[Nfb-science] Taking an Astronomy Class

[John Miller]

Hello Jewel,
I think your idea is a good one.
Another method I have found quite successful for creating 2-dimensional tactile drawings quickly is to create a screen board.
The screen board I created began with a letter writing guide purchased from the materials store. I removed the front plate that contains a set of strings with beads on them for keeping your position on a line while writing.
What was left was a light board 8.5 X 11 with  lip around the edge that keeps the piece of braille paper from sliding while drawing.
>From Home Depot I purchased nylon window screen material. Using masking tape I taped the window screen on to the front of the board.
I place braille paper on the window screen and draw my own drawings or ask a sighted person to do so.
The drawing is done with a ball point pen pushing somewhat harder than normal.
The drawing can be felt particularly well on the reverse side of the piece of paper but can also be detected on the front side.
What is so helpful about this kind of drawing is that a sighted person can draw a graphic with ink while simultaneously making a tactile line.
The Sewell kit is available but I find it less desirable.  I have difficulty maintaining its drawings over a period of years and they crush extremely easily if you carry them in a backpack or ever put weight on them.
The drawings I use are also more delicate than those made by a braille transcriber using a pattern drawing wheel or thermoform but hold up good enough.
You can do astronomy.  
Most the assignments will be about scientific theorems and which physicist proposed what.
Ability to take good notes and working with a sighted assistant and having the text in braille, electronic copy, or all three will also help.
Very best,
John Miller, president
Science and Engineering Division of the NFB
 

-----Original Message-----
From: nfb-science-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:nfb-science-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Jewel S.
Sent: Thursday, May 13, 2010 6:23 PM
To: nfb-science at nfbnet.org
Subject: [Nfb-science] Taking an Astronomy Class

Hi all,

I love astronomy a huge amount. I read a lot of astronomy books, and am particularly interested in studies about black holes, super-earths, and the possibility of a mission to Centaurii Alpha. I am intending to take as many astronomy classes in college as are available. However, as a blind student, I am not sure the best accommodations to learn astronomy tactilely.

I am considering using a Lite Brite, a pegboard that lights up, to imitate a planetarium set up. Basically, I would get images of constellations, solar systems, and the like blown up to the right size for the Lite Brite. Then, I would have a sighted person (probably a volunteer who enjoys Astronomy) place pegs in the board in positions that simulate the image best, making holes in the picture placed on the board. Once a picture is done once, I would be able to go back and place the pegs myself at a later date to study constellations, solar system types, planet size differences, planet distances, etc. What do you guys think of this idea as an accommodation for a student who has some residual vision (enough that I can see colours and lights, though not much else). Do you think this is a good way to study the stars'
shapes and positions in space? If so, do you have any ideas of improvemnt; if not, do you have any suggestions of other ways of learning the shapes, sizes, and distances of constellations, solar systems, solar flares, varying ray types, and the like?

I have read the NFB/NASA books, and loved them, but I know that creating images like the ones in those books is an expensive process and requires a Tiger embosser, which my school does not have, nor do they have any plans of getting one. Is ther a reasonably-priced way of creating tactile images without using a lot of a person's time (in other words, something that the college might be willing to provide as an accommodation?).

Any other suggestions about making astronomy easier to study and more fun to learn tactilely would be much appreciated. I am very interested and quite excited about taking astronomy classes, but a bit concerned that it will be too visual. I took one astronomy class before, and it was very visual, taking place in a planetarium where we spent most of the class period staring up at the ceiling as the professor created the images. We rarely opened our books in that class, except to study what we had gone over in class, and much of what was on the test was based on constellatin and system projections in the planetarium. One test, the professor would point at a star, constellation, or planet, and we had to write down its name and classification, an entirely visual test...what would be an alternative to a test like this?

Curious and hopeful to study astronomy,
Jewel

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