The Joy of Learning to Virtually Chat

One of my high school students has been learning technology for awhile, but because she did not start it until high school, she had no paradigm for how technology worked, so struggled with using it. This year, it has started to click in and she is really getting it. When she is learning a new skill on the computer, she can start to figure out where I am going to take her and what we are going to do.

I have been telling her about Google chat for awhile, but she had so many other areas that needed addressing that we were not able to start it until today. With JAWS tandem I can connect and disconnect with just a keystroke, so once I got her all set up, I told her we would just communicate through chat and I was going to disconnect for a bit. We text each other back and forth and as she was inputting her 5th response I quickly brought her computer and her up again. The smile on that child's face lit up the room.

I told her that once she gets really good at it, that she can leave her Gmail and chat box open all day. Whenever she does not know how to do something, she can just text me and get an answer within seconds. I asked her if she understood the power of this tool. "YEAH!!" was the quick response. That incredible happy smile of JOY beaming throughout her will warm me for quite some time.

Teaching Virtual Teachers

I have teachers of the blind calling me from all over to learn the virtual techniques to teach students. The excitement of showing them another way to help the children is always a joy for me. Today was no exception to this rule. If you want to be one of these teachers...send an email and we can get going.

A few days ago, I received an email from a teacher who had quit her job last year to have a beautiful baby. Before she had quit I told her what I had been doing in regards to virtual teaching and that if she wanted, she could do it too from home, while still caring for her children. A couple days ago I got the email asking about the virtual teaching.

I took her through the process of being the student and how I connected to her and then her being the teacher and connecting to me and all the many aspects that went along with virtual teaching. Her excitement of its potential could be felt across the wires. We will practice until she is comfortable and then when she gets students I can assist when she needs it.

I have discovered several different ways to do virtual instruction. When you go across state or country lines, the connections vary. Instead of phoning and adding up long distance charges, I connect with SKYPE, give directions, then bring up JAWS Tandem and we continue both throughout the lesson. If the video becomes too garbled because of bandwidth, we use only audio. Local calls can be phone and straight Tandem. I have also given lessons straight through chat, text and Tandem. There are so many ways and options. Meetings with school personnel can happen through SKYPE or a phone. If teaching braille or other hands on skills, a para educator is on the other side following instructions on how to help the child position their fingers....all watched through video on my side.

Most importantly, we have the ability to teach every child as long as there is a phone line. Every child could potentially have the ability to receive as much instruction as they need to achieve their goals and dreams. This is one more option to address the challenge of teaching so many children.

Frustrated Blind Field

I receive many personal emails about fear or frustration. Paras and teachers do not know how to let the district and the families, know how frustrated they are with the teaching system for the blind children. They feel hopeless and trapped and sad for the child. Not everyone, but a good portion.

I have paras who know their students are dependent on them and that they do a bulk of the work, but they are waiting for direction from the teacher of the blind (TVI). They fear for their jobs if the students they are working with do not show a good grade..... they are waiting for that help and direction.

The teachers of the blind are overloaded with a huge caseload. The teachers generally can only see children a miniscule amount of time each week. They are putting out fires more than really teaching. Not to mention the teachers have no time to help the para and no time to gain further skills to help themself and in turn help the student.

We have districts with the directors, that IF they know, they are trying to look for more personnel to hire but cannot find qualified people. But many directors do not know. Many teachers of the blind and paras suffer in silence over the condition and are not sure where to turn.

As a collective community of people that want to help make a difference, we need to start really thinking outside the box...and way outside. I see this condition getting worse in many areas, especially now that I am communicating and teaching all over this county and in different parts of the world. People are looking for direction.

Virtual teaching is a "think outside the box" area that is blooming in its possibilities. If anyone is interested in a virtual lesson, email me and I will get you going. I have been teaching this way for over a 15 years with great success. Teachers can access more students in one day than if they are trying to drive to every school.

Another aspect of virtual instruction is if our community all gets on texting, chat, video conferencing, everyone is always 1 second away from an answer or the help they need. Get more information on virtual instruction at blindgeteducated.blogspot.com or email me personally.

Little Sight but Great Vision

I am blessed to have known one particular young person for almost 2 decades. She came to me in lst grade with little blind skills, and had a progressive eye condition. She loved print...large print and was determined to stay with it and nothing else. IN ADDITION, she would argue to stay with large print, if allowed. Consequently, it took her hours to do the work that the other children did within shorter periods of time.

I asked her if she wanted to learn how to do her work as fast as her friends did. She immediately said "Yes" but then added, "What do I have to do," with a concerned look on her face. I demonstrated the talking software on the computer and she was amazed at how fast my fingers flew across the keyboard and how I could not only get everything to speak for me, but I could get it to repeat and make that computer do anything I wanted. I had an older braille student demonstrate her fast fingers moving across a braille page, sitting up straight and tall and confident in her abilities. The younger child was impressed and hooked.

This young person was convinced this was the path for her...but not without "buyer’s remorse." The technology was easy. It always is for the kids. They pick it up incredibly fast and are pretty much independent with it within a couple of weeks. By third grade, she was emailing her work and receiving it back from the teacher. However, the braille was harder. It took more work. She got the idea of how much faster it was, but she still resorted to large print and could see it if she got a couple inches from the paper.

We compromised on her using the large print for everything but reading books, as I knew she would need to practice to become proficient but also to be ready for such little vision that she would not be able to use large print any more. You have to get students to "buy" into where you want to take them. If they are not on board, it will not happen.


I have had low vision children go from seeing large print in the spring to NOT seeing in the fall. I have had children come to me who had vision one day and woke with NO vision the next. This sudden loss brings with it terrible depression and a lack of will to do anything. We have no idea when loss will come, so be prepared. It takes a lot more effort to get the child turned around if they have no idea how they are going to handle life. I knew that if this young person learned those blind skills along the way, the transition would be far easier into the no vision.

Her sight loss was very gradual. Every year, she used the large print less and less and increased her Braille. She was already full on board with the technology so the output was easy for her, whether it was Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Internet, email or an adapted laptop with braille display. She had it down. She did not even have a bump in the road on her sight loss. The progression of gaining the blind skills made it easy. Though little sight, she had her VISION of who she was and what she was going to do in life and she just continued to gain the skills she needed to achieve those goals. She is in college now, pursuing those dreams and goals, happy and blessed with many friends and a great family and the ability to embrace life.

Reaching Your Potential

One of the biggest issues in the blind field (and there are many) is how much should a para educator be with a child?

What I have seen:
When a district does not have a teacher of the blind, a para is glued to the child's side and does most of the work for the child because the para lacks the blind skills to help the child do it for themselves. The child appears to be succeeding (though only because of what the para is doing, NOT the child) and all are happy. BUT the parents do not realize how much their child is NOT doing and many times, the district is unaware of this also. Or, parents fight for a para next to their child all day, without realizing this para will be a big brick wall between their child making friends and achieving their own goals and potential.

I went to a school district and watched a blind child rocking back and forth while the para did the work. Sitting side by side, the child was miles away, in her own little world. When I talked with the child, the most intelligent words came from her mouth, so I knew there was a brain there. We spent the next couple of years teaching her all the technology, braille, and other blind skills, and she was completely independent by the third year. The para just adapted the work for her and made sure she had it in class when all the other students did. This is more of what SHOULD be happening with all paras and students.

I have had the first scenario over and over and depending on the "pain" level of weaning the child from the para, it is really up to the child and parents. Most are on board with the heavy duty technology, braille lessons and other blind skills and within that 2-3 year window you can have an independent child.

However, there are the people who are not thinking ahead to graduation, college, a job. They really think that somehow, miraculously their child will be completely independent when they graduate, when in fact, they have been completely dependent on a para throughout their school career and this dependence and lack of ability follows the child. The child ends up living with the parents and the parents continue to do everything for this child who has the potential to climb Mt. Everest inside, but instead the child sits like a rock going no where.

Parents and children bring the fear to each other. The child brings that fear to the parents and the parents have the same fear, or the parents put the fear on the child and they tell the child they cannot live without the para (the second scenario is the most common). They truly believe they cannot live without that para being right next to the child all day long. It kills the confidence of the child. The child lacks friends because the para has become the end all to be all of their life. They fail to gain enough skills to go onto college, and worse, be gainfully employed to their IQ level.

So, back to reaching your potential. We can't do it without "pain". It will be painful, not physically, though I have seen a lot of sweating, but emotionally. The fear. The dread of not being able to do your work because you forgot something. The fear of getting lost in the school or on a bus ride because you got on the wrong bus.

I use the phrase: We learn more from our failures than our successes. I give everyone permission to fail because we are going to fail at something no matter what it is. Don't feel bad about it, feel happy that you are progressing toward something. We can learn from our mistakes, but if we never try, we do not know our own potential.

When the children are getting ready to take their first solo bus ride, they are very fearful of getting lost. I tell them, cheerfully, "Don't worry...you will!! And they laugh. That is why God gave you a mouth. Speak up and ask someone directions. Same thing goes for class. Speak up and ask." I see relief come over my students. Yep, it is better to fail at trying something than to never try anything. You can only reach your potential with work and pain....but the pain goes and confidence and success stay.

Creating Beautiful Excel Graphs

I try to have my students take a class called Financial Fitness...This class allows practical application of life and how we spend money...or over spend it. The students have to set up a monthly budget, get a simulation job and pay their bills. They use an excel sheet to layout all their information, do auto calculations and very sophisticated formulas, then they create a graph that encompasses all this information. The graph does not mean much to my blind students, but it does to the teacher. If the rest of the class is going to create a beautiful and colorful graph with headings, titles and number plots, then I want my students to do it also. After all, they will most likely needs this in college and they may need it for their job.

After my students create the graph, I have them type it out in long form so I truly know they understand what they are doing. They move their cursor below the image of the graph and start to type out every number in an XY plot graph or shade in a bar graph selecting each cell accordingly, and then they plot the graph. If they need further detail, we take out the Draftsman or some other tactile drawing kit and draw it so they can feel what they just did. Once they have the concept in their head, they can easily create any graph required by the teacher.

Orientation & Mobility Made Fun

In one of my school districts we were fortunate to have the Elementary, Middle and High School within a block of each other. In addition, there was a grocery store and many other stores that we could travel to and practice our O&M skills (orientation & mobility-cane skills). I selected days to go shopping with the whole class. We would make a grocery list. Some of the students chose to put the list on their Braille Notes, others practiced brailling it on a piece of paper and took the list with them. The advantage of the braille note is, the students were able to keep mathematical track of the cost of our purchases: adding in a math lesson also. Whatever we bought, we would take back to school and cook.

These were always multifaceted lessons: Making the lists, walking there, learning to pay with money and credit cards, walking back, cooking the food, and socializing. The buying and cooking would happen on different days, so the lesson could be accomplished within 1.5 hours. The older students would mentor the younger students, and all learned how to purchase products and use money. It really gave the students examples of real life experiences.

Another huge advantage of mentoring is the younger students get to see how quickly the older students accomplish their skills: whether walking, brailling, reading, or accessing the computer. Likewise, some of the older students who walked very slowly increased their speed significantly and by the end of the school year were walking as fast as the others, so they too could keep up and socialize as they progressed down the streets.

We all need each other to learn about the best we each have to offer, and in the process improve our own skills.

Creating Math Timed Speed Tests with Duxbury

Timed math quizzes in elementary school are popular: The teacher hands out a math sheet to all the students with the math drills they have been working on. The teacher times the students to see how fast they can complete a certain number of math problems within a given amount of time.

Enter the blind student. The blind student has the exact same problems, but his are brailled out on an 11x11 piece of braille paper. He reads the problems with his left hand and prints the correct answer with his right hand (or vice versa depending on hand dominance). He races across the braille page at record speed to finish as high as his peers do, or higher depending on his skills. Hence, another reason why it is so important for blind students to learn their braille print letters and numbers also.

Nemeth lessons (braille math) can be created very quickly using Duxbury Nemeth mode. Duxbury is a print to braille, braille to print translation program. I have had para educators who were just learning braille be able to create the perfect braille document using this software program. I have people taking distance education classes by 6-key brailling their lessons and emailing it to their teacher. Duxbury is truly a gift to the blind world and its power to create a brailled lesson quickly.

Magnification with your Technology

I frequently get asked, What type of magnification system do I use with my low vision students? So, let's address this.

I have tried Zoomtext and Magic, and a plethora of other items, which are good, but found one method to work the best for students. I always give them options and this is the one they chose by far because it is so easy and on every computer they sit at.

There are so many methods to enlarge everything, something, a bit or whatever you desire on your computer with just a couple key strokes. These attributes of magnification are already built in, but in general it is NOT the magnification system built into the accessibility feature.

Example. Last week while a low vision student and I were working, she was having a difficult time visualizing a long math problem with just her talking software. With an ALT+V then a Z to zoom (this will work on any PC system), she was able to increase the magnification to 500% to see the problem. Then she matched it with her talking software and could completely understand the math problem. She decided to do the rest of her problems this way and finished within record time. With zoom in effect, the student never has to worry about printing something with 78 font characters. The font is 12 point always.

With another student, she was working in Excel and needed that visual feedback also. With a quick F6 she jumps to her zoom and increases to 400% and continues her work.

I have some students who love the black background with green font and everything enlarged all the time on the screen. This feature is easily accessed in the accessibility feature on a PC. If you only want to increase the ICONS or taskbar or anything, you can pick and choose with a simple applications key (right click with a mouse for mouse users). The options are endless. Because a student can pick and choose, they prefer this method.

The most important skill I teach my low vision students is to use touch typing on their keyboard and their talking software. Mouse use really slows them down. Their hearing is far stronger than their eyes, but when they want to use their eyes, they have the skill to do so. When done with the visual task, they go back to using their ears and their fast fingers.

Losing Sight Fast

When I was in my last semester in college, both of my eyes hemorrhaged. I had to drop out because I had no idea how to finish school or get on with life with sight loss. I moved to the Midwest to receive medical attention and lived with a family who cared for me. I was completely dependent on them. I could do little but knit and wait around for people to take me places and do things with and for me.

Anyone who knows me knows that I have a lot of energy and my brain is always going a mile a minute. I had many minutes to think about my life in the months that followed, sitting at home, sitting at the doctors and waiting for people to "do for me."

The dependence was not boding well with or for my soul. I knew nothing about the blind world or really the route I was to go. Doctors were the one who brought up braille and schooling. So, I went back to school and met one of the most incredible life changing people ever. He had been blind from birth, but had a vision and outlook so vast, even at 60 years old, that he inspired me on to do great things. He had been teaching all his life and was more advanced in technology skills than even the sighted people I knew. He kept up with the newest and best of teaching strategies and gave his students a vision for what they could do with life: My life. I got a vision for what I could do with my life.

So, many years later, here I am; A teacher of the Blind for over 23 years, teaching virtually all over the country. I clearly know that gaining blind skills along the way instead of having to stop your life completely to learn them is far better. The most important aspect of gaining blind skills along the way is you can skip that terribly depressed time you will go through when you do lose that remaining useable sight. Now my sight loss was unexpected and sudden, so there was not much I could do about that, but I can help those under my wing of guidance. I have seen students come to me in their teens that had lost sight progressively and were not taught any blind skills. They talk of death not life. I have been able to teach children from the beginning of their education who never go through the "death" talk because they always knew how they would do life as they lost their sight.

God can take things that Satan means for evil and turn them to Good. My eyes hemorrhaging became a blessing, as I would never have gotten into this field if not for that experience. My sight did return and I am thankful. This career has been incredibly life fulfilling and I hope to touch as many people as possible and give them a VISION for what they can achieve in life.

Braille--Get them Hooked

I had 2 students who were sisters. They both were losing their sight. It was a gradual loss, so they went from large print most of the time and gaining on braille to mostly braille. One child just switched completely to braille because she just did not like the eye strain, but the other kept with the large print as long as possible, despite her nose was sitting on the page to read it. She just did not want to be different. Interestingly, a child does not think it is different to be hunched over a large piece of paper with large print on it but yet it is different to sit up straight and read Braille as fast as their peers. However, you cannot fight with a child's logic, just find other ways to steer them the direction that would help the most. With good steering, I know they will make the leap into Braille when they are ready.

When children do their lessons with me, it is to read Braille: Their favorite stories of course. I always start out reading the first few chapters to really get them hooked. Then they really want to finish. This method has always worked. The one child above who resisted reading Braille at school in front of her peers, did not resist at home. In fact, her mother would tell me that after lights out, she would periodically check on the girls and there they would be reading their braille books in the dark: Sometimes until the wee hours of the morning. When mom would wake them the next morning, there the braille books would be laying on top of them. They would wake and fess up they read until very late, or early (in the morning as the case may be).

They would come to school and tell me about the story. Harry Potter always seemed to be the mainstay of books to get kids hooked. Even in the middle of the book, they would ask for me to read a chapter at the start of our lesson. Of course, I would. To increase their speed, I would do what I called paragraph jumping. I would read a paragraph and they would follow along, then they would read. If they got lost because I read so fast, they would jump down to the next paragraph and wait. They had their right finger on the last 2 words of my paragraph, and their left fingers on the start of their paragraph, so they would know when to begin reading without a stop in the flow. This method increased their speed significantly, especially with all the reading at home too.

The biggest key is "Get them Hooked on the Story", Then they learn the secret of reading in the dark, Then they don't want to put the book down, Then they get hooked on Braille.

Learning Disability and Blindness

I was working with a child with SOD-Septo optic dysplasia. She had a lower IQ and struggled socially and behaviorally. If a child can talk, walk and wiggle their fingers, there is a good chance I am going to teach them braille, technology and other blind skills. For 2-3 diligent years she learned her braille and typing skills for class and her orientation and mobility skills to move around the school. She was integrated into her regular education classroom, minus the direct one on one time with me to go over the contractions she would be reading in her classroom.

One day as they began their spelling test (story told to me by the regular education teacher), every time the teacher gave the spelling word, she would notice this child reach up to the braille sheet to the left of her keyboard. The child would feel something on the page, then go to the keyboard and type the word. After a couple more words, the teacher figured out that the child was reading the braille word, then typing it on the computer. The children were then let out for recess. When the test was done, she called me in to check her thoughts. As she told me the story, I walked over to the child's computer and sure enough, the braille-spelling list was sitting on the table.

We called her in from recess and asked her about the spelling list by her computer. She wiggled, squiggled and squirmed and finally fessed up she had not studied for the test. She knew the teacher did not know braille, so she thought she could get away with cheating. She had clearly moved into the power of Braille and understood the magic that it carried. Now, we just needed her to use it for good. --smile :)

A Parents Influence in a Child's Learning

I teach during summer for those children who need a boost in their learning. Any child starting out in Braille or Technology must have summer instruction for several summers for it to "stick" or they will be starting over in square one in the fall. It takes them even longer to catch up to where they were from spring and in that time of catching up, they get further behind their peers.

One of my students who was in first grade was losing vision fast. He was and still is very bright, but had a chip on his shoulder the size of a boulder. He could not come to grips with his vision loss so he choose to deal with it by fighting everyone who got in his way....and everyone seemed to get in his way. He was so busy fighting everyone and everything that all learning in school was slow and arduous...especially learning his blind skills.

He had started with me in kindergarten, so a year and a half later with little progress his mom and I had a long discussion on what could possibly help him. I asked if it was possible that she could join us for summer lessons. She rearranged her day and I had early morning lessons to fit her schedule. Every day the two of them would show up and she learned the braille and technology right along with her son. The joy of her son was overwhelming. The excitement to learn and that his mom was learning it too, must mean it was important....and he learned!

That is how kids think. More importantly, that young child sailed in his learning and caught up to where he needed to be to begin 2nd grade. I see this often. Whether it is with deaf/blind students and the parent learning sign to "speak" with their child, or braille and technology to "speak" the language of blind skills; If a parent puts in the effort, the effort is 10 fold for the child. Parents do not even need to be proficient in the skills, but just sitting and learning even a small amount goes a long way. This extra effort excels the student forward in their learning in their confidence of who they can become

Resolving Big Problems

One of my student’s sent me a text this morning from her Gmail chat and told me she is getting an error box when she tries to start her JAWS. I told her to do a PrintScreen to take a picture of it, so she could send me what it looked like. Then I can diagnosis the problem, pull up her machine and fix it.

The PrintScreen is at the top of every keyboard. Most people have no idea what to do with it. It is a way to copy your desktop and all its information. Then you open WORD and paste it with a CTRL+V. The big advantage in this is, when your student has no idea what to do, they can quickly hit PrintScreen, copy it, paste it into Word, save it and email it off to me or to another person who is helping them. Within minutes the student can have an answer to their problem, or their machine can be pulled up and fixed depending on the level of difficulty and their expertise.

Just a fast way to resolve problems…..

Incredible Tools for Vision Loss as you Age

The older people that come to me do not want to learn Braille. Their friends do not want to learn Braille either. They love the idea, but for whatever reason, that is not going to be the route for them. They want something that will give them their local news, which they get from their TV's or radio; they want to be able to read books, write letters, email, or social network. People older than 70 are generally more limited.

Therefore, I really tailor lessons for those who have goals later in life. They do not want to go back to school, but they want the tools that will give them the ability to keep in contact with their friends and read books. My lessons are guided by the willingness of older people to learn something new.

First, I get them signed up with their State Book and Braille Library. Here they get digital players and books, allowing them to immediately begin listening to their favorite books again. The players are incredibly easy to learn and even my oldest clients have learned how and LOVE the player books.

Second, if a person already knows how to use a computer, then they know the keyboard. I then add talking software and teach them how to use it according to their needs. We start with WORD and writing letters. I teach them how to type out addresses on envelopes so they can send the letter snail mail. Once, that basic step is learned we advance to learning how to send a letter via email. In general, people younger than 70 prefer sending letters by email. As older people progress in their lessons, we can move onto more sophisticated adventures like social networking. However, many older people also have a palsy or tremors in their hands and cannot type any more. The easy solution is hooking them up with something like JSAY, where the person talks and the computer types out what they are saying and can also read it back.

The next is the ability to write checks and pay bills. Macular degeneration is one of the primary reasons for age related sight loss. A CCTV-or enlarging screen tool allows people to see through the cloud in their central vision. I have seen CCTVs extended this ability to "see" for as many as 15-20+ more years. You can change the contrast of the computer monitor to suit your needs and the advances of the CCTV have improved tremendously. One of the most incredible pieces of equipment I have come across is the MyReader by Humanware. It gives you the ability to take a picture of a book or other text and put it into read back format with auto-scroll. You can increase or decrease the speed of it moving across your screen automatically as well as the font size. My oldest clients easily learn this tool and LOVE it. Another type of scanning system is the SARA by Freedomscientific (there are other brands like this also), that will scan and read back the information for those who have lost all ability to see print.

For the Fan who loves to go to sports events or just wants to sit across the room to watch TV, there is the JORDY. It truly is like something from Star Trek but it works to see things in the distance. I have tried something like this with younger students, below the age of 20, and though it works great to see board work and anything else they want in the distance, they will not wear it. It makes them "too different." Ironically, their sighted friends think it is the greatest thing in the world.

Life is perspective.

Gradually Losing Vision

I have had far more children in the process of losing vision than totally blind.

I have had many doctors tell the parents their child was not going to lose any more vision, and they did. I have had children with a diagnosis that stated they were not going to lose any more vision and they did...or the diagnosis changed to something else because the doctor figured out they did have a degenerative eye condition.

It does not matter what case scenario, I always teach, or try to always teach, what the child will need at the middle and end, not just the beginning. What are the child's dreams and yes the parents, but many times, I hear from the parents, "I just want my child to be happy." They adjusted their dream when they found out about the child's sight loss and now they are not sure WHAT to dream.

If a child has some vision, I utilize that vision for visual tasks, such as looking at maps and graphs, pictures, learning print, etc., as part of the academic skills. But any major reading or writing goes to braille and technology. What I do know is if this child has a normal IQ then I need to give them tools to do the work as fast as anyone else with that IQ.

If you can get the child early enough...really before 1st grade, 3 years old is great and at birth is even better, but if you can get them early enough, begin them on braille, technology and other blind skills. Even in kindergarten when all print is already large for everyone, the low vision child joins in with writing his or her letters and printing out work, just like everyone. During reading time, the child switches to braille, so he is getting a mixture of the print world and the blind world. He is utilizing all aspects, because if the child can learn all aspects of print, they will understand the world in general better. If someone says, "I need to take a U turn" "Can you grab the C clamp" and so on, the child can create an image in their head.

As the sight decreases, the child moves more to braille and uses large print less and less. It becomes a very easy transition, if they learn both from the start. I have had kids hate to read braille at school because they do not want to be different. However, they go home and read all their work in Braille. I have had students slide more over to braille without even a twitch because they are so tired of trying to see the print...or tired of the headaches. But an easy transition because they had the choice of what they wanted to use. No one complains about the technology though and they all output on a computer, so that is always fast from the start.

The students who have come to me from elsewhere who are low vision and are using magnifiers and equipment to enlarge work, are not able to keep up with their peers: If they are older than 3rd grade, they have already gained a great dislike for reading. This is a tougher sell to convince them to use braille, even at 3rd grade, but it can happen. The transition to the computer is very easy. I hook a braille display to the computer and slowly but surely those fingers of the student move to the display to see the output that they have typed. I have started older students right out on a braille note and between the braille display, voice and input of braille, the students learn braille incredibly fast: Instruction is so much different from decades ago of just using a brailler.

The key is to teach students every tool then no matter what happens, they can use what they know. There is also less of a chance of the child going through a terribly depressed time when their remaining sight goes or they figure out the sight they have is not enough to do the job. When they figure this out and they have not learned braille or technology, they have to stop their life to learn it. Even if a low vision child does not lose more vision and are between that 20/100 and 20/200 visual acuity, when they go onto college or try to get a job, they realize they cannot keep up with their colleagues using enlarged print techniques.

Thinking years ahead for all opportunities tells you what they need now.

JAWS, Spanish & Math

When using Windows 7 and Office 2010, have you noticed that if you download an attachment from the Internet, it sometimes opens in Protected Mode and you therefore cannot edit the file? This happened to one of my students with a paper that her teacher had sent her. The paper had Track Changes on it and the student needed to make corrections. Jaws talks the page fine but does not enable editing. The student needed to enable the editing manually.

I connected to the student using JAWS tandem and began teaching the lesson. My student opened her document from the Internet, in protected mode, and as I was teaching her how to get into edit mode, the fire bell rang. The phones disconnect and I knew they were on their way outside. While they were outside, I was able to go through her paper and look at the correction details she would need to make because I was still linked through the JAWS tandem.

The student had forgotten some knowledge over the summer and I could see on her math page, she was writing out the word "degrees" instead of inserting the degree symbol. The command: JAWS insert+4 gets you into "Select a symbol to Print". This area contains many math symbols as well as Spanish symbols and a variety of other things. It is worth a look.

When the class returned from the fire drill, they immediately called to make our connection again and she was laughing on the other end, as when they walked into the room, her JAWS was talking away with no one sitting at the keyboard. That was me checking over her work from my side of the world. She and her para knew what was happening but no one else in the room did. Kind of like a ghost. I could absolutely see the hilarity in this.

As we got back to work, I showed her the insert+4 again for her math and that "Ah Ha" moment came back to her and the knowledge that there is always an easier way to do something, or more importantly ...a way! We switched to her Spanish and once again the insert+4 brought up her á é ñ and so on, so she could do her Spanish characters quickly also. But I had to be reminded by a past student the day before that insert+4 also does the Spanish characters. I just love that collective knowledge. If we are away from something for awhile we forget. We all need reminders.

One thing to be careful of with this command is it is so close to the insert+F4 which turns off JAWS. Students only have to do it a couple of times though to remember.

Surround Yourself with People who Know

I was taught that if you want to be generous, hang around generous people. Their gift will rub off on you.

This same adage goes for information. If you want to continue to grow in understanding about technology, or blind technology, or the newest thing out there, you want to surround yourself with people who know about technology.

Every time I go to a conference I meet people who are in the "know" about their product. I meet hundreds of people through email, Facebook and many other virtual avenues.

All of us have different gifts, so I find the people gifted in their area of expertise. Then when a situation comes up with one of my students, and I have not gained the needed knowledge yet to help them, I go to the experts for the answer. I have found my past students, who have continued to press forward in their understanding of their blind skills, to be a major source of expertise.

The other day, one of the teachers I assist asked if I knew what kind of IPOD she get for her child. I told her to go to the local tech shop and look for the youngest salesperson there and he or she would know. It is the younger generation that really gets the product because they are using it all the time. You want to gain knowledge from the people who use the product all the time. They will have the answers.

We are all in the learning process and I am a big believer in sharing the knowledge so we can all help each other get ourselves and our students where we need to be.

Don't sweat the small stuff

As I am to set up lessons for one of my home school children, Mom was discussing how stressful their lives have been, starting with her husband's layoff and adding a myriad of other things. She explained that her and her daughter had not done any braille or studying in general over the summer and was concerned over her loss of skills.

In the scheme of things, really a summer loss of skills or even a year or whatever it is, is minor compared to what life can dole out in a season. Life can get rough, but was do have smooth times too.

In the rough times and even in the good, we need to put things into perspective and look at the big picture. Where do we want to go...how do we get there....do we need to take a time out, can we go slower?

In the meantime,
Don't sweat the small stuff!

Typing out Special Spanish Characters on a Laptop

Most people know that you can insert special symbols into documents as you are typing. However, JAWS talking software does not "talk" the symbols as you search for them, therefore symbols require a sighted person's help. A big advantage of having Office 2010 is that JAWS can talk the first 20 most recently used symbols, so when the student is in class, they can easily access at least 20 symbols. Sadly, between math and Spanish class you quickly run out of options.

Another option is to memorize the special combination of letters and numbers to automatically insert any symbol. For my Spanish student, she was having difficulty with doing all the letters and numbers in the correct order to insert the correct symbol. I asked a Microsoft friend about other options and he sent me to this page, which has made all the difference in the world (Spanish symbols)

The student uses a laptop so now needed to learn how to use the numpad on the laptop, which is actually the letters ON the keyboard. Using the FN or function key with scroll, she now turns on her numpad and m j k l and so on become her numpad for entering the special characters --No, you cannot use the regular numbers to do these commands). For example, the upside down exclamation mark ¡ as you see is ALT+173 and an upside down question mark ¿ is Alt+168 and so on. She was typing out Spanish words in correct format almost as fast as the wind blowing through the trees. I could hear her smile and joy through the computer, once she understood how to do symbols on a computer. I then taught her the quick way to access Spanish accents and that is through JAWS with insert+4.

She now has the ability to type out every Spanish word exactly as it should be and complete her work far faster than thought possible.