[blindkid] computers as school credit

Peter Donahue pdonahue2 at satx.rr.com
Sun Sep 16 02:13:45 UTC 2012


Hello Pat and everyone,

    I just know the way I and other blind adults on this list were brought 
up. If mom required my sister to do house-hold chores she expected me to do 
the same. She was not one to wait around for the school to teach me 
particularly some of the tasks and jobs mentioned below. If we had to learn 
new tasks no allowances were made for me due to my blindness. I learned to 
burn bush, kill livestock and poultry, shoot a gun, put up and take down 
Christmas decorations, start a fire, cook my own food, attend to personal 
needs, travel independently, and a host of other tasks and activities from 
my mother and other family members. We didn't wait around for the schools to 
teach me. If we did we'd still be waiting despite IEPS, IDEA, and the rest.

    Advocating for her blind child was something my mother learned well 
particularly in the early 1970s when I returned to Perkins after a 10-year 
long battle with special ed officials in Massachusetts. Mom's taking 
everything they told her concerning my education at face value and not 
daring to question also figured in to this until both of us realized we were 
our own best masters of my future. If those tyrants had their way I would 
have been on an express train to a sheltered workshop working for less than 
the federal minimum wage. Ouch! I was getting around my neighborhood 
independently long before I ever saw a white cane. By the time I received 
O&M from the Oak Hill School for the Blind I took to the cane like a duck to 
water as since I all ready got around by myself it would enhance what mom 
encouraged me to do in those early years. By the end of my last year at Oak 
Hill I was traveling to Hartford CT and Brockton Ma on my own as I went home 
for the weekend. Not long after I began going home on weekends by myself one 
of my classmates was trained to get himself home and back to school as well. 
Even during my final years of schooling at Perkins I was one of only a few 
students that made the trip between school and home on holidays and weekends 
entirely on his own thanks to a mother who didn't let the education system 
decide when I was ready to learn valuable skills like cane travel or if they 
dragged their feet teaching me.

    Knowing mom if that were to happen today she would have the wisdom to 
realize that the current system of IEPS isn't perfect. They won't help your 
blind child if the school doesn't have adequate staff that are knowledgeable 
about computer use to instruct them properly. I believe you're from Utah. 
There are some very fluant blind computer users there that could assist you 
in teaching your child the basics. He could then use the lab time to hone 
his skills and hopefully once a TVI that is computer literate can be found 
to work with him/her. If we had blind children we'd would realize that we 
are their first teacher and as such should not rely entirely on the school 
system to teach them. Systems break down and blind children don't always get 
the skills they need to succeed in their learning. Parents of sighted 
children understand this and as far as I'm concerned it's no different if 
you're a parent of a blind child. If you can't teach the blind kids the 
skills they need to succeed thanks to the NFB there are lots of blind 
mentors who can while you work out the problems with the school district. 
Hope this helps.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Pat Renfranz" <dblair2525 at msn.com>
To: "NFBnet Blind Kid Mailing List" <blindkid at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Saturday, September 15, 2012 8:29 PM
Subject: Re: [blindkid] computers as school credit


I regret falling to temptation, but I am indeed offended, Mr. Donohue. You
have no right to imply that I have not taught my blind child.

Do you and Ms. Silverman think our utilizing the IEP to achieve special
education goals is inappropriate? What do you know about my child? Believe
me, we did pull in blind tech users to help with training and there's been a
computer at home with JAWS, and all the other bells and whistles, that she
was not interested in using. And perhaps you don't realize that there are
families that don't have computers with JAWS at home and have poorly-trained
TVIs who have no idea how to get that blind child on the computer, so our
pushing the system a bit might help with another child.

This thread was starting by a parent whose very bright child is failing a
tech course. Something needs to be done now, and, in my opinion, not by
throwing him in a pool and telling him to swim.

Sometimes, I think the NFB has a very bad attitude towards parents. Sorry,
but that's my 2.
pat




On 9/15/12 5:02 PM, "Peter Donahue" <pdonahue2 at satx.rr.com> wrote:

> Hello everyone,
>
> For Arielle Silverman amen, amen, and amen. Parents are a sighted child's
> first teacher. it needs to be the same way for blind children.
>
> Peter Donahue
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Traci Wilkerson" <traci.renee27 at gmail.com>
> To: "Blind Kid Mailing List,(for parents of blind children)"
> <blindkid at nfbnet.org>
> Sent: Saturday, September 15, 2012 4:37 PM
> Subject: Re: [blindkid] computers as school credit
>
>
> I understand your question Arielle, but I know my kids are young and we
> already experience time crunch now at 5 and 7 after school, by the time we
> get home, let the kids chill and play for a bit, do homework (which can
> take sometimes an hour if its a battle), make dinner and its then bedtime.
> I'm sure older kids may have some more time but I'm sure homework also
> takes longer.  I would love to do more tech with my kids but I also want
> them to enjoy being kids.  They have computer lab time at school, so in my
> eyes the school needs to be teaching them the skills they need at that
> time.  They shouldn't be sitting there letting someone click through
> screens "pretending" my child is doing something on their own.  Yes, we
> have already had this.  So if they are in the class, yes! the school 
> should
> be teaching it in a way relevant to what they need.  No excuses for them
> not too.
>
> Traci
> On Sep 15, 2012 5:26 PM, "Arielle Silverman" <arielle71 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi all,
>> Forgive me for beating a dead horse, but I  just don't understand why
>> we are waiting on school personnel who aren't very tech-savvy to teach
>> blind kids JAWS when the JAWS program has excellent user
>> documentation, enabling any blind student to learn JAWS on their own?
>> Why are blind kids having to do a boring tech tutorial at school when
>> they could be playing online games, using Facebook or looking up cool
>> things on the Internet at home, like their sighted peers are?
>> I believe that the way a sighted child first learns to use the
>> computer is by sitting down in front of it and looking around the
>> screen, eventually learning to identify the different icons, the start
>> menu, programs on the desktop, etc. A blind child can learn the exact
>> same way. Turn on JAWS, have them sit down and press the tab key, or
>> arrow around the desktop, so they can hear all the different programs
>> that are available to them. Have them open up a program like Word,
>> tell them to press the Alt key and they will be able to hear all the
>> different options located in the menus or ribbons.
>> JAWS is not much more complicated than using Windows as a sighted
>> person. If a sighted person wants to move around the screen, they use
>> the mouse; the JAWS user presses Tab or the arrow keys. If the sighted
>> person wants to click something, they click the mouse; the blind
>> person presses the Enter key. There are more advanced keyboard
>> commands that a blind computer user can eventually memorize so they
>> don't have to go looking all around the screen, but these more
>> advanced commands aren't necessary for basic computer use. A blind
>> student who has basic computer knowledge, gained from exploration,
>> should be able to learn the more advanced commands independently from
>> a tutorial.
>> I learned JAWS twenty years ago when computers still used command
>> prompts and were much less user-friendly than they are today. Plus,
>> there wasn't much funn stuff to be done on the computer then, like
>> there is today. With all  the free screen reader options out nowadays,
>> I just don't understand why any blind child is not
>> technology-literate. Why wait for a student to fail a computer course
>> when so many self-teaching opportunities exist at home?
>> Perhaps there are some kids who don't have the motivation or attention
>> span to self-teach technology, but I suspect that will be a minority
>> of students. Why not have them start on their own, and then ask the
>> school to help if they get stuck?
>> If there is something I am missing please let me know. I do not intend
>> to offend anyone, but I really just want to better understand what the
>> issue is and why parents aren't able to address it on their own.
>> Best,
>> Arielle
>>
>> On 9/15/12, Pat Renfranz <dblair2525 at msn.com> wrote:
>>> Hi Rosina,
>>> My daughter was in a similar boat: sluggish tech training, required
>>> computer
>>> tech class, etc. One thing we did to force the issue was to use the
>> course
>>> requirements to lay out what had to be done by the TVI during the year,
>> and
>>> put those as goals in the IEP. The goals were very specific. The tech
>>> teacher was great at making sure the TVI knew the material and knew what
>>> needed to be taught. The district, knowing the TVI did not have the
>> skills,
>>> purchased training materials to lead the TVI step by step; the materials
>>> were from a company called DeWitt and Associates. I have no idea if this
>> is
>>> the best stuff out there (probably not!) and it was boring as heck for
>>> my
>>> daughter, but it got her through the class. Because working through this
>>> took some time (why should anything be worked out before the school year
>>> start?), the teacher allowed my daughter to work on the class into the
>> next
>>> semester.
>>> pat
>>>
>>>
>>> On 9/13/12 3:56 PM, "Rosina Solano" <colemangirly at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>> Okay, so I just got a notice that my 9th grader is failing computer
>>>> applications and it is a required course.  WOW, possibly because they
>>>> haven't
>>>> taught him ANY computer or tech skills at all.  And here is the
>> clincher,
>>>> if
>>>> he does fail it, he has to repeat it next year.  Gee, if they don't
>>>> give
>>>> him
>>>> the education to use JAWS and such I don't think it will matter how
>>>> many
>>>> times
>>>> he repeats it.
>>>>
>>>> Maybe this will be the sign that I am not the only one who knows that
>>>> they
>>>> should be teaching him technology. Sigh
>>>>
>>>> Rosina Foster
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> blindkid mailing list
>>>> blindkid at nfbnet.org
>>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/blindkid_nfbnet.org
>>>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
>>>> blindkid:
>>>>
>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/blindkid_nfbnet.org/dblair2525%40msn.com
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> blindkid mailing list
>>> blindkid at nfbnet.org
>>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/blindkid_nfbnet.org
>>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
>>> blindkid:
>>>
>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/blindkid_nfbnet.org/arielle71%40gmail.com
>>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> blindkid mailing list
>> blindkid at nfbnet.org
>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/blindkid_nfbnet.org
>> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
>> blindkid:
>>
>> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/blindkid_nfbnet.org/traci.renee27%40gmail.c
>> om
>>
> _______________________________________________
> blindkid mailing list
> blindkid at nfbnet.org
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/blindkid_nfbnet.org
> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
> blindkid:
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/blindkid_nfbnet.org/pdonahue2%40satx.rr.com
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> blindkid mailing list
> blindkid at nfbnet.org
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/blindkid_nfbnet.org
> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
> blindkid:
> http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/blindkid_nfbnet.org/dblair2525%40msn.com
>



_______________________________________________
blindkid mailing list
blindkid at nfbnet.org
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/blindkid_nfbnet.org
To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for 
blindkid:
http://nfbnet.org/mailman/options/blindkid_nfbnet.org/pdonahue2%40satx.rr.com 





More information about the BlindKid mailing list