Braille Notebook/Index Cards for Children with Multi-disabilities

This is a project I promised a teacher of a multi-disabled student in a class for severely disabled children. The wonderful  teacher goes through the alphabet, the days of the week and the months of the year every day and needed a way to present the same info to the blind child.

I gathered index cards which I cut in half, a Sharpie marker, stick paste, poster letters, a manual Perkins braille writer. Everything here except the brailler came from one of the good VI supply stores: Dollar General. :)

I also found this notebook of index cards. 

Since the poster letters have three of each letter I made two sets of loose alphabet cards and one set I pasted onto the unruled side of the cards in the notebook to the far left on each card. I used a pen  write what each letter means as it stands alone in braille where applicable; Example "b" means "but"; "m" means "more." For a list of braille contractions CLICK HERE.

Next I stuck each card, as well as the cards from the notebook (they rolled in as far as I needed while still attached) and brailled each letter on each card on the lower right side.

The notebook has enough cards for me to write the other items the teacher needs to present. This child needs days of the week, months and daily schedule words. The yellow tabs inside are removable so I was able to label them with my Sharpie and move them around. After I wrote the words I needed. I  brailled the words beneath the printed words using grade two braille. The reason I did not use puffy braille or grade one braille is to keep in realistic for the student. The child is impaired enough not to become a reader of novels and newspapers but I want her to have survival braille that will look like what is found in the environment. She will learn the words by shape and not letter-by-letter, sign-by-sign.

The notebook comes with a plastic insert so a teacher can label this set of cards however she wants. 

 

This photo shows the notebook of cards standing. The letter is shown in large print so that a low vision child can use it or the teacher can present before the small groups class then allow the child with the VI to see the braille letter. Textured glue like puffy paint or glitter glue can add more texture for low vision, cortical blindness and other perceptual differences. 

If your student does not need texture on the print letter but you would like more durability on the loose cards, have them laminated before they are brailled. 

For folks working with students on my caseload: After you make your cards and you'd like braille on them contact me and I'll get that done ASAP. The same for labels around your classroom.

Sorry, I'm delivering this one today for the child involved and the loose cards for another. But now that I have posted directions for making them you can make some inexpensively for your self. 

Braille under siege as blind people turn to smartphones

Like a lot of smartphone users, Rolando Terrazas, 19, uses his iPhone for email, text messages and finding a decent coffee shop. But Terrazas' phone also sometimes serves as his eyes: When he waves a bill under its camera, for instance, the phone tells him how much it's worth.

Terrazas is blind, and having an app to tell bills apart can be a big help. For one thing, it means he doesn't have to trust clerks to give him correct change. Terrazas' daily life is full of useful technology like this, but it also has a downside: The more he uses technology, the less he uses Braille, the alphabet of raised dots that the blind read with their fingers.

"All through elementary school I used Braille," Terrazas says. "But when I got a laptop, I switched over and I went away from Braille. If you don't use it, you lose it. And that's what happened to me."

Terrazas uses software that reads out loud what's on his computer screen. These days, he's slowly re-learning Braille as a student at the Colorado Center for the Blind, south of Denver.

The center puts a lot of effort into convincing students they still need Braille to be independent and employable. Director Julie Deden says technology is making the nearly 200-year-old writing system more accessible than ever. She shows off an electronic reader that's about the size of a paperback. Instead of having to lug around massive volumes of printed braille, this reader allows Deden to just sweep her fingers over little plastic nubs that rise and fall with each line of text.

Still, Deden worries that technologies like smartphones are also masking a serious problem — Braille illiteracy.

"People will let it go and they'll say: 'Well, you know, they're not really illiterate. They just don't really use Braille or print very much, but that's just because they're blind,' " she says. "I think that it's kind of an out, and technically they really are mostly illiterate."

Blind people choosing not to learn Braille is only one part of the equation. Chris Danielsen with the National Federation of the Blind says his group is increasingly butting heads with school districts trying to get out of federal obligations to provide a Braille teacher.

"They will tend to say, 'Well we have screen magnification software, we have all these tools available, and in light of that we don't think it's necessary for a blind person to be taught Braille,' " Danielsen says.

The federation estimates that today only one in 10 blind people can read Braille. That's down dramatically from the early 1900s. Jackie Owellet lost her sight as an adult, after an operation. Standing in a cafe in a Denver suburb, Owellet says learning to read Braille was the last thing on her mind.

"When am I ever going to use Braille? I'm never going to sit down and read a novel in Braille. You know, I'd rather download an audio book from iTunes," she says.

But last year, while taking classes for her yoga instructor certification, it became clear that having a mechanical voice reading off teaching notes didn't make for a very soothing yoga experience.

"So I realized there is a use for Braille," Owellet says. "I think everybody uses Braille in their own way. You know, I think that everybody finds what they need to use Braille for."

Advocates for Braille are hoping blind people like Owellet will continue to find enough reasons to keep their tactile system of writing alive, even amidst the growing chorus of computer voices.

[Source Link: http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2012/02/13/146812288/braille-under-siege-as-blind-turn-to-smartphones]

AGGGH! Snake!

I have to apologize as lately I have been posting articles rather than my day-to-day activities and ideas for working with our kids. The reason is that the paperwork is overwhelming and my caseload grew from seven schools and fifteen children to nine schools and twenty-two children. On top of that, I have admin who have felt that I should have school duty like a regular classroom teacher and just work my way around that. We have also had a busy semester with IEPs as many of them done by a certain date in the Fall had to be revisited this semester.

Why is this Child Playing with Snake in a Bucket?
Because he's a snake handler, that's why! Actually, it's a "Grow Snake" and of course it is a toy. I would not have been in the room to snap the photo if it had been real.

He's learning braille and there is a contraction for "OW" (dots 2, 4, 6).  As he spelled aloud some words that contained the letters O-W one of the words, as you can figure, was the word "grow." The snake is supposed to double in size if left in water over night, so I allowed him to fill the bucket with water, take the snake from the package, and put the snake in the bucket of water.

Then we wrote a sentence about what he thought would happen using the word "grow" using the new contraction.

In braille the sentence "The snake will grow" has some previous signs like the T-H-E sign and the W for the word "will." We can lengthen it using "T-M" for "tomorrow" or "T-N" for "tonight."

"The snake will grow tonight. Tomorrow it will be big."

When you get up, do and apply rather than just write the word over and over you're more likely to remember it and how to write it.

Another concept was reinforced with this simple exercise
was sequencing. His mom told me that he couldn't get off the bus before he started telling all that had happened and why he was coming home with a wet snake in his bookbag.

Message from Mom to his visual impairments specialist: "Well...thanks for the snake...I think."