[blindkid] Technology and Little Kid

[Richard Holloway]

I feel like I stirred up a hornet's nest a bit. First, I must have  
misspoken somewhere, no doubt typing and doing three other things at  
once; my apologies-- Kendra had some letter reversal issues but she is  
past them now and that was with braille reading; quite common at least  
with young kids.

The issue with her slate & stylus is apparently one of fine motor  
control, so we have decided not to focus on that heavily until she can  
better control the tool on the advice of her TVI. I don't have a  
problem with that. In fact she does fine with the finger slate; no  
reversal issues at all. As with so many things, sometimes we have to  
adjust the schedule and order of things based on the needs and  
readiness of each child.

I have mentioned several times that I agree slate and stylus are  
important but I really don't think her education needs to be centered  
around being record-setting fast with a slate and stylus. That is the  
main point I would like to make.

One cannot focus on being the absolute best and fastest at everything.  
I continue to think it makes sense to generally focus on the mastery  
of skills with which one is ready to proceed and which offer  
reasonable "bang for the buck", so to speak. I don't see a lot of  
"bang" for my child from pushing hard on the slate right now, and I  
see no downside from her being very quick with both a Perkins and a  
BrailleNote / PAC Mate. If she were busy putting everything into the  
slate, she'd no doubt be somewhat better at it now, but at what cost?  
She's a first grader working generally around a fourth grade level  
with her braille work, just not while using a slate. I see FAR more  
value in that than in getting over-focused on slate and stylus.

As she becomes more proficient with her slate, we can begin to decide  
what she should use when, just as she has already moved to much  
heavier use of a PAC Mate and BrailleNote this year while she was  
using a Perkins a lot from ages 3 through 5. She only started doing  
much at all with a BrailleNote in the last year (kindergarten). Still,  
I doubt more than a small part of her work is going to be done on a  
slate, though we will likely bow to the wisdom of her outstanding TVI  
in that area. In five years, she has yet to steer us wrong...

Richard