Search Blog Posts

10 Oct You do not need eyes to See

Your Brain is what Sees
I have been reading "The Brain that Changes Itself" by Dr. Doidge over the past year…and rereading it. Research states that when you do not have vision, the touch and hearing part of the brain will take over for the visual cortex. For low vision children, if you blind fold them, they will learn quicker as their brain will tune into their fingers and hearing. If the child tries to use their poorest sense … their eyes, their hearing and touch will never be honed and they will be slower than their potential.

Researchers took completely sighted adults and blindfolded them and within a week, their touch and hearing took over their visual cortex and they could begin reading braille. Yes, when the blind folds were taken off the eyes completely regained control of the visual cortex. The power of the brain is incredible.

Researchers discovered that you do not need your eyes to see. It is the brain that sees. Whether the eyes, ears, or touch, whatever sense you have the brain will utilize and take over the visual cortex. If you lose your sight, you can train your hearing and touch to "SEE" like your eyes, and that is what gives you vision. It only takes practice. I have known and know people like this. They are the ones that have influenced the way I teach.

I see this all the time. My completely blind or almost completely blind students do the best because they tune in with their ears and fingers. They are the best in braille and technology and figuring things out tactually. The students who are low vision, struggle with the braille and other blind skills because they want to use their eyes–in general. They use the talking software but try and use their eyes. The result is they type slower than the completely blind children who are totally tuned into their ears and therefore their fingers are flying. Even if you look at totally sighted people, the fastest typists are those that never look at the keys.

It is the low vision children who have ambition and dreams for their lives, who call me years after graduation and ask for help in getting the training they need and realize it was a mistake not to take the blind skills seriously when in school. …something to think about.

10 Oct Virtual Student Interaction

As my students gain in knowledge, they are able to do more virtual interaction.

Today, I have students texting, video chatting, skyping, facebooking and emailing me. Students from hundreds of miles away to thousands of miles away. Ages 6th grade to 21 years old. My 21 year old is very advanced in his skills and very gifted with technology. He did not start technology instruction until he was 16, but took to it like a duck to water. He can just ask for any type of lesson and I know he can pretty much handle any detail with that lesson. As I sent him lessons on how to download video chat and texting for gmail, he suggested I add scripts to Skype to enhance all its features.

After creating a lesson on scripts for Skype, which makes every component accessible and enhances the fun, I sent that lesson off to another student. She needed help on the lesson, since she is only in 6th grade, so she texted me and I brought her computer up on my screen with Jaws tandem then added SKYPE and within minutes her issues were fixed and she was hearing all the joys of Jaws with her Skype. We then disconnected and she contacted one of her friends with the new enhancements of SKYPE. She later sent me a text saying how much she loved this feature because she no longer had to struggle over using the mouse—and when we started, that is all she wanted to use—hmmmm, can we say eye fatigue!!

Another student calls me through SKYPE from thousands of miles away and I was able to help him with downloading JAWS and real speak voices. Within minutes he has his lesson. Another student asks how to access something in Facebook. A quick response and she is off adjusting.

The excitement every time one learns one more thing to make their lives easier just keeps me going. No one should feel isolated any more with this great technology. When you need help or a friend, it is there. Not only do the students contact me, they contact each other, creating their own social network.

Lessons to help teach

10 Oct HELP!

I have known B a long time. He started his education with me in kindergarten. For 6 years he learned braille and technology and was one of the kids near the top of his class. Then he moved away to a place where everyone was put on CCTV's (closed circuit TV) which enlarges all his work. He slowly went down that ladder of academic success. The school started cutting his work in half because he could not finish it and worse, he started failing. He lost all his braille, technology, and cane skills…really all blind skills…and now was a failing low vision student.

After a couple of years, his parents asked if he could come back to live with us. His behavior was a major issue when he came. He had developed the skill of just getting into trouble all time, picking fights with kids and ignoring everyone. Suspension was a norm in his life. I was guessing this was his way of getting back at the world for his loss of sight. He was disruptive because he knows he is smart but had no way to do the work.

Two years is a long time to be away from blind skills and we had to start over at square one. He quickly caught up with the technology and that became his main tool. The braille came slower and he hid his cane when he got to school. In two years he had significantly increased in skills and went back to live with his family. We emailed & phoned and kept in contact. His blind skills were going away quickly once again due to the lack of blind services where he lived.

Today we had a long chat over SKYPE. He is in college now and REALLY struggling. Help! Help! was loud and clear. He can't do college. Everything is enlarged and he uses a magnifier to see the print. It is too slow. He can't get through the work. We discussed many options, but he knows he must relearn JAWS and his blind skills if he is going to succeed in life. The next conversation will be about the training center for the blind….but that is to come.

Lessons that help teach

10 Oct Losing Sight at 16

A beautiful young lady with long golden hair came into my district at 16. I can picture her and her mom with their translator sitting across the table from me. They were from Ukraine. She had come to America for medical care and had been living with a family in Pennsylvania while going through treatment. Fortunately, her family got a VISA to come to the US also and now they were together again after years of separation.

The young lady had lost almost all sight and vision of who she was by 16. She knew a few words of English and her family knew none. At our first meeting I could see she was very depressed and her mother incredibly concerned and fearful. At our first lesson, her first English words to me were, "I want to die, blind people can't do nothing." It broke my heart, but I could clearly understand the desperation and sadness in her voice.

She had never touched a computer and knew nothing about technology. I started from square one teaching her computer skills at school. She learned English very quickly due to the JAWS talking software. We added Russian Jaws, which fortunately she knew Russian also, to give her the ability to check her work after she typed it in English. Within a week she understood the power of what this technology could do for her. Within 2 weeks she was flying on that keyboard. We only had 3 months of her total learning and I knew with school getting out she needed a computer at home to continue not just in her learning but regaining a vision of who she was becoming.

The Lions Club bought her a computer. As I was setting it up in her home, tiny tears trickled down her cheeks as she exclaimed. "I don't want to die any more. I know I can doing something in life now." This still brings tears to my eyes.

How many people have lost their vision of who they are because they believe something devastating has taken away everything? But it has not. Our trials lead us to testimonies of overcoming. This young lady continues to conquer one trial after another and also spurs others onto more than they thought possible.

She is in the process of becoming a teacher of the blind because she wants to give a dream back to those who have lost their vision of themselves also.

Lessons to help you

10 Oct Home Schooling, Districts and Virtual Teaching

I have the pleasure of working with people in a variety of different situations. For instance, I work with parents who are home schooling their children or with administrators and students in school districts.

Many home schooling parents find me when I am speaking at conferences about Education of the blind & visually impaired. After the speech, they talk with me at length about how to improve their child's education. Quite often, they return home and tell their local school district the news. The district checks out my credentials and within a short time we have contract for services to be provided to the home schooled child.

Many parents of home schoolers do not know that you can intermingle school district services and home schooling. School Districts can count the child on their roster and get funds for them, while supplementing the parent's teaching skills, such as with calculus or blind education or sign language. This can be a great relationship, and in general I see it working incredibly well.

Virtually, I go into the home when scheduled. The parent takes the lessons right along with their child. I send new lessons after our initial instruction for them to continue to work on the skills. The really nice thing about home schoolers is we can meet any time of the day or week. The flexibility is wonderful.

In one particular situation that came up over a year ago, a parent had become very frustrated with the school and the school lacked the skills to help. Her child was not successful and the struggle to get the correct services became overwhelming.

We began instruction and her child began to flourish with the deaf/blind techniques taught. As time went on, I explained other ways to integrate school into her child's life so she could gain more social skills, though she was already making many friends through email.

Many blind children feel very isolated so friends are important. Emailing and connecting with others is one of the first lessons I focus on when starting with a child. They need their peers to connect to. These friendships immediately get them on board with what I am teaching and they see their world expand quickly.

The child mentioned above has now been integrated into school activities and is really enjoying life. Both parent and child have regained faith in the educational process…or at least parts of it. But they have found that happy medium of home schooling and going to school outside the home. Many ways, offer many possibilities!

Lessons to help teach

10 Oct Virtual Teaching-Going from memorizing to understanding

Yesterday was a huge "Ah Ha" moment for one of my virtual students.

I started lessons with her about a year ago. She was in 9th grade. I tested her skills and discovered she did not know how to turn on a computer, did not know Nemeth (Braille math) and did not know a plethora of other blind skills. She also lacked orientation and mobility skills (cane travel). BUT, she did know Braille and that had gotten her to the point she was, however she relied heavily on a para and her parents to help her do her work.

The biggest problem was not understanding how a computer works or what it could do for her. She relied on memory. She tried to memorize every step, and for those of us who use JAWS talking software, we know you cannot always depend on memorizing steps because JAWS is unpredictable. But, if you "understand" how a computer works, no matter what occurs you can figure out the issue and take control of the computer instead of it controlling you.

Anyway, as we did our virtual lessons, she would move along, but spent a lot of time memorizing "hiccups" (unexpected occurrences with talking software) that occurred as we moved in and out of the Internet. Many times the lessons were smooth and flawless as she followed her memorized steps. However, when she tried to do the lessons on her own, and ran into a "hiccup" she was stopped in her tracks.

Yesterday however, she turned a corner in her approach to learning.

I always start my kids out using BASIC HTML in Gmail, which is one of the most accessible emails there is around. Once they learn the basics, I switch them over to Standard View because there are so many more options available, but far more commands to learn. One being texting, two being video chat, three being the auto filling of addresses and so on.

Now this young lady is VERY stoic and proper. Something VERY special has to occur for her to crack a smile or laugh. As I was doing a virtual lesson with her, I showed her how she would not need to memorize email addresses any more with the auto fill aspect of Standard View. As I showed her, I actually got an "OHHHHH WOW". More importantly, when I showed her how easy it was to go back and forth from Basic HTML to Standard, her approach shifted and she actually asked the right question to let me know she understood the difference AND how to do it whenever she wanted.

She was moving from that all important step of just memorizing steps to do something, to understanding what she was doing and that SHE had the power to make that computer do what she wanted instead of the computer taking that power away from her due to her lack of understanding. With understanding, we gain power!

Lessons that help teach

Articles:

Teaching Virtual Teachers

Virtual Teaching Options

10 Oct Seeing the Light-Gaining true vision

I keep in contact with many of my past students and families. That is one thing so wonderful about this field, the close connections we make and keep.

One of my students called me about 4 years ago very distressed about her life. She said she was tired of depending on everyone to do things for her.

She was in 10th grade and had lost the majority of usable sight. But she still had a speck of sight in the corner of one of her eyes and she was determined to use every ounce of it—and not be classified as blind. However, she grudgingly learned braille but just enough to keep me happy. She had never touched a computer before, so I taught her basic computer skills and within 2 weeks she was back in class independently working away on her computer….slowly but doing it herself. She begged for a para-educator to do all her work, telling me how much faster it would be. I said "Yes it would faster but your skills will never improve." For the next 2 months I heard this topic many many times, but by the end of the 2 months she was so fast, it never came up again. She did fairly well in school and graduated but did not push herself to learn more blind skills.

We talked and emailed several times during the next few years. Every year that remaining speck of sight became worse until it was unusable. One day I got the sorrowful call, which I have gotten before from other students. When the student depends too much on a remainder bit of sight, and they stop learning skills after graduation, only to lose finally that speck of physical vision, they then believe their dreams can't become reality. This was the case with this student.

After calming her down, I told her about a great rehabilitation center in Louisiana where she could go and gain the skills she needed. I told her who to contact and what to do, but it would be up to her to do it.

It was time for the people she relied on to back off. We adults sometimes do way too much for our children and students. I am constantly analyzing myself and making sure I am giving them the skills by making them do their own work.

Sadly, for a long while, this student thought I'd jump in and do the work to get her into the training center, while she sat back. But I didn't. It was difficult to hold off, because I could easily jump in and do everything. But, I knew her life would only change if she applied herself.

She finally did apply herself. She registered for the training center, got approved and went on to graduate. A whole new woman. Completely independent and not afraid to go anywhere or do anything. She now has her own private Massage business and knows how to run it on her own. She is the boss of her destiny now. She can truly live out her dreams and she is dreaming even bigger now. Now that is true VISION….having the skills to see your own potential.

10 Oct Helping a student take a test with a virtual teacher

I am always trying to figure out better ways to help my students virtually. Teaching the students their ability to text messages is an immediate help. My students who have learned enough technology skills, can sit in class and text me for a quick answer to any technical problem they have whether it's about hardware or software. For example: At the start of the year, teacher's are usually fearful of having a blind student in their classroom and they are very unsure what to do. A teacher emailed me last week saying, "I will be giving the class a test, How do I give the blind student the test?" I told her to put the test in a WORD document, then save it to a thumb drive. Then give the student the thumb drive and tell her which document file to open when the rest of the class was working on their paper test.

This is where their ability to text me as their teacher became valuable. The student opened her test and realized she has forgotten some of her talking software commands over the summer. She text me with the problem (I am hundreds of miles away from her, but at my computer and beside her virtually) She needs help with her technology. I give her the code for a JAWS tandem session so I can pull up her computer and take a look at her issue. I text her back with what she needs to do to get JAWS to read the problems and tell her where to answer. She is off and running.

She does not disturb anyone else in the classroom as she has her headset on and quietly listens to my directions in the text. No one else knows she is getting help from me but the teacher. A virtual teacher beside her whenever she needs.

This access to a virtual technology teacher who knows skills for the blind gives the regular education teachers and students peace of mind because they have the technical help whenever they need.

Lessons that help teach

Articles:

Teaching Virtual Teachers

Virtual Teaching Options

01 Sep The Joy of accessing books fast

While not so difficult for sighted students, it can be a challenge for blind students to get books for school. However, technology is taking the bite out of the challenge and blind students are now blessed with many websites where they can download books quickly.
Only a few years ago, a book for the blind would have to be ordered from a book and braille library, which may take up to a week to deliver, if the book was on the shelf to send…but that time is past.
So, do not let those times when the teacher decides at the last minute that a new book will be required for class the next day.
Right in class, because the blind student, who never goes anywhere without her laptop and talking software or her Braille Note, can go online to one of the best accessible sites around, BOOKSHARE. Click on BOOKSHARE and download the required book before the sighted students even have all the books passed out.
Can't find it on bookshare, then go to NIMAC find it, let bookshare know and they will setup the file correctly for you and enter on bookshare for you to download.
If a child knows technology, they can access the world!
Lessons and articles to help you:
Bookshare.org and JAWS-Eight lessons to get you moving
First Steps in Great Braille Readers
Beginner Braille Reading
Braille Instruction begins at 3 years old
Braille Cheat Sheets
How to STOP scrubbing While reading Braille
Fast Braille Reading
Tricks to Learning Braille in your Teen Years or Later
Free Braille Books-Where to go to get Books
The Synchronicity of Braille & Technology
Braille Rap Song Lyrics
Rap Song to Learn Braille