy using that method, and, after such torture, would not have 
any fondness for the slate and stylus.

But, even if a young blind child did experience some initial trouble 
with reversals when writing on the slate, does this mean that the 
child should be deprived of the nonvisual equivalent of a pen or 
pencil? Just because some young print writers sometimes write "b" and 
"d" or "q" and "p" the wrong way, do early childhood teachers across 
the nation abandon the use of pencil and paper for young sighted 
children? Of course not and no one would be so irresponsible as to 
suggest that we do so. Yet, this is largely what has happened 
regarding the slate and stylus. The decline in slate usage was aided 
by the rise of the "print at any cost" philosophy among sighted 
teachers of children with low vision. Though many of these children 
were Functionally Blind, they were told to use what sight they had. 
completely nonfunctional strategies, such as the following, were, and 
still are, taught to children with low vision. "well, you can use 
print because, provided you have the right lighting, a very specific 
kind of very dark ink pen, the correct dark line paper, can write 
slowly and are not having trouble with eye-strain today, you're a 
print reader. You don't need braille and certainly don't need a slate 
and stylus to take notes." The fact that many of these students never 
manage to write fast enough and rarely experience the perfect 
conditions required to enable them to cmpete on equal terms with their 
sighted peers/colleagues, does not appear to be a concern to the 
teachers taking this stand. Somehow, in some strange, deep part of the 
human psyche, having the student act sighted and using print, even 
when they can't read what they write, when the student is complaining 
of eye-strain and head-aches and print is not working for a student, 
seems to be preferable to calling a child blind and giving them 
totally competitive tools, like a slate and stylus and braille. Sadly, 
because of the misconceptions about blindness, many parents would 
rather have a print using pretend sighted child than a real, braille 
using blind child as well.

Why have I gone onto my antiprint rant you may ask? Because I believe 
that there are psychological reasons, such as seeing the slate as 
old-fashioned and low tech, too hard, too slow, too blind, and too 
hard to teach, that influence teachers who don't or won't teach it to 
today's blind children. There's no real data on slate usage among 
those who are profficient users. I've never seen a survey seeking real 
data on the value, or nonvalue, of slate and stylus to blind people. 
Yet, somehow the decision that slate skills are no longer necessary 
has been made.
This is sheer foolishness, the kind of logic that says because we can 
now drive cars we don't need bicycles, or because we have replaced the 
outdoor Main Street shopping experience with indoor shopping malls, we 
don't need umbrellas.

I cannot imagine the innumerable inconveniences I would experience 
without recourse to my slate. I Write shopping lists on the bus, I 
take notes quietly in meetings, I jot down phone numbers and addresses 
of new contacts, I write or retrieve information in extremely noisy 
environments with ease, I have quickly made notes for an impromptu 
meeting, written down doses and instructions at the doctor's, copied 
out a recipe I found in a magazine in the dentist's waiting-room, 
noted the name and number of taxi drivers whom I wished to report for 
good or bad reasons, written down info a bus or train clerk gave me on 
my next connection, and who knows what I may still use it to write. 
The
possibilities are endless... rather like the excuses that people give 
why young children should be denied the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity 
to learn to be competent slate users.

As for technology for a young child, it depends on many factors but 
should include games and teaching/learning devices that offer the same 
exposure to the concept of what techology is and does that sighted 
children are given. The child's preferences, parents' preferences and 
the available budget as well as the co-operation of local educators 
are all factors that will influcnce choices.

Warmest regards,

Heather Field
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Richard Holloway" <rholloway at gopbc.org>
To: "NFBnet Blind Kid Mailing List,(for parents of blind children)" 
<blindkid at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Wednesday, February 17, 2010 11:42 PM
Subject: Re: [blindkid] Technology and Little Kid


Certainly the slate and stylus (as someone else mentioned) is not a
bad idea, but a child in this age range is probably not going to have
the fine motor control to master the tool's use easily or likely be
ready for the whole mirror image concept.

A child of nearly any age can begin using a Perkins Braillewriter-- I
know we were using one by at least age three. At the very least a
braille novice can "scribble" on a braillewriter, just like my sighted
almost-4-year-old scribbles on paper with a crayon all the time.
Braillewriting skill with a young child emerges at least somewhat like
writing emerges with a sighted child-- not all letters at once and at
first, just like penmanship is typically pretty poor-- this after the
child has first just pressed the keys at random-- indeed "scribbling"
just like sighted kids. Getting the feel of the tools to use is an
important first step. It is hard for small hands to properly press and
form braille mechanically with a Perkins, but you are building hand
and finger strength and forming braille concepts all along the way.
Many schools can provide a second braillewriter for the student to use
at home for free once the child is in school.

I think that often the way to go is to immerse the child within all
the options that can be gotten as the child appears ready to take to
them-- at least that was our theory when our daughter was born, and in
fact, it continues to be the same way to this day, then we focus on
what she seems ready to take to-- she'll ultimately use most all of
these things. There is also an entire range of tactile graphics
solutions and manipulatives. You can produce these with pipe cleaners,
and a bottle of glue, or you can use a multi-thousand dollar
thermoform; quite a range of options exists.

Now at age 7, Kendra uses a BrailleNote and PAC Mate daily but still
uses a Perkins often, as well as an abacus for her math, JAWS on her
computer and so forth. She also works well with refreshable braille
and that can be a really handy option. The next big challenge I see
for her is needing to learn a qwerty keyboard, so there can be a lot
of technology in use by an early age.

It is also really important to expose the child to braille as much as
possible. A sighted child sees print everywhere. Make certain this
child runs across braille often. Now in first grade and a proficient
braille reader, our first grade daughter still runs across the braille
stickers on things all over the house-- refrigerator, dishwasher,
table, drawer, oven, door, bed-- you name it. This will cause the
child to ask questions-- just like a sighted child-- "what is this"
and later "what do these letters say?-- what do they mean?" Also, use
twin vision books-- sighted kids look at letters while parents read
most every time. Blind kids can do the same-- that's why it is best
when adding braille to a print book to always put the braille below
the print-- a sighted reader can still read while small hands are
exploring the braille.

Screen readers can be used at that age as well as a victor reader.
Things like Mt Battens are expensive but potentially useful, but be
careful that an electronic (and expensive) solution like a Mt. Batten
or a PAC Mate is not learned at the expense of being able to use a
mechanical braillewriter as that need will almost certainly come up
all of this child's life, at least from time to time.

I'd like to rework this link, and our site is about to get a facelift
overall too but here are some technology ideas that you might direct
her towards. Let her see a range of options and then she can decide
which way she wants to proceed.

http://www.gopbc.org/gopbc_technology.htm


Richard




On Feb 17, 2010, at 10:01 PM, David Andrews wrote:

> I got asked a question, the other day, and since most of my
> experience is with blind adults -- I didn't know quite what to say.
> A woman said she had a four year old totally blind daughter, and she
> wanted her to keep up with her peers in technology, so what
> assistive technology/technology is there  -- should she start using
> with her child?
>
> Dave
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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