[blindkid] braille learning as fun!

[Heather]

One thing that might apeal to him would be making each dot a different 
colour, but consistant within each cell.  For instance, dot 1 is always red, 
dot 2 is always blue, 3, green, 4 orange, 5, purple, 6 yellow, and places 
where there are no dots, black rings, empty and white in the middle.  If he 
is wanting to use his vision, you can encourage him to read Braille with his 
eyes and fingers.  I was partially sighted, and I found it interesting to 
look at Braille as well as feel it.  Labeling everything is a good idea, but 
especially helpful would be play houses, castles, railroad sets, etc that 
naturally have signs.  I.E. if you have toy trucks for him, have a toy stop 
sign, and braille that.  If there is a jersey number on an action figure he 
has of a football player, label that in braille, and so on and so forth. 
It's good for him to learn print, so don't descourage that, but pear the 
Braille with it as equally important.  For Jeremy at least, he has fun 
picking out the braille letter tile to go with the cut out shaped print 
letter magnits, and the sounds.  Describing braille letters to him in terms 
of shapes might also be helpful if he is a visual learner, despite his 
visual imparement.  For instance, W was never dots 2, 4, 5, 6 to me, it was 
always a backwards R.  I would express the o u n d sign as a moved over K 
and a d, as k is dots 1 3 and the part of the contraction proceeding the d 
was 4 6.  Or, the lettersign was a lower moved over B to me.  It used to 
piss off my vision teacher to no end, and had I had more confidence as a 
child I would have told her to get over herself, as no student will always 
think the same way the teacher does.  As a teenager, I made full use of my 
vocabulary and put her in her place, explaining multiple intelligences and 
learning styles to her, and she shut up, when I started using text books 
intended for professional educators against her.  I digress.  Point being, 
that maybe putting Braille letters in terms of shapes he sees everyday will 
help.  L is a line, g is a square, or a two by two lego, and so on.  Words 
will start to look like pictures to him.  For instance, the word ice looks 
like a bridge with ramps at each end.  The word then when contracted looks 
like a cat's eye.  the name andy looks like a box when contracted, and so on 
and so forth.  You can hide words in pictures made on a braille writer.  Not 
just randomly writing them inside of the picture, but using the letters to 
make up the picture.  For instance, the checkers on a table cloth in a 
picture could be alternating g no g g no g, the slope of the roof could be 
Is going up on the left and Es going down on the right, and Cs going across 
the top.  Where lines and shapes link up words could be formed.  If he is 
into looking for artistic forms and is a visual learner, things like this 
might be really appealing for him.  You could make word and letter searches 
for him this way.  Also, scrabble boards and sudoku puzzle boards could be 
fun places for him to play with the art as well as the function of letters. 
One thing about print letters is that they can easily be made into three D 
cut outs, whereas braille letters are harder to douplicate, as no print 
letters, save lower case i have a seperate pen stroke anywhere in their 
creation and can be made easily from one piece of wood or plastic, etc. 
Braille letters such as K, U, M, X and so on are seperate groups of dots. 
But a lot of them can be created with glued or screwed together wooden cubes 
or lego blocks.  If he is a visual spacial learner then having him jump into 
squares of a grid with the numbers of the dots, in the order to make a 
braille letter might be fun, also having him and you and your partner, other 
friends stand in squares to be the dots themselves might be fun.  Talk about 
connections between how braille words look and what they mean.  For example, 
a sighted child might think that the word snake looks snakey because the S 
looks like a squiggly snake, or the word boo! has Os that look like the 
shape your mouth makes when you are yelling boo.  If you are creative you 
will think of things in braille that look that way.  For instance, the word 
push looks like a crane and hook on the right hand end, and cranes push 
things, or the word fox looks on the right like a pointed fox's head going 
into an opening, like a hole, or the word screech looks like the two Es were 
running and then screeched to a halt, like people lean when they stop 
quickly.  If you don't know Braille you'll have to learn at least grade one, 
but I and you might both not see some of the things in words that he sees in 
words.  A lot of the meaning making must come from him, but playing with the 
shapes might help.  Finally, let him play with the letters in space.  For 
instance, he might turn words upside down or backwards to see if they mean 
anything.  He nmight take the J in Jack and turn it in ninety degree 
intervals to get hack and dack and fack, of course he will have to discard 
non-words, but that is part of the proccess.  Have him flip Ms upside down 
and turn them into Us and see how that changes words.  A lot of kids confuse 
these letters, but a lot of research is finding that if you achnowledge 
common tripping places early and encourage them to use compare and contrast, 
that it will actually be easier down the road.  Hope that helps.
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Marie" <empwrn at bellsouth.net>
To: "'NFBnet Blind Kid Mailing List,(for parents of blind children)'" 
<blindkid at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Tuesday, June 08, 2010 3:21 PM
Subject: Re: [blindkid] braille learning as fun!


> Hey Richard, can you give me some ideas of things that you did to make
> learning Braille fun for Kendra. Jack needs letters 2 to 3 inches high for
> near vision so I am definitely thinking he needs to learn Braille and have
> put Braille in his environment with labels and such and we have
> Braille-Print books. However he is VERY attracted to print but Braille 
> does
> not seem to mean anything to him yet. It may have to do with (lack of)
> fingertip sensitivity (have no idea how sensitive they are since he is 
> still
> learning to talk and this would be a difficult concept to discuss with any 
> 5
> yr old). He wants signs read to him and he tries to spell ALL the time.
> Ideas?
>
> Marie (mother of Jack, born May 2005)
> Check out our blog at http://www.allaccesspasstojack.blogspot.com for
> glimpses into our busy life with a boy who is busy growing and developing 
> in
> his own way in his own time
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: blindkid-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:blindkid-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
> Behalf Of Richard Holloway
> Sent: Tuesday, June 08, 2010 11:48 AM
> To: NFBnet Blind Kid Mailing List, (for parents of blind children)
> Subject: [blindkid] Wii Thoughts
>
> I'm wondering if any of us has actually had "hands on" this device,
> and who among us has actually seen that video or had it described to
> us...
>
> From what I can discern, this "electronic cane" is basically a fairly
> conventional cane with a chunk in the middle that has been replaced by
> a pair of shafts with what appears to be some sort of a motion-sensing
> device that hangs between the the shafts. I suspect it would feel like
> a slightly awkward and heavier-than-usual cane. This is not some crazy
> alternative-to a-cane contraption. It is also (from what I can tell)
> FAR closer to a typical cane than the Wii Guitar is to an actual
> guitar, for whatever that may be worth. Despite it's similarity with a
> "proper" cane, it also does not appear to be offered as a replacement
> to a cane in any way.
>
> My guess is that (much like with the knfb reader) among so many other
> pieces of technology, over time the device would shrink and could
> ultimately feel (and in fact be) a typical cane that happens to offer
> the features of a Wii input device as well. (Perhaps you could even
> attach a small device around a personal cane for this at some point.)
>
> I keep hearing so much apprehension and resistance to what this device
> claims to offer but no evidence that it really won't work or certainly
> anything that shows this to be detrimental to cane travelers' skills.
> What I did hear however, is that it apparently has inspired and
> pleased a number of the kids who have been trying it out. Again, I'm
> not picking up an anything bad there. I hear that some people
> apparently think learning to use a cane should NOT be fun. Well, let
> me tell you-- if my daughter thinks something is fun, she's going to
> do it a lot more often and a lot better than something she dislikes
> and I'm suspecting this is not unique to Kendra. In my experience,
> Kendra really enjoys reading and writing braille. She has fun doing it
> now, because she actually had fun learning to read braille and it has
> nearly always been associated with positive experiences for her. Many
> of the ways she learned to read were very much game-like, Now she
> reads several years ABOVE grade level and she's only just finished
> first grade. Does anyone want to suggest to me that while it is okay
> if she enjoys reading NOW, she should NOT have enjoyed LEARNING to
> read? Does that make sense to anyone?
>
> I was recently looking at a braille compass in a store. Then I saw an
> electronic compass. I don't know how well it works, but the concept is
> interesting. So consider this-- put the electronic compass into a cane
> which tells you which way you're pointing at will. Or why not a GPS in
> a cane? Does that sound excessive or overly complicated? Well it may
> be, but what is much more likely is that things like this Wii cane
> could develop into something like a conventional cane (or cane
> attachment) with a bluetooth interface that could send whatever data
> the sensors in the cane are made to pickup, then you could interface
> that with whatever you wanted-- a compass system, a GPS, or probably
> any number of other devices.
>
> There was a time when telephones were not mobile, then some people had
> the "crazy" idea of putting them in cars and then briefcases. Those
> became "bag phones" that became the "brick" cell phones which became
> pocket sized phones like many of us have now. Ultimately, a pocket
> phone can encompass everything from a PDA to a GPS system to a knfb
> reader and who knows what else?
>
> It looks to me like the Wii system, in many ways is actually at least
> part of something somewhat like a simulator for cane travel. You can
> actually travel with it (at least a bit) but not in a "real world"
> environment. Well, the simulator concept is a proven one. People learn
> to do all sorts of things in them all over the world. Often it keeps
> them safe, makes learning faster, and saves time and money. Again, I
> have trouble seeing the down side. Every time I get on a airplane, I'm
> delighted to know the pilot may have spent a lot of time in a
> simulator AS WELL AS actually flying. All of that is hopefully keeping
> me safer in the air!
>
> The NFB really is working towards cars that would be reasonable for
> blind people to drive on their own. Not just an autonomous vehicle a
> blind person could own and ride in, but one that my child might be
> able to get in and drive on her own one day. It troubles me to observe
> other bashing ideas that may not only be useful and helpful right now,
> but which may very well lead to all sorts of additional helpful
> technologies for all of our kids in the future. I hope we can all keep
> this in mind when we're exploring and discussing new developments in
> technology.
>
> Once upon a time someone came up with a strange and awkward concept
> for sending messages that could be read in the dark in combat areas.
> It didn't work very well at all and it needed a lot of refining. I
> expect many people thought it was a ridiculous concept, and a waste of
> time, but today I don't think so many of us would announce that
> Braille is a foolish or useless invention.
>
> Just my thoughts on the matter.
>
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