[blindkid] braille learning as fun!

[Heather]

To each their own.  Visual learners might not reach full potential if not 
allowed to learn in this way.  I'm a visual learner who is also blind, and 
was also encouraging finding the artistic aspects in Braille, even for 
children who are totally blind, but I'm dropping it, so as not to cause 
drama.
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "H. Field" <missheather at comcast.net>
To: "NFBnet Blind Kid Mailing List,(for parents of blind children)" 
<blindkid at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Thursday, June 10, 2010 5:33 PM
Subject: Re: [blindkid] braille learning as fun!


> Hello all,
> It is best to teach your child braille using his fingers and not
> vision. Although he will be able to tell you the letters by placing
> objects into the correct dot positions by using vision, this is
> encouraging him to use vision to read braille. To train good habits
> from the beginning and to work on developing tactual sensitivity I
> advise that you use touch. You can play games where you use a
> sleep-shade and work with him using only his sense of touch for
> braille activities. Use his vision with the print letters if he enjoys
> that game. While those with some usable vision enjoy using that vision
> with braille, a child's enjoyment is not always the determining factor
> in best practice teaching methods. braille is a tactile system and
> should be used tactually if children are to learn to use it to their
> maximum advantage.
>
> Regards,
>
> Heather Field
>
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Heather" <craney07 at rochester.rr.com>
> To: "NFBnet Blind Kid Mailing List,(for parents of blind children)"
> <blindkid at nfbnet.org>
> Sent: Tuesday, June 08, 2010 9:34 PM
> Subject: Re: [blindkid] braille learning as fun!
>
>
> 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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>
>
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