A Song to Help Children Learn Braille

There is an enormous amount of research on music and learning. Music makes learning fun and fast.

Here is a Braille Rap song that will enable your children to learn the Braille Alphabet quickly. Have them sing it for awhile, then when they place their hands on a brailler, it will all come together. Make sure those fingers are in the correct position on the brailler.

Click on the link to go to Braille Rap Song and download a copy for yourself

Free Braille Books-Where to go to get Books

There are many options when it comes to finding and getting braille books.

For Free Braille books, go to Seedlings Braille Books for Children
They offer 2 Free braille books per year through their Angel program. Otherwise they offer very low cost braille books for your children.

If you want to create your own braille or audio books, you can download books from bookshare.org, where school children can sign up for free. Bookshare offers thousands of books at your fingertips. You can download Victor Reader Soft, from their site, which is free audio software. When you download your books, you will download them in daisy format to be played on Victor Reader Soft right from your computer. Sign up and get your child registered.

Bookshare offers braille book downloads also. If you have braille software such as Duxbury Braille Translation software you can download books in the .brf format and have them open in braille. Combine this with a braille display and your child can read the book from their computer. If they are blessed with an adaptive laptop such as a Braille Note then the file can be saved to a thumb drive and loaded onto the Braille Note, or the Braille Note can go online and download it directly from Bookshare and can be read in the bookreader of the Braille Note.

National Braille Press also offers books, some for purchase and others for free.

But never forget about your state book and braille library. This is a free book loan program in your state for braille and audio books. For more books than you can dream of, go to the largest braille library source in the country: Utah State Library for the Blind and Disabled
If you go there, they will have a host of other information and where to go and get more braille books and materials. Your state library can help you get books from this resource if you do not happen to live in the loan area for books from them.

Web Braille is the National Library of Congress loaded with thousands of braille books for download also. When you sign up for services you will go to their download section of Braille Books which will require you to have a username and password. There you will find a plethora and myriad of braille books at your fingers tips also.

So here are a few options to get you going. For more information on educating your child based on experience and years of education, visit yourtechvision.com and ask questions that you need answers too.

Virtual Teaching using Remote Access

When one of my students is having difficulties with their Jaws or needs help installing it, I need to connect to their computer a different way than through Jaws TANDEM. There are many ways to do remote access, but I chose to connect yesterday through SKYPE. For those new to the idea, remote access is where someone can help you resolve computer problems, no matter where you or they are in the world. You just need a phone line, but better is a wireless connection...anything works though.

The student called and then I gave her directions on the key commands so I could call up her computer.

Within minutes her Jaws was fixed. I then gave her the JAWS commands to pull up her computer using JAWS TANDEM and continued her lesson.

When you connect remotely using anything else other than JAWS TANDEM, you will not be able to hear JAWS unless the person turns him way up, which I have done also depending on the issue, but you miss too much information. To truly check to make sure JAWS is working correctly you must pull the students' computer up using TANDEM. I had her and SKYPE on one of my monitors, still connected remotely and then pulled her computer up using TANDEM on the other monitor. I could easily watch the interaction on both screens, tweaking as I needed. Well actually having her tweak. In general, I will not touch my keyboard to control their machine, as this is a great chance for the student to learn how to fix their own problems.

The point is giving them applicable skills that will work for a lifetime, so when they are on their own, they can fix their own issues as they come up. My older students who have long since graduated, can just email me now with a problem and I can give them the answer back through email. Rarely do I have to pull their machines up. Watch video: Virtual teaching

Give someone a fish and they eat for a day.
Teach them how to fish and they eat for a lifetime!

Looking Outside Yourself Gives you Hope

Ever notice how you get a problem and all you can do is think about it? Ever notice someone go into a depression and you are not sure what to do? Ever see someone so lonely it hurts you to watch them?

We can get so self-absorbed in our own problems that is all we see.

The only way to get your mind off yourself is to put it on someone or something else. A pet will do that in a heart beat.

A child that is rocking in a corner will now have a puppy to lick all over them and to walk around, to sleep with, hug and hold, as is true for an adult too.

When you can start looking outside yourself, you gain perspective and HOPE.

Help for the Low Vision Student in the classroom

We have many low vision students, sitting in the classroom and unable to see what the teacher is doing when she uses the document camera, or projector or computer to project images up on the board, in front of the room.

There is a very inexpensive way to combat this problem. A simple VGA splitter and an extra monitor is all that is needed. An extra monitor can be connected to these other pieces of technology and brought right to where the student is sitting. The student can now easily participate with the rest of his peers, take notes as needed and complete work with more understanding of what is occurring in the front of the room.

Lessons to help you learn more

Help Student

Free Office Tools

Open Office is an option to use instead of purchasing expensive software. Open Office will open all Office documents too. Basic and easy to use and perfect to get little kids going while you save up the money for years later when they need more sophisticated tools.

Also remember that when you do purchase Microsoft products that one license can be used on 3 computers. You can use it on a home and work computer and a laptop, so you do not need to feel you need to buy multiple licenses for many machines. Lessons on how to use these products, only using keystrokes, can be downloaded at yourtechvision.com

Touchscreen Braille writer

All those wonderful flat screens from the IPhone to the IPad to the IPod, Kindles, etc are going to make a leap into touchscreen braille writing given the new technology that has just come out.

Standford University just released a newsletter describing the Touchscreen braille writer. It is intuitive and however you hold your fingers in the 6 key fashion, the tablet will adjust to your fingers and allow you to braille on this flat screen.

You can watch a video at this link Touch Screen Braille writer and learn move about this upcoming technology at Braille Writer Tablet

Answers on How to Use Windows 7

When you are using Windows 7, every time you hit the start key, think of it as entering a huge search engine for your computer. Any word you type in, Windows 7 will find.

Your Start Key or Windows Key is the second key in on the left of a desktop keyboard (the key with the windows symbols picture on it). For sighted people it is the round button you most likely click on at the bottom left hand corner of the screen.

Let's do some keystrokes to see how fast Windows 7 is:
Hit the start key and type in: volume and down arrow to adjust system volume or what is applicable to your version of Windows 7. Enter on the volume and your options open. Up and down arrow to adjust the volume. Hit ESC --top right hand corner on keyboard to get out of the volume

Hit the start key again and type: documents and down arrow to documents and enter to open--down arrow through all the documents you have already created on your computer
ALT+F4 to close the documents folder

Hit the start key again and type in the name of a file on your computer, down arrow to find the file and enter to open it. The file opens.
ALT+F4 to close the file

You can search for anything on your computer with that START Key....it is very powerful. Now go have some fun and look for other things on your computer using the Start key.

If you would like to learn how to use Windows 7 and Office products using just the keyboard or keystrokes with JAWS, go to yourtechvision.com and go through the site either with a mouse or with JAWS using Insert+F7. You can move through your options easily on every page, using your TAB key.

If you don't see a lesson you want, just go to the contacts page and request a particular lesson you need and it will be added to the site.

You can be Pitiful or Powerful, but NOT Both

I have the students who take on everything I have to teach them and rise to the top of their class, eventually with no accommodations at all. Completely supported by parents who fight for this independence also and let their child know they can reach this goal. The children have learned how to read their Braille work, so their fingers fly across the page, then they quickly turn to the computer and output the answer. When the teacher says it is time to hand in the work, they open their email, attach the lesson and send it off before all the other work is collected in the class from the sighted students. The teacher grades the work, using TRACK CHANGES to mark the paper. The teacher emails the lesson back with grade and remarks and the student can easily read it with her JAWS commands. , all independently. All these children, are powerful and everyone looks up to them. One particular child even scores the highest on state tests in the spring time and she is only in the 6th grade. Greater things follow and people seek her out to be her friend and she becomes middle school president of the ASB and later successfully enters the college of her choice.

I also have other students, who are backed or rather fronted by parents who seek unlimited time for their child to finish work and they do poorly in class because their lessons have been cut in half or less, so they are not learning the same amount of content as their peers. This child has the same abilities as the fore mentioned child but because of the limited work and due to an unlimited amount of accommodations insisted by parents, they child cannot rise to their potential. Children like this are frustrated by their poor grades and it hurts their self esteem and they either act out or go into depression or just mediocre silence and apathy. They feel sorry for themselves and believe the school needs to do more for them. The parents believe this also. The more the school does, the less the child does and the less they learn other than they have become pitied and pitiful. They do not have friends. They stay home every weekend and do not even have the skills to go to camps in the summer. They graduate school and cannot get into college or find a college to finally go to after many rejections. They go and within the first month cannot do school and drop out. Some call later to ask what to do, others stay with their parents. Some insist that their rehab counselor find them a job and the pity from others and themselves grow.

This is not a blind thing or a sighted thing, this is a human thing. I have seen it in every age, ability, creed and color. You have the people who believe the world owes them something and you have the people who actively put out the energy to make the world a better place. I go back to what Kennedy said decades ago "Ask not what your country can do for you--- ask what can you do for your country." So what are you doing? Are you taking or are you adding?

You can be pitiful or powerful, but you cannot be both. Life is choices. What choice will you make?

Tricks in SEEING the Computer Better

I have spent the last few days with my mother in law—an incredible woman. She has a bit of age on herself and as many older people she is having difficulties SEEING the computer screen.

So, with indelible ink , using large black letters, I wrote on the hard space of her laptop to help her remember the important keystrokes.
To enlarge the Internet, use CTRL+
To reduce the size, CTRL-
When you are in WORD and having difficulty seeing the words, keep the same font size so you don’t print out large letters, but use a ZOOM effect
ALT+V then hit Z, then hit 2 and enter and you will have 200%. No matter what Office you are using, just keep hitting those keystrokes and ZOOM effects will open

Just little fast keystrokes can make all the difference in your life. For more ways to make your life easier in using your computer, Go to Low Vision Lessons for a multitude of low vision lessons

The advantage of Firefox over Internet Explorer

There are a couple great advantages in using Firefox over Internet Explorer (IE).

The biggest one is the advantage of automatic spell check on any and every word you write. It will be underlined in red for you sighted people, and for JAWS users, it will say the word oddly. You can arrow back and hit your applications key (3rd key to the right of the space bar on a desktop keyboard), which is just like using the right click on your mouse. The keystroke is faster—try it out.

The next and most important for any JAWS user is the great accessibility and interaction with websites. Where they are problematic in IE, they are not in Firefox. Even if you do not know the h for headings, or ; for landmarks, you can easily TAB through content, slowly, but TAB through content to move through a page.
For more quick keystroke lessons go to http://www.yourtechvision.com/products/jawsinternet

TAB through your lessons or Insert+F7 for your links and just down arrow through all the possibilities of keystroke lessons of JAWS with the Internet.

How many Accommodations should a child have in school?

When a blind child first starts school, the child needs to learn everything about the print world AND the blind world. You will need to find that fine balance between cutting down lessons, but still getting the point of the lesson; allowing more time to finish an assignment because the child may be using technology that he is just learning to output work and reading Braille books where he is just learning the Braille code and if he has some sight, may be using a CCTV that enlarges pictures and graphs for math class.

The biggest point is every year you want to diminish how many accommodations the child needs. The child needs to get to the point where he can finish the same amount of work as everyone else is doing in the same amount of time given. That means the child needs to be gaining enough skills each year to reduce the accommodations down. By high school these accommodations are very minimal and by graduation, the child can do what he needs to do to go onto college, self-advocate and find the answers he needs to be independent. That independence may be in hiring a “reader” where the reader comes in and helps the student pay bills or shows him the campus so he can travel independently with his cane; the student needs to know all types of technology to scan the printed work the professor just handed out, or the ability to go to the Internet and find anything he needs to complete his work or use an adaptive Braille note taker.

This independence goes after graduation from college to the job when the young person is confident in his/her abilities to travel anywhere, asks assistance for the tasks that are completely visual, but for the most part knows how to take the visual world and put it into a tactile or verbal feedback so he/she can access what is needed.

If you are asking for accommodations by the time you want a job and you are competing with others that are NOT asking for accommodations…who do you think is going to get the job? Go back and get the training you need to gain the skills necessary so you can go in with skills and confidence to do the same job within the same general time period as your potential colleagues. That is the way to compete in a global market that is looking for people with talent and skills to ADD to their business.

Keystroke Lessons at yourtechvision.com

For lessons on using only keystrokes, go to yourtechvision.com

If you want to advance in your computer skills and do it the fastest way possible through keystrokes, then this site is for you:

At yourtechvision.com hundreds of lessons are ready to download, on Microsoft Excel, PowerPoint and Word, other lessons on Braille Note and other blind technology under OTHER TAB and Mac-iPad-iPhone lessons under the Mac/iTool Tab--skills to learn yourself or teach a student. All lessons are compatible with Jaws talking software too.

If you are low vision, there are dozens of lessons to see your computer better too- yourtechvision.com under the Low Vision Tab

If the lesson is not there that you need, make a request and it will be written up for you and added to the site

LookTel Money Reader on IPhone

Are you blind and you want a way to know what money you are holding without using sighted help. The IPhone 4 offers you an app to do that.

How about going to a restaurant and they have no braille menus. This app also offers you the ability to take a picture and have the iphone read it back to you.

Would you like to know the objects in any cupboard, this app will do that for you too.

An incredible new app that gives so much. Go to this site and watch the demo and read all about it LookTel Money Reader

It is more than a money reader...it does a little of everything.

Phone that you can Speak to and it will Text for you

This is a WOW moment.
SIRI is a new app on the iPhone 4S that lets you listen and respond to voice messages automatically. Send and receive texts all with verbal commands.
Ask for weather in different parts of the world, ask any question and your app will find the answer and tell you verbally the answer.
Listen to how incredible this new piece of technology is:

Apple - Introducing Siri on iPhone 4S

Internet, JAWS and hotkeys

I get many requests from people on how to navigate the Internet more quickly. Many hotkeys can be used without JAWS also.

Here are a few hotkeys to get you going
Hit your windows key+R for your run menu and type in: www.google.com and ENTER and your Google page will open (you can use your run menu to get wherever you need to go VERY quickly) Your windows key is at the bottom of the keyboard to the far left. It goes CTRL, the Windows Key, also called Start--it is on the right hand side of your keyboard also.

After you enter your Google page, if you are using JAWS and you do not hear him say edit: type a text, then hit the letter E until you hear this, then hit enter for forms mode on, and type in a search word: Type: yourtechvision and hit enter and all searches for that word will come up.

Now hit the letter H for headings until you get to the link that says: Blind/Visually Impaired Education: YourTechVision and hit enter to open (you will hit H several times to get through your headings)
You will come to my blog with that heading on it, so hit the letter H again until you jump to the heading of YourTechVision and down arrow to listen to the content

When you are done, in Internet Explorer you will hit CTRL+O and in Firefox you will hit CTRL+L to jump to your URL address edit bar. This time you will type in: ask.com. This is a site where you will type in a question you want to know the answer to. Type: How many blind people are there in the world and ENTER

When the page opens hit the letter H for headings until you jump to: How many blind people are there in the world and then down arrow to listen to the answer
Hit SHIFT+H to go back up to the link and hit ENTER to open the link. When the page loads, jit the letter H again to jump to the heading and down arrow to listen to the content

ALT+F4 to close the page--More quick key lessons -practice and have fun

Leave room for MARGIN

I was talking to a very busy father the other day. He is the Chief of Staff of medicine at one of the major Hospitals in the area and was taking time out for his daughter's soccer game, though he admitted he regularly worked 16 hour days and did not see his children often enough. He is a brilliant man of medicine yet confessed he did not know how to use technology well. I immediately had him pull his iPhone out and showed him several features. A major one was texting.

Many parents are overloaded with schedules that are too busy, not enough time and especially not enough time for their children. I told him that texting his children several times a day, just to say "I love you," "You matter", "What are you doing?" will make all the difference in the world in keeping connected. It will let them know you care and are really just a call or text away.

We need to leave room for margin. That white space on a page. That free time in our day for something else to occur. We cannot get so busy that we forget about doing those special things for our spouse, our children or a stranger.

Do you know that Jesus did his greatest healing in what you would call "margin"? He was always on his way to somewhere, when someone in great need stopped him and asked for a healing. He took time out and healed them. He made time for something else along the way, which made the greatest impact in someone else's life.

Are you making room for MARGIN? Are you taking the time to help someone along the way, or help your family along the way? Are you looking around and noticing the unnoticeable? You can make some to the greatest impact with some of the littlest things in life.

Breaking BAD HABITS

Bad Habits have many names, but the one that prevails in the blind field is "blindisms". A Blindism may be rocking, poking eyes, pressing or hitting oneself, light gazing and a plethora of other things.

We all have bad habits and the only way to get rid of one is to do something else consistently for a minimum of 30 days. Yes, you can take the "Will Power" route and say you are just going to break the habit. In general, I have NOT seen this work. Where I see success is exchanging one habit for another less noticeable or offensive habit. Oh yes and the most critical is you have to get that person on board with changing the habit. You will have to show them there is something better and a better consequence will occur if they get rid of the bad habit.

If you take drugs or smoke, you have a chemical bond to break in your body , which makes it very difficult to break such a habit. With a body injuring technique or unusual movement, that no one else does and everyone stares at you while you do it, you have some sort of psychological need of doing a particular habit and is also a bond. It is giving them stimulation that they are being rewarded by and they don't particularly care what others think, when young....and by the time the habit is so well worn it, everyone is making fun of them by now, and the child feels they cannot break it when they really want to.

You have to exchange one stimulus for another. Example: One of my students rocked furiously and poked her eyes while doing it. She is very intelligent but did not look intelligent while in this frenzy of motion. Her peers jeered and made jokes and it was difficult for her to make friends. When young, her parents were told it was fine. No one knew the consequences of being told that. So instead of giving her other activities to keep her entertained, they let her entertain herself with rocking and eye poking. Then it became such a problem the girl had a terrible time breaking the habit. By her teens, she was very distressed at the lack of friends and worse the damage that she had done to her eye sockets. She had pressed her eyes back in the socket, had dark circles around her eyes and further damaged her optic nerves and lens'. Doctors refused to do eye surgery because she would cause even more damage after the surgery if she could not break the eye poking habit. (I have had kids actually pull their eyes out of their sockets, or pressed them so deeply that the deep black circles around their eyes looked as if someone hit them hard every day). Habits like this look bad but also damage...damage physically but also possibilities of making friends, getting jobs or advancing and competing with others around you.

Back to breaking the habits: For the fore mentioned girl, we tried bracelets and necklaces for her to rub instead of eye poking and rocking. That worked for a while, then it stopped. We moved to makeup and that was almost the breakthrough. Then we added a cool looking pair of glasses and that pretty much did it, but it took a couple years, until she could do it consistently for 30 days. She is pretty much steady as a rock now, though she admits, behind closed doors on those depressed days, she reverts back. But she knows she has to fight it every day until it stops being a urge to revert back.

Other techniques that have worked: That soft fleshy part of the skin between the thumb and pointer finger. Yep, that's the part, press it and just slightly massage it. Very stimulating and enough to break another habit you do not want others to see. Holding a paperclip or pen, yep, even blind people can hold a pen and twirling it in the fingers keeps yout mind off doing the other habits that are not as acceptable in society. Others shake their leg, well just about everyone shakes their leg, so that is really acceptable. Find something!

I even had a friend who told me that for Lent she gave up rocking and eye poking and it worked after the period was up. Yep, God is a good one in helping you break those habits.

Grocery Shopping for the Blind

The grocery shopping skill is used for everyone; I will just be putting a blind twist on it here. There are many different ways to do this, so here are a couple.

Get Organized...hmmm, an absolute running theme in what we do
Keep a grocery list throughout the week, either on a brailler or slate-n-stylus (slate n stylus is truly easiest at a home. Easy to put in a drawer, take out to add an item then slip it back in the drawer because it is so small and compact), yes a Braille Note or other adapted laptop works too, but I am always leery with computerized equipment around food and liquids. A grocery store can mean anything and you will never cry over ruining a piece of paper you brought to the store versus a Braille Note. Bring a calculator.

In school, students can practice this also, except it will be for a cooking lesson at the end of the week. So a list is made with a budget.

Today, this step takes a leap and a bound. Prices can be looked up online, to get the idea of the budget you have and need to stay within and if you are in a big enough town, groceries can be ordered online. What an incredible time saver. Yes, you are going to have to be a bit tech-savvy, but once you learn the ropes in ordering your food online, it is an easy process. In a small town, with a small store, a telephone still does the job.

So let's say you do not want or can order food online. Pick a local grocery store where they will get to know you. You can bring a sighted friend with you, but if you would like to do this on your own, make arrangements for someone at the store to walk through with you and get food items (The ease of asking for help depends on the store, so find a willing one and give them your business). Call ahead and establish this connection so the person is waiting for you when you get there. Take the bus to the store. If at school, take the bus or walk. What a great way to work in an orientation and mobility lesson. When I lived by myself, I would always bring a rolling shopping tote and I would only buy as much as I could fit in the tote, so I could easily get it back home. When you are doing this with students, I bring the reusable shopping bags and they get to carry the contents. Working in the shopping tote should also be used so they have options.

I do also have students who are not handling the food and liquids, keep track of the items as they are being purchased on the braille note and keep track of the total--great math lesson; yes, there are exceptions to every rule, but I always go back to the options thing.

They need the whole experience of making a list, checking prices, calling for assistance at the store or bringing a friend, walking or taking the bus to the store, buying the food, paying for it, packing their tote or bags and getting back home, or school.

We have refrigerators at school and shelves to store the food until we use it. You need to divide these activities up, so we shop one day and cook or bake another. This way the students get to bake their reward and learn shopping techniques in the same lesson. When out on their own, they will have been through this process to know how to do it by themselves better, but as you know a bit of fear of doing this by yourself always enters. Just do it and the fear will go.

When in school it is a greater benefit when you can do this in groups. I have my high school students mentor the young students...or sometimes everyone is learning the same thing and mentoring each other, but being together always adds to the fun.

JAWS spelling magic

Jaws offers up a great spell check option that WORD cannot.

Word offers you the applications key any time you misspell a word. Open word and misspell any word, arrow into it and then hit your applications key. Those of you who do not know what the applications key is, on a desktop keyboard, it is the 3rd key to the right of the space bar. It is the key you most likely have never used because you have no idea what it does. It is a very powerful key. Any time you do not know how to spell a word, spell it out the best you can, then hit that applications key and it will give you the correct spelling...that is as long as you have not misspelled it so badly WORD really has no idea what you want.

The next spell check in WORD is F7. I will provide a lesson on that later on, as it is very involved.

But the power spell check for JAWS is ALT+SHIFT+L. Try it out. Open word, misspell several words, then hit the command ALT+SHIFT+L and it will bring up your misspelled words and tell you how many you have in the document. Hit enter on the word and you will pop back exactly to the word, hit your applications key and enter on the correct spelling. Repeat the command ALT+SHIFT+L and continue until all words are correctly spelled.

Today, as I showed one of my students this power command, I could hear her smile across the miles of our virtual screen. She lit up the room and once again, she is shown how technology is making her life so much easier.

Lessons to help you learn more

Jaws magic