Future Reflections
The National Federation of the Blind Magazine for Parents and Teachers of Blind Children
Vol. 23, No. 3 Fall 2004
Barbara Cheadle, Editor
[PHOTO/CAPTION: Rocket On! students, staff, and mentors pose for a group shot at the wrap-up ceremony held in the auditorium of the newly opened NFB Jernigan Institute. In the front row, from left to right, are the students: David Abrahams, Justin Harford, Tiffani Clements, Amy Herstein, Justin Hodge, Alysha Jeans, Daniel Ramirez, Meghan Joost, Nikki Singh, Ryan Thomas, Hoby Wedler, and Lindsay Yazzolino. In the back row, from left to right, is: Chaz Cheadle (NFB), Mary Jo Thorpe (NFB), Bernhard Beck-Winchatz (St. Paul University), Phil Eberspeaker (NASA), Mark Riccobono (NFB), Nathanael Wales (NFB), Robert Shelton (NASA); Marc Maurer (NFB), and Robin House (NFB).]
ISSN 0883-3419
Future Reflections
Subscription Notice
We are pleased to announce that Future Reflections is now available at no charge. As you may know, Future Reflections has always been free to dues-paying members of the National Organization of Parents of Blind Children (NOPBC). A $15 subscription contribution was requested from non-members. However, we always gave complimentary subscriptions upon request—no questions asked, no strings attached, no invoice a year later. Now, you don't have to ask; it's FREE to all who want it! We will continue to provide readers with the opportunity to join the NOPBC and to make financial contributions.
Future Reflections is available in large print, on cassette tape, or by email, and is posted on the NFB Web site at <www.nfb.org/futref.htm>. Email subscription registration is available online at: <http:www.nfb.cal.org/listserv-signup.html>. Future Reflections is published by the National Federation of the Blind.
Mail Subscription Requests to:
Future Reflections
1800 Johnson Street
Baltimore, Maryland 21230 USA
Print and Cassette Tape Subscription
Date: ___________________ Name: _________________________________________
(Please include the first and last names of both parents if appropriate)
[ ]Parent(s)/caregiver [ ]Teacher [ ]Other ___
Address: ________________________________________________________________
City, State, Zip ___________________________________________________________ *Country: _______________________________________________________________
Phone number(s): _________________________________________________________
(Please note if this is a home, work, or cell phone number.)
Email address (please print): ________________________________________________
Name of blind/visually impaired child (first and last):
_______________________________________________________________________
Sex: M[ ] F[ ] Birth date: ______________________________________
I wish to receive: [ ] (Large) Print [ ] Cassette Tape [ ] Both
This is a: [ ] New subscription [ ] Change or correction
Changes: If this is a change or a correction, please print old or duplicate name and/or address as it appears on your magazine label in the space provided below. ________________________________________________________________________
[ ] YES, I/we want to join the NOPBC. I/we understand that Future Reflections is FREE and there is no requirement that I/we join the NOPBC to receive the magazine. I/We have enclosed a check or money order made payable to the NOPBC in the amount below:
$8.00 NOPBC at-large family membership dues.
$_________________ Donation
$_________________ Total
International Subscribers:
There is no shipping and handling fee for residents of the USA, USA territories, Canada, and Mexico. Residents of all other countries are asked to pay a fee, in USA currency, of $20 for a one-year subscription and $55 for a three-year subscription. Please send checks or money orders made payable to the National Federation of the Blind.
Enclosed: $______ shipping and handling for a (check one)
[ ] One-year subscription [ ] Three-year subscription
Mail to Future Reflections, 1800 Johnson Street, Baltimore, MD 21230
For more information about blindness and children contact
National Organization of Parents of Blind Children
1800 Johnson Street
Baltimore, MD 21230-4998
(410) 659-9314, ext. 2360
www.nfb.org/nopbc.htm * nfb@nfb.org * bcheadle@nfb.org
Contents
Vol. 23, No. 3 Fall 2004
From the Editor
This IS Rocket Science
by Bernhard Beck-Winchatz
by Marc McCutcheon, Book reviewed by Deborah Kent Stein
Turning Dreams into Reality: The 2004 NFB Science Academy
by Mark A. Riccobono
Taking Matters Into Their own Hands:
Blind Students’ Perspectives on Teaching, Trust, and Telescopes
by Michaela R. Winchatz
Technology and Keyboarding:
A Parent Wants to Know, What Comes First?
Using Readers
by Carol Castellano
When the Light’s Not Right
Online Education Program
New Initiative from the NFB Jernigan Institute
The California School for the Blind and the Unique Joy of Braille Literacy
by Dr. Stuart Wittenstein & Mary Willows
2003-2004 Braille Readers Are Leaders Winners
Christmas Crafts For Blind Children
by Heather Field
Good Toys for Blind Kids
Fall 2004
Massage: A Feel-Good Treat That Works Wonders Resources and Tips for Blind and Multiply Disabled Children
by Linda Zani Thomas
What You “Auto” Know: Blind Teens and the Mechanics of Myth-Busting
by Anna Cheadle
Blind Mechanic Had Magic Touch
by Bryan Corbin
Choosing a College
by Eric Duffy
Making Friends, Meeting Strangers
by Barbara Pierce
Catalogs from the Editor’s Bookshelf
Compiled by Barbara Cheadle
North American Active Learning Convention
Hear Ye! Hear Ye!
[PHOTO/CAPTION: Barbara Cheadle]
I am a science fiction fan. For those scoffers and eyebrow-lifters out there, I point out that Dr. Kenneth Jernigan—the great NFB leader and visionary who designed the newly opened NFB Jernigan Institute—was a science fiction fan, too. I rest easy in my fan status knowing that I am in good company. However, some years ago, I noticed a disturbing trend: I would check the spines of new books in the library, look for the SF designation, and pull out a book only to discover, to my dismay, that it wasn’t science fiction at all—it was a fantasy book! It still annoys me that there is no separate designation for fantasy, but I live with it. I even read an occasional fantasy book and enjoy it. But, personal taste aside, I still insist that science fiction and fantasy do not belong in the same category. Science fiction is based on scientific principles of the known world. Indeed, some of the far-out speculations of early science fiction stories actually exist today; for example, clones, space ships, and cell phones—just to name a few.
Fantasy, however, is just that—fantasy. It is about magic—the unexplained, the mysterious, the unbelievable, the scientifically impossible. Sure, the author of a fantasy novel may make up certain rules under which his or her fantasy world operates, but those have no connection to the scientific rules of the world and universe in which we live. Fantasy is escape from reality. On the other hand, science fiction strives to stretch the limits of the human imagination about what is possible. Sir William Bragg, the renowned British physicist, once said: “The important thing in science is not so much to obtain new facts as to discover new ways of thinking about them.” That’s what the “science” part in science fiction is about: new ways of thinking about existing facts.
And that’s what the National Federation of the Blind is about: new ways of thinking about blindness and stretching our imaginations about what is possible. In this issue we talk about blind people doing things that, even today, many members of the public scoff at as pure fantasy: blind people using telescopes, driving a car, fixing a car, launching a rocket, going to college, mixing and socializing at parties, and putting on blindfolds (sleepshades) and shutting out the little vision they have in order to learn how to be more independent. It isn’t fantasy, but only because those who dreamed of these possibilities took steps to turn them into realities.
It takes hard work, perseverance, and many false starts and failures before a blind woman can achieve her dream of becoming a rocket scientist, or a blind student with additional disabilities can read and write his own name in Braille. There are no short cuts. Blind students can launch a rocket, but not if they can’t read or do calculus. Blind students can succeed in college, but getting and keeping a job requires more than good grades; it requires skills—like knowing how to use, hire, and fire readers. Blind students may aspire to travel the world, but must first learn how to give the cabbie directions to the airport. Fantasies do not require such effort; possibilities do. As parents and teachers, your children and students look to you for guidance in distinguishing fantasy from possibility. We hope this issue helps you in this oh-so-important task.
[PHOTO/CAPTION: Bernhard Beck-Winchatz speaks to the students at the Rocket On! closing ceremony held in the auditorium of the NFB Jernigan Institute.]
by Bernhard Beck-Winchatz, DePaul University
“Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions.”
— Albert Einstein
“Give me a state! Ready?”
“Ready!”
“It’s up to you, Alysha!”
“5 — 4 — 3 — 2 — 1 — FIRE!”
“Hold it! Hold it! There she goes! There she goes!”
“We have Lift-Off!”
The cheering that erupted in the blast-proof blockhouse near the launch pad at
Wallops Flight Facility is impossible to describe in words. It was 8:34 a.m. on August 19, 2004, and Alysha Jeans, a high school junior from Wichita, Kansas, had just pressed the launch-button that sent the first-ever sounding rocket launched by blind high school students soaring into the sky. I have been following National Aeronautics Space Agency (NASA) mission launches since I was a kid and always wondered what it would feel like to be part of a team of scientists and engineers that is watching their rocket blast off into space. Now I know! No offense to the folks who launched the Hubble Space Telescope, the Mars Exploration Rovers and other great NASA missions, but this mission, developed and launched by our team of twelve blind students from across the country, blind NFB facilitators, and NASA scientists (blind and sighted) from Goddard Space Flight
Center and the Wallops Flight Facility, was definitely the best ever!
The inventor of the astronomical telescope Galileo Galilei once said that you cannot teach a man anything, you can only help him find it within himself. (A modern-day emancipated Galileo would probably replaced “man” by “person” and “himself” by “himself or herself.”) There is an important lesson in Galileo’s quote for parents and teachers of blind youths. It is easy to say: “Blind people can do everything sighted people can do if they put their minds to it,” and it was obvious that most of the twelve students at the camp had heard this statement from well-meaning sighted and blind adults many times. They all had strong academic backgrounds and seemed prepared for college and beyond. But did they really believe in their hearts that they could overcome all obstacles blind people encounter in their education and careers?
Such an attitude is not something you can teach students. You have to provide opportunities for them to discover it within themselves. Failure is as much part of this journey of discovery as success. It requires the willingness to go out on a ledge, take risks, try out new and difficult things, and most importantly, be willing to fail, learn from your mistakes, and try over and over again. As a college professor, I know that most students struggle with this. How much harder is it for young people to overcome their fear of failure if the notion that the true reason may be blindness always lingers in the back of their minds? When I was invited to be a Rocket On! Facilitator, my hope was that the camp would be an opportunity for the students not just to learn about rocket science, but also to find it within themselves.
The days at the NFB’s Jernigan Institute leading up to the Thursday-morning launch were long and intense. Launching a sounding rocket with a scientific payload is a complex task, and students were involved in most aspects of the launch. The days at the NFB’s Jernigan Institute leading up to the Thursday-morning launch were long and intense. Launching a sounding rocket with a scientific payload is a complex task, and students were involved in most aspects of the launch. Assisting them was a group of blind facilitators from the NFB: Robin House, Mary Jo Thorpe, Nathanael Wales, and Chaz Cheadle. The mentorship and role-modeling provided by blind instructors and scientists throughout the week was a key part of the camp experience.
On Monday and Tuesday the students worked with lead teacher Robin House, chief of the Wallops sounding rocket program Phil Eberspeaker, and blind electrical engineer Dr. Michael Grosse to learn about the history of rocketry, Newton’s laws, basic rocket physics, and basic electronics. Then they split into three groups, each responsible for one major aspect of the launch. The Circuiteers team, comprised of Justin Hodge, Meghan Joost, Nikki Singh, Hoby Wedler, and facilitator Nathanael Wales, built and tested the scientific payload of the mission, consisting of four sensors that measured temperature, pressure, acceleration, and light intensity during the flight. These sensors were connected to the telemetry system aboard the rocket, which radioed the measurements back to Wallops in real time. Justin Harford, Alysha Jeans, Ryan Thomas, and Lindsay Yazzolino (with me as the facilitator) formed the Ego Squad team, which conducted a detailed analysis of the rocket trajectory to predict maximum altitude and range, and to verify that the correct rocket motor was chosen. They used a new software tool called the Math Description Engine (MDE) Graphing Calculator, which was developed by blind NASA mathematician Dr. Robert Shelton, who also helped the team with their calculations. Finally, the Action-Reaction team, comprised of David Abraham, Tiffani Clements, Amy Herstein, Daniel Ramirez, and facilitator Mary Jo Thorpe, was responsible for launch pad operations, such as moving the rocket to the launch pad, fueling, and the count-down.
For me, being the only sighted facilitator at the camp was a very interesting learning experience in itself. Suddenly the term accessible took on a completely new meaning! It was often impossible for me to teach the students anything without learning from them at the same time. For example, I was scheduled to give a lesson on telescopes on Tuesday afternoon, and then lead an evening remote observing session during which the students were to operate a telescope at Yerkes Observatory in Wisconsin over the Internet. I had prepared a set of tactile diagrams to illustrate how telescopes work, and what can be learned by analyzing images and spectra of stars and galaxies. Sara Gallagher from the NFB had embossed my diagrams on thermal image paper and made self-adhesive Braille labels, but I soon realized that it would take me days to figure out where to attach which label, since I cannot read contracted Braille. Fortunately,
I was able to enlist the help of one of the students, Justin Harford. Working with Justin made labeling the diagrams a breeze. It didn’t only save a lot of time, but in the process he taught me a lot about how to make better tactile diagrams. In turn, he learned a few things from me about astronomy and telescopes.
After the Wednesday morning trip from Baltimore to the Wallops Flight Facility on the eastern shore of Virginia, followed by final last-minute launch preparations in the afternoon, the team got up at 3:00 a.m. on launch day and reported for duty in the blockhouse on Wallops Island at 4:00 a.m.. The launch window was 6:00 a.m. - 9:00 a.m.. Tensions in the blockhouse were high. The team had done everything they could to prepare for the launch, but several uncontrollable factors that could potentially jeopardize the launch remained. The 10.5-foot experimental rocket had a hybrid motor never before used at the Wallops Flight Facility. Several of these motors had exploded during tests on a static test firing stand prior to the launch. The solid fuel tank of the rocket motor had been reinforced, but there was still a significant risk that the motor on the rocket would blow up during the launch. The United States Coast Guard had been contacted to keep boats away, but a stray boat entering the launch range at the wrong time could still thwart our plans. Wind was also a concern. While usually mild in the early morning, high winds can and often do delay rocket launches.
In the end almost everything worked out perfectly. By 8:15 a.m. the wind had died down to an acceptable level. A fishing boat headed for the launch area had turned around even before the Coast Guard had to intervene. And the rocket motor did not blow up and worked beautifully. The rocket reached a maximum altitude of 5,450 feet 20 seconds after launch. All four sensors worked and sent back data throughout the flight via telemetry. The mission did hit an unexpected snag when the main chute that was supposed to slow down the rocket for a gentle water landing did not deploy, causing the rocket to break up when it hit the water at high speed.
The minor parachute mishap could not dampen our team’s enthusiasm about the successful mission. During the post-launch briefing, word got around that the Coast Guard had recovered the nose cone and tail section of the rocket drifting in the Atlantic. This happened on their way back to base, after they had already given up and assumed the rocket had sunk to the bottom of the ocean. They did not find the middle section of the rocket containing the scientific payload and telemetry package. The fragments arrived back at Wallops just before the team headed back to Baltimore, giving the students the chance to examine the damage that the high-speed splash-down had caused.
Back at the Jernigan Institute NFB President Dr. Marc Maurer was already waiting for our return to congratulate the students on the success of their mission. He and other NFB staff had been watching the launch via a Web-cast from the Wallops Web site. But there was not much time for celebration. The successful launch had already been announced to the press, and a press conference was scheduled at Goddard Space Flight Center for 9:30 a.m. the next morning. The students worked late into the night to prepare their presentations and handouts.
“We build too many walls and not enough bridges.”
— Sir Isaac Newton
Working with a capable group of people who share common ideals and goals makes it easy to forget that reality is often still far from ideal. During the camp the reminder came in form of an electronics company that sells talking multimeters. Multimeters are used to measure voltage, electric current, and resistance. The students needed them to test and calibrate the electronic sensors they built for the rocket. When a NASA engineer on our team called in an order, the company refused to sell them to him because the talking multimeters were not designed for use by blind people. The company sales person was probably well-meaning and only wanted to protect blind people from electric shock and his company from a lawsuit. Nevertheless, his refusal to sell the instrument is offensive and disparaging to highly capable high school students. It is one of those walls Sir Isaac
Newton is talking about, one that needs to be replaced by a bridge.
The Friday-morning press conference was flawless. In his opening remarks Dr. Ed Weiler, Director of the Goddard Space Flight Center, congratulated the students on a job well-done, and encouraged them to continue their work with NASA though internships and careers in science and engineering. He reminded them that they are privileged to be part of a generation that will likely answer some of the deepest scientific question humans have been wondering about for thousands of years, such as “Are there earth-like planets orbiting other stars?” and “Are we alone in the universe?” After Dr. Weiler’s introductions, the Ego Squad, Circuiteers, and Action-Reaction teams each discussed the mission from their perspectives and presented initial results. Each presentation was followed by a question and answer period.
“It is difficult to say what is impossible, for the dream of yesterday is the hope of today and the reality of tomorrow.”
— Robert H. Goddard
As Rocket On! drew to a close, our focus shifted toward the future. The students had worked hard and proven that they have what it takes to succeed in science. They had literally become rocket scientists! Twelve mentors, some blind and some sighted, from the Goddard and Johnson Space Flight Centers and from NASA Headquarters had been selected to continue to work with the students on an ongoing basis. Many students had expressed their interest in opportunities to work at NASA, for example, through internships and even careers after college. Phil Eberspeaker, Chief of the Wallops Sounding Rocket Program and one of the Rocket On! “dreamers” of yesterday, expressed our shared hope of today when he told the students: “I hope that one day when I am sick, one of you will be the doctor who saves my life.” Together we can make it the reality of tomorrow!
and the Stories of Other Extraordinary Young People in Science
by Marc McCutcheon
Reviewed by Deborah Kent Stein
As author Marc McCutcheon explains in his introduction, this is a book about “boys and girls who had great ideas and worked hard to make something happen with them.” McCutcheon gathers brief biographies of nine people who made major discoveries or inventions while they were under eighteen years old. They include Robert Goddard, who at fifteen designed his first rocket; Mary Anning, who discovered some of the first known dinosaur skeletons while she was in her teens; sixteen-year-old Sarah Flannery, a mathematical genius who devised a remarkable encryptment program; and nine-year-old Emily Rosa, who debunked a medical myth with an experiment she designed as a science fair project. Each story is lively and readable, focusing on the subject’s youth and summarizing his or her later accomplishments.
The final chapter in the book, “The Blind Boy Who Developed a New Way to See,” tells the story of Louis Braille. McCutcheon begins with the accident in which Louis was blinded at the age of three. He explains that blind people had few opportunities at that time and place (early nineteenth-century France), and that Louis’s parents encouraged him to be curious and independent. Braille’s story provides some basic information about blindness. The author explains, for example, that young Louis used a cane to find obstacles when he walked in the village by himself, and that he listened for echoes to determine how close he was to a wall. For a few years Louis Braille attended the local school in his village, but his studies were severely limited because he had no means to read and write. At ten he was sent to a school for blind boys in Paris. There, at the age of twelve, he began to work on a tactile reading system based on a cell of six raised dots.
Braille’s story is told in clear, unsentimental prose, the same tone the author employs in the other biographies. It is refreshing to see Braille placed within the context of Robert Goddard, Sarah Flannery, and the others we meet in this book. All of them showed genius and astonishing creativity at an early age. The stories in this volume are all inspiring,
Louis Braille’s among them. “Beyond their intelligence and imagination,” McCutcheon reminds us, “these kids had two things in common above all others: they believed in themselves and they worked hard.”
Editor’s Note: This hardcover book (ISBN: 0-8118-3770-X) is beautifully illustrated by Jon Cannell. The list price for the print copy is $15.95. For more information about the book and other books published by Chronicle Books, go to their Web site at <www.chroniclekids.com>. Also, the National Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped selected the book for its collection so it will soon be available in audio format for loan throughout the Regional Library for the Blind system. The NLS book collection number is RC 58645.
by Mark A. Riccobono, Manager, Education Programs—NFB Jernigan Institute
“It is difficult to say what is impossible, for the dream of yesterday is the hope of today and the reality of tomorrow.”
— Robert H. Goddard
In the February 2004 issue of the Braille Monitor, I detailed the road that led to the establishment of the 2004 NFB Science Academy, a series of summer science camps designed to change the prospects for blind youth in science education and careers.
Readers of the Braille Monitor will recall that we had a number of ambitious goals for our science camps, including:
• to spark the interest of blind youth in science and inspire more of these youth to pursue careers in science;
• to allow blind youth to build confidence through opportunities to perform challenging science activities from which they are generally excluded in public schools; and
• to demonstrate the effectiveness of the Federation’s approach through the development of a centralized collection of resources related to blind youth in science that can be accessed by regular educators, blind youth, their parents, special educators, and others.
The camps—and our high expectations of them—began as a dream of Dr. Marc Maurer, President of the National Federation of the Blind. Dr. Maurer presented this dream to the NFB 2003 National Convention assembled in Louisville, Kentucky. Then, at the Grand Opening of the NFB Jernigan Institute in January 2004, young Courtney Despeaux spoke on behalf of America’s blind youth about the brighter future the Institute represents. She said, “This Research and Training Institute, a dream turned into reality, now allows blind youth like me to have even bigger dreams.”
Now, just one year after Dr. Maurer announced the establishment of these camps and slightly more than half a year after the opening of the Jernigan Institute, the first stage of this dream has been realized. By summer’s end, 2004, twenty-four blind middle school and high school youths had successfully completed the first-ever, consumer-conceived, -planned, and -executed summer science camps: the Circle of Life Camp (July 18 - 24) and the Rocket On! Camp (August 15 - 21). There is no doubt that we (with the assistance of our new partners at NASA) are well on our way to the establishment of a rigorous summer science program; one that inspires blind youth and those working with them to imagine a future full of opportunities in the sciences.
This assessment is not based on subjective opinion alone. In keeping with accepted professional practice, we employed an experienced program evaluator. Federationists will be familiar with the work of Dr. C. Edwin Vaughan, a blind sociologist, professor, and author whose work has often appeared in the pages of the Braille Monitor. In order to examine the effectiveness of the 2004 NFB Science camp sessions, students completed pre- and post-surveys developed by Dr. Vaughan. His evaluation report displayed overwhelming positive results based on the student responses to the surveys. In fact, the one major problem expressed by participants in both camp sessions, was that the camps were too short. Many of the students said we should add one or two days to each camp.
We clearly achieved the goals outlined above. We inspired youth, gave them confidence in their capacity to do science, and—through that process—we demonstrated that our unique approach works. The purpose of this report is to begin disseminating what we know to others—science teachers, schools, parents, science museums, universities, and any and all other science programs for youth. Only then will we achieve our ultimate goal of the complete integration of blind youth into scientific studies and careers. As we reviewed our success, seven key ingredients emerged. However, before we look at the essential elements of this program of the NFB Jernigan Institute, let’s review the two camp sessions briefly.
Circle of Life—July 18-24, 2004
In this session, twelve blind middle school students representing eleven different states participated in a week full of exploration and investigation into the world in which we live. The participants ranged in age from eleven to fourteen, and included entering seventh graders to entering high school freshmen or ninth graders. Although a few of the students had some partial sight, all were Braille readers. Following are photos of each student taken at the camp. In addition to the student’s name, the caption gives the student’s age at the time he or she completed the camp, and the grade he or she will be entering in the fall of 2004 - 2005 school year:
[PHOTO]
Karl Martin Adam, Southfield, Michigan: age 14, grade 8.
[PHOTO]
Rachel Becker, Frederick, Maryland: age 14, grade 9.
[PHOTO]
Bryce Gitzen, Cle Elum, Washington: age 12, grade 7.
[PHOTO]
Amelia King, Madison, Wisconsin: age 12, grade 7.
[PHOTO]
Aaron Linson, Louisville, Kentucky: age 14, grade 8.
[PHOTO]
Steven Maxfaults, Brooklyn, New York: age 13, grade 9.
[PHOTO]
John Pastorius, Smithfield, Virginia: age 13, grade 8.
[PHOTO]
Tanya Perkins, Thorton, Colorado: age 13, grade 8.
[PHOTO]
Jordan Richardson, Blaine, Minnesota: age 13, grade 8.
[PHOTO]
Daisy Soto, Thousand Oaks, California: age 11, grade 7.
[PHOTO]
Andrew Wai, Harleysville, Pennsylvania: age 12, grade 8.
[PHOTO]
Matthew Wallace, Springfield, Pennsylvania: age 13, grade 8.
The intent of the activities in this session was to spark the “Wow!” of science in the students, challenge them to do things blind students are typically not expected to do, and to introduce them to blind mentors, blind scientists, and the blindness techniques critical to the pursuit of “doing” science. The session especially emphasized the hands-on, fieldwork nature of how “real” science is conducted. This was a revelation to most of the students whose primary exposure to science is in the restricted, highly text-based or vision-based methods of the classroom or school lab.
Rocket On!—August 15-21, 2004
In this session, twelve blind high school students representing nine different states participated in a one-week mission to launch a half-sized Patriot rocket with a payload. The captions of the following photos, which show each student participating in some aspect of the camp, includes the students name, state, age, and 2004-2005 school year grade:
[PHOTO]
David Abrahams, Albuquerque, New Mexico: age 16, grade 11.
[PHOTO]
Tiffani Clements, Ramona, California: age 14, grade 9.
[PHOTO]
Justin Harford, Chico, California: age 16, grade 11.
[PHOTO]
Amy Herstein, Ellicott City, Maryland: age 16, grade 12.
[PHOTO]
Justin Hodge, Bunker Hill, Indiana: age 16, grade 11.
[PHOTO]
Alysha Jeans, Wichita, Kansas: age 16, grade 11.
[PHOTO]
Meghan Joost, Chicago, Illinois: age 17, grade 12.
[PHOTO]
Daniel Ramirez, Brooklyn, New York: age 19, grade 12.
[PHOTO]
Nandini (Nikki) Singh, Ellicott City, Maryland: age 14, grade 9.
[PHOTO]
Ryan Thomas, Tucson, Arizona: age 16, grade 11.
[PHOTO]
Henry (Hoby) Wedler, Petaluma, California: age 17, grade 11.
[PHOTO]
Lindsay, Yazzolino, Issaquah, Washington: age 15, grade 10.
The mission consisted of learning key scientific concepts, examining the history of rocketry, working together in teams, managing time, doing complex calculations and making predictions based on these calculations, reporting information to colleagues, building and testing sensors for the payload, preparing and testing rocket components, performing the countdown sequence (including fueling and firing the rocket), and analyzing and reporting on data gathered from the mission. This session presented blind students with a challenging experience under the direction of blind mentors and partners from NASA. The session also taught the students about the non-scientific elements of successful missions. That is, team work, project management, problem solving, information sharing, and other important aspects of working with colleagues. The program exposed the students to the invaluable network available to them through participation in the National Federation of the Blind and helped them understand the importance of the NFB/NASA partnership.
That’s the overview. Now, let’s examine each of the seven key ingredients that made the NFB Science Academy so successful:
1. Blind Mentors: The core of this program is the same critical ingredient that the NFB brings to any program for children or youth: successful blind role models. The instruction for each of the two camp sessions was headed by Robin House, a blind teacher and guidance counselor from St. Louis, Missouri. Miss House was assisted by a faculty of blind facilitators who served as mentors along with their duties as instructors and camp counselors. These facilitators for the Circle of Life session included Paul Howard, a teacher of blind students from Gary, Indiana; Alicia Richards, a guidance counselor from Des Moines, Iowa; Caroline Rounds, a teacher of blind students from Apple Valley, California; and Mary Jo Thorpe, a graduate student at Louisiana Tech and a recent recipient of National Orientation and Mobility Certification (NOMC) from the National Blindness Professional Certification Board (NBPCB). At the Rocket On! camp, Robin House and Mary Jo Thorpe were joined by facilitators Nathanael Wales, a blind civil engineer from California; Chaz Cheadle, a blind college graduate from Maryland; and one sighted facilitator: Dr. Bernhard Beck-Winchatz, an Associate Professor of Astronomy from DePaul University, Chicago, Illinois. Dr. Beck-Winchatz brought his own unique skills to the program as a sighted person who understands and promotes the NFB philosophy of high expectations and positive attitudes about blindness. Dr. B, as he was known during the Rocket session, fully participated in all aspects of the program including doing some activities under sleep shades along with the students. In addition, a number of other blind individuals participated as guest instructors during the program. These instructors were Dr. Geerat Vermeij, Dr. Robert Shelton, Kent Cullers, and from the NFB headquarters, Dr. Marc Maurer, Dr. Michael Gosse, and various staff members (including myself).
The great value of having successful blind adults at the heart of the instruction team cannot be over-emphasized. How many blind students have the opportunity for exposure to blind mentors who can challenge them to reach higher expectations in the sciences through role modeling, and who can engage them in honest and open discussions about life as a blind person? The consistent presence and guidance of the blind facilitators provided the camp students with a level of mentoring and understanding about their own capabilities as a blind person that most of them had never before experienced.
This was demonstrated in Dr. Vaughan’s evaluation report as noted in this passage:
“Students valued the intensive involvement with successful blind adults. This was shown in such comments as ‘I liked working with such high-skilled blind people’ and ‘It was good to be exposed to more blind people and just how much blind people can do.’”
2. Independence and Self-Sufficiency: While the focus of the program was science not blindness skills, it is difficult to separate the two. In order to master complex scientific tasks and carry out a career in a scientific field, one must have a certain set of core skills to work effectively and gain respect amongst colleagues. Thus, students in both camp sessions were expected to travel using the long white cane, to take usable notes independently (21 of the 24 students were Braille users), bus their own tables at meals, be responsible for themselves and their property, and otherwise function at an age-appropriate level. While instruction and support was provided when needed, the expectation was that the students would do for themselves.
While this approach receives lip service in most summer programs for blind youth, it is often not carried out in practice to the extent necessary to be effective. In the NFB Science Academy, as in our other youth programs, independence and an expectation of independence underpinned all activities from day one through to the closing ceremonies. Of course, in just a week, no program can hope to provide students with a complete set of skills or the deep understanding of blindness and confidence in their own abilities that is desirable for blind people to lead full productive lives. However, by the end of the two sessions, evidence of changes was already emerging. The evaluations showed that most students moved from simply “saying” that they were capable of doing something to actually building a collection of experiences in “doing” the things they had claimed were possible to do.
3. Hands-on learning: Science is often taught using pictures and words to describe complex concepts. However, science lends itself very well to models and hands-on learning experiences that are beneficial for all students, not just the blind. Thus, this program emphasized hands-on learning in all of its activities. The opportunity to experience science through personal observation and structured discovery was clearly invaluable and, as demonstrated by comments from students, something that does not happen in their typical science classroom. Consider these statements from three of the students:
“Now I actually know I can do dissections, make conclusions, collect and record data, share and communicate information with others.”
—Andrew Wai, Pennsylvania
“It made me experience science a lot more. In school it’s boring, but because this was hands-on, it was interesting.”
—Daisy Soto, California
“There is a lot of hands-on science that I didn’t know about. I learned that you can study soils & sea shells by touch.”
— Amelia King, Wisconsin
While many of the students coming into the camp sessions said that blind people could compete in scientific endeavors, they could not say how it would be done. They lacked a range of experiences in “doing” science as a blind person. Although all of them had taken science classes in school, it was clear that they spent considerable time sitting on the sidelines. The actual hands-on “doing” of activities makes a tremendous difference in the learning and interest gained in a subject like science.
4. Braille and Tactile Models: Through a combination of Braille materials, tactile graphics and maps, and three-dimensional models, complex concepts can be conveyed. This was emphasized in the program and proved to be highly effective. However, these materials are only effective if they are presented in a way that makes sense and if the students have the appropriate background with tactile materials to fully utilize the rich information provided. We observed the need, particularly among the middle school age group, for blind youth to be fully encouraged to put their hands on things and use their tactile sense. Often, when the camp students were handed an object, they were not skilled in thoroughly examining it using both hands in a systematic pattern, and then describing its details. This problem was not simply limited to students with or without residual vision but seemed to be a problem across the board. It seems that our “look but don’t touch” and “hurry, hurry” culture has a serious dampening effect even upon those children whose parents and/or teachers have tried to counteract it. Part of the function of the blind mentors was to demonstrate and model effective tactile exploration methods. This, of course, took time and on a number of occasions we modified our Circle of Life camp schedule to accommodate the need for more complete tactile observations.
5. Challenging Experiences: All too often blind youth are surrounded with an environment of low expectations. Even completing the most basic of tasks receives high praise. However, the NFB Science Academy presented challenging opportunities in an environment of confidence to the students. The students were treated equally in all aspects. Because both students and facilitators were blind, everyone faced the same level of high expectations to complete a task.
Secondly, the students were presented with experiences that stretched them. For example, none of the students in the Circle of Life camp had previously actively participated in a dissection. That is, one or two had been a part of a dissection team but had not actually done any of the work. All of the students were expected to do a dissection of a dogfish shark and each of them did it under sleep shades (blindfolds) to emphasize the effectiveness of non-visual techniques. While we called our Science Academy sessions “camps,” do not let the semantics fool you. Many of the students in both program sessions made comments much like the following sentiment expressed by a student in the Rocket On! Camp:
“I’ve never been this challenged in other academics/ programs I’ve attended.”
—Justin Harford, California
6. Partnerships: The NFB Jernigan Institute collaborated with a number of partners to provide the NFB Science Academy. Most important among these partnerships was the collaboration between the NFB and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). In particular, the Rocket On! Session was a true reflection of the great value in the NFB/NASA partnership. Instructors and supporting contributors to this camp came from both organizations and were an important part of its success. Individuals from NASA who were not familiar with blindness and working with blind youth went through a training offered by NFB staff. It is clear by their work in the camp that all of the NASA staff took this training to heart and believe in the capacity of blind people to contribute to the community as a whole. At all times NFB students and facilitators were treated like any other group working with NASA employees. While it would be difficult to name all of the NASA employees who had an impact on the 2004 NFB Science Academy, special recognition should go to Phil Eberspeaker who designed the NFB rocket mission and provided much of the instruction to the students in collaboration with NFB instructors. In addition, blind NASA employees worked as mentors with students from both camp sessions.
In addition to NASA, a number of other organizations participated in the program. These include the Maryland Science Center, Baltimore, Maryland; the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, also in Baltimore; and the Smithsonian Institution Naturalist Center, Leesburg, Virginia. Each organization worked with the NFB Jernigan Institute staff in advance of the event to prepare their staff and facility to maximize the learning experience for the camp participants.
7. Follow Up: The NFB Science Academy was not intended to be an event in isolation. Students in each session will stay connected through mentoring and ongoing connections to the NFB. For example, the Rocket On! Session was not simply a program but a commitment to inspire and challenge the next generation of blind youth to accept the scientific and technological challenges facing our world. Each student was matched with a mentor from NASA in order to have a one-on-one relationship that can help them build an understanding of the steps necessary to build a career within an organization like NASA. Additionally, a listserv has been established so that all the students, facilitators, and mentors can communicate and share information. This on-going relationship will hopefully lead to students securing internships and other opportunities with NASA.
Conclusion:
The 2004 NFB Science Academy program met its goals and in many cases exceeded them. Most importantly, it demonstrated to the students the type of future they can have if they work hard and apply their imagination. The blind role models set a higher level of expectation than the students typically get in the classroom and challenged the students to reach those expectations. The NFB/NASA partnership clearly proved its effectiveness as coordinators and instructors from both organizations worked collaboratively to develop a rich mission experience unlike any other mission ever attempted by NASA.
Twenty-four students have been influenced and inspired by this program, but what about the great lack of resources and information regarding the tools to empower thousands of blind youth throughout the country to excel in science, technology, engineering, and math classes and careers? The NFB Science Academy is just one component of a broader vision for the NFB Jernigan Institute. The Jernigan Institute plans to establish a National Center for Blind Youth in Science (NCBYS) as part of the Institute. This center of excellence will continue to find new horizons for blind youth in the sciences, provide a national centralized clearinghouse for information and resources, and establish the body of knowledge related to science instruction and nonvisual techniques that is desperately needed in order to improve opportunities for blind youth across the country. The NFB Science Academy will continue to be an important part of the NCBYS. Plans are already under way for the 2005 sessions. The high school program, Rocket On!, is scheduled for July 15-23, 2005. The middle school session will take place July 30-August 6, 2005. Both will be located at our headquarters (site of the NFB Jernigan Institute) in Baltimore, Maryland.
An advisory work group has been established to assist with the plans for the NCBYS at the Jernigan Institute. Parents, students, educators, and others who have or know of valuable resources related to teaching science to blind youth, innovative methods/materials for conveying scientific concepts, Web sites with valuable information related to the blind and science, or other materials to be included in the NCBYS should contact me, Mark Riccobono, Manager of Education Programs, NFB Jernigan Institute, 1800 Johnson Street, Baltimore, Maryland 21230; email: <mriccobono@nfb.org>; or call (410) 659-9314 extension 2368. The NCBYS is not intended to be a manufacturer of products but rather a clearinghouse of information and resources to emphasize the good work being done in this area, to eliminate duplication of effort, and build a body of knowledge so that the constant reinventing of the wheel can end and the imaginative building of a bright future full of opportunities can begin.
Taking Matters Into Their own Hands: Blind Students’ Perspectives on Teaching, Trust, and Telescopes
by Michaela R. Winchatz, DePaul University
When I first arrived at Yerkes Observatory in Williams Bay, Wisconsin, I was rather nervous. I was invited to go there by a group of individuals who were leading an astronomy camp for blind students. The camp was part of the Space Exploration Experience (SEE) Project for the Blind and Visually Impaired, which had been funded by a NASA IDEAS grant (Initiative to Develop Education through Astronomy and Space Science). As the evaluator for the SEE Project, I had come to interview the students and staff about their experiences at this three-day camp.¹
As a communication researcher and educator, conducting interviews is part of what I do. I ask people questions and pay close attention to how they talk. Ultimately, if I do my job well, I can find out how individuals understand and experience their world, and most importantly, I can discover what is meaningful to them. So, the interviews were the least of my worries. What made me nervous were the list of unknowns I was facing. I had never been to an observatory, I knew little about astronomy and science, and I had never before worked with blind and visually-impaired children. Clearly, this was going to be an adventure.
It was a beautiful May evening, and the two-hour drive from Chicago to Williams Bay went without a hitch until the final stretch. As large as I had imagined an observatory to be, I never thought it could be hidden so well. After passing the entrance countless times, I finally found the small, unlit sign that marked the winding drive up to the building. The night was clear, and the silhouettes of the three domes against the evening sky were a lovely sight. The large, wooden doors of the planetarium opened, and I was greeted by Geoff Holt, the director of the Madison, Wisconsin, planetarium and member of the astronomy camp team. He escorted me through corridors and downstairs to a small room where the others were waiting.
When I entered, I found a group of young people seated around two wooden tables, laughing and eating cookies. The six students in the astronomy camp were all females ranging in age from twelve to twenty years. They were accompanied by two teachers of the blind, Beverly Helland and Diana Brower, as well as Vivian Hoette, a former teacher who now conducts education programs for students and teachers at the Observatory. I introduced myself to the group and felt immediately welcome. As we sipped hot chocolate from styrofoam cups, I listened to the young women rave about the day’s events. They were full of energy, despite the late hour, and I soon found out why. They still had a midnight date with a 24-inch telescope for some late-night observing, and this snack break was the last pit stop before heading up to the dome to start their work.
Once the group navigated its way up the narrow, spiral staircase, we entered a large dome 30 feet in diameter. The students got themselves into position in order to complete the number of tasks needed to make observing possible. The dome had to be opened, making the work area quite cold and forcing us all to put on our jackets. The floor under our feet was raised and lowered, in order to give students access to the instruments on the back of the telescope. As the students aimed the instrument toward the planets, stars, and galaxies they wished to observe, the high-pitched squealing of the telescope’s gears filled the air.
Once they located the astronomical object they were interested in, they worked with the computer to take an image of the object as seen through the telescope. These images were then embossed on thermal image paper, which allowed the young astronomer trainees to see, in detail, what these objects in space actually look like. For some, it was their first real look at outer space.
Just how complicated this process really is came across quite clearly to the camp participants. Olivia Smithmier-Bohn, a seventh grader from Jefferson Middle School in Madison, Wisconsin, told me, “What I thought was really interesting was that—to get a really good image with the telescope, there were so many things that you had to do. Someone is adjusting the floor on the telescope, or someone is checking the dome, or someone else is checking the coordinates to make sure they’re correct. But it’s just amazing to me that it all works so well because there are so many things that have to be just right, and there are so many things that could go wrong.”
Amelia King, a sixth grader at Jefferson Middle School, added, “You have to do so many things to just get one picture. It takes a lot of teamwork, and it takes a lot of patience, but once it works, it feels really, really cool.”
The responsibility that came along with this unique opportunity to work at Yerkes Observatory was not lost on Angelica Hope, a seventh grader from the Wisconsin Center for the Blind and Visually Impaired. “My favorite part was working with the telescope because not many twelve-year olds get to use one of those big telescopes.”
Because astronomy is usually understood as a science for which vision plays such an integral role, it was highly rewarding for me to watch these six young women navigate the complex technical equipment involved in making astronomical observations. Grace King, who was finishing her senior year at the Wisconsin Center for the Blind and Visually Impaired, said, “My favorite part of the experience was working with the computers and learning how the actual observing is done. Blind people could almost do it on their own! Just with a little tweaking of the program, it could be done.”
The program Grace speaks of is the screen reader JAWS. One of its limitations, when applied to the software used to operate the camera on the telescope, is that it does not allow a blind user to find and read the floating window on the screen without guidance. This appears to be one of the few smaller, though important, details that need to be worked out in order for blind individuals to conduct telescopic observing on their own. Luckily, Grace promptly emailed the technology group responsible for JAWS, Freedom Scientific, and informed them about the difficulties she encountered with the program during her work at the camp. She is about to start her college education at Northcentral Technical College in Wausau, Wisconsin, pursuing a degree in assistive technology. With her newly acquired experience applying JAWS to astronomy observations, she appears to be the perfect candidate to promote the kind of change needed to fully open up the world of astronomy to the blind.
When the students weren’t observing with the telescope, the camp provided many opportunities to discover more about our home planet. Earth is the only planet, as far as we know, that has an atmosphere that can sustain life. On the days before my arrival, the group participated in a guided nature walk to learn about the plant life growing in the region. They enjoyed a pontoon boat ride on Lake Geneva to experience one of Earth’s most precious resources—water. And I had the opportunity to go with them to a local airport, where all of the students explored the details of ultralights on the ground and then were taken into the air in a small Cessna plane to explore the atmosphere.
The pinnacle of the camp came on the afternoon of day three, when each student chose one of the tactile images created during the evening observing sessions to write about. The ultimate goal was to create a tactile book containing astronomical images taken by the students during the nightly observing sessions, supplemented with the students’ own Braille descriptions of these objects and of their experiences while conducting the observations.
Amelia found this part of the camp one of the most exciting. “When we got the pictures, that was rewarding. I also liked feeling the pictures after they were done because it was like, ‘Yeah, I was there. I was taking that picture.’ It’s not like when you’re looking at someone else’s book.”
For fourteen-year-old Katie Watson, taking the pictures and seeing them later gave her a whole new perspective on space. “That picture we took of the moon was really interesting. I pictured the moon being rocky and everything, but I never really had seen a picture with craters and mountains and stuff, actually detailed.”
Chelsea Reilly, a twenty-year-old sophomore at Carthage College, agreed with the sentiment of the group as well. “I think that looking at the pictures and being able to observe was really good because we got to feel the tactile images and know what the shapes and lines are of what’s out there in space. I think that putting it into a book of our own and getting our own ideas out there was really fascinating.”
On the afternoon of day three, sandwiched in between plane rides and book making, I had the opportunity to talk with the six young women about their experiences at the camp. I had come to collect their comments about what had gone well and what could have been done differently, so that possible future camps like this one could be made even better.
What I didn’t expect, however, was how much insight these young students would have about their own learning styles and preferences. For me, these interviews moved beyond mere evaluations of the camp to a kind of teaching tutorial, the lessons of which are worth sharing.
One significant theme that emerged across the students’ talk was the importance of trust. Each of the young women talked about the enormous trust they felt the teachers and staff at the camp placed in each one of them. As is so often the case, trust seldom remains a
one-way street. Once the students realized how much responsibility the camp team was willing to hand over to them, the young women found that they, in turn, were able to let their guard down and dive head first into the learning experience without any fear.
For example, several of the students mentioned how surprised they were that the camp team allowed them to actually work, hands-on, with the 24-inch telescope. As with all young people, there exists a strong desire among these students to try things on their own without someone stepping in and doing things for them. Katie contrasted her experience at this camp with some of her prior experiences. “People don’t always let me do things myself. They would either put their hands over mine and show me, or they would just do it themselves and not let me do it at all. So, I think this was great that we got to really control the telescope and move the floor and take the pictures.”
Amelia agreed, “Other people would say, ‘No! She will never touch the telescope. That’s just too dangerous!’ But here they trust you, and they don’t really limit you on what you can and cannot do.”
By allowing the students to work on their own and develop confidence with some expensive and highly technical equipment, the camp team showed the group that they were genuinely interested in their learning experience. This fostered an atmosphere in which the students felt comfortable to show what they didn’t know by asking questions of the camp team. Olivia specifically found the small size of the student group quite helpful to her learning experience. “You felt like you could ask anything, and you wouldn’t be made fun of by anyone. At school it’s a large group, and even though you’ve known your classmates for a while, you still feel uncomfortable, and the teachers don’t have a lot of time to answer all the questions you have.”
Because each of the students was at a different age, grade, and knowledge level in science and astronomy, the camp could have easily fallen into the trap of teaching to the so-called lowest common denominator. This would have had the advantage that no student gets left behind or confused by any of the activities, but it certainly would have also limited or constrained the learning experience of those students who had a stronger base in science and astronomy prior to arriving at the camp. Katie talked about how well the camp team dealt with this facet of the learning process. “I’m pretty familiar with astronomical basics, so one thing I really liked is that they didn’t limit me. I could ask more advanced questions, and I didn’t feel weird about it.”
Beyond trust, the students also talked about how special it was to work with a group of teachers and professionals who were open and willing to learn how the students themselves wanted to be taught. Although two members of the camp team were teachers of the blind, several other members had had limited experience working with blind and visually impaired students.
The team members’ willingness to approach this camp with open minds about how to teach the young students especially impressed Olivia. “The team had this willingness to learn. They wanted to know what would work for us and what didn’t.”
Amelia agreed, “Some people just won’t listen to how you want to be taught. When you’re blind and visually impaired, you kind of learn differently. But here they will listen to how you want to be taught. The more time they spent with us, the more they learned how to teach us.”
Katie summed up the impact of this distinctive learning experience as well. “It’s very rare to meet people who are so willing to help you, and not only help you, but who want to learn how you like to be helped.”
All in all, every participant in the SEE Project rated the three-day camp a huge success. Clearly, partnering young students eager to learn with experts in a particular field is no easy task. The funds made available by the NASA IDEAS grant provided a much needed financial base, but it was the energy, creativity, and open mindedness of both team members and students that allowed this experience to become a model and an inspiration for future endeavors of this kind.
In my twelve years of university teaching, I have cherished meeting that handful of students who are excited to learn and driven to discover their intellectual boundaries. For some, coming up against blocks in their own scholarly journey can cause stagnation or retreat. Little did I know that I would find six young scholars in an observatory in Wisconsin whose focus and drive allowed them to transcend the boundaries they faced—if even for just three days.
I drove back to the Windy City that evening having learned something about myself as a teacher. Striving to control what and how my students learn may seem an efficient way to tackle the time-restraints and uncertain chaos that all teachers face from time-to-time. But perhaps there is another way. Perhaps I could truly listen to what my students want and learn to open up my classroom and my teaching more to their needs and interests. Perhaps I could learn to let go of the wheel a bit and trust the students to steer for a while. Easy? Certainly not. But if these tactics can get students to reach for the stars, then it’s most definitely worth a try.
Notes
1. The Principal Investigator of the SEE Project is Bernhard Beck-Winchatz, who is an Assistant Professor at DePaul University.
Technology and Keyboarding:
A Parent Wants to Know, What Comes First?
Editor’s Note: The plethora of technology available for blind students today is both wonderful and confusing. With options come choices, and with choices, questions: What piece of technology should a child get, and when? What skills do they need before they start learning specific technology? What factors are most important to consider when making these decisions? The following email exchange addresses a couple of these important technology questions. The exchange is between the parent of a middle school student and Curtis Chong. Readers may remember Chong (a blind leader in the NFB in Computer Science Division) from previous articles he has written for Future Reflections and the Braille Monitor. Curtis Chong is one of those technologically savvy blind adults who compete successfully in today’s work environment. Born blind, Chong also cares deeply about the education of blind children today. On a number of occasions I have asked him to respond to letters and other inquiries from parents about technology matters. Here is the latest email request I asked him to handle, beginning with the letter from the parent and concluding with Chong’s response:
Tuesday, August 31, 2004
Barbara,
Can you forward this email to someone at NFB that can answer my questions on technology for middle school children? I would appreciate it.
I have a twelve year old, seventh grader, who reads and writes grade II (contracted) Braille, uses a BrailleNote very efficiently, and started typing over the summer. His typing skills came extremely quickly. He used the Talking Typer program and he has gone all the way up through all the letters, most of the punctuation, all the numbers, and other various keys—braces, brackets, slant bar. He doesn’t know upper case numbers and the plus, minus, and dash keys as of yet. His speed on sentences is 18 words per minute with 96 percent accuracy and on individual key lessons it is 95 percent accuracy at 38 words per minute. He’s so awesome on this typing. He has typing goals in his IEP for June 2005 that he has mastered (obviously I need a new IEP), but before that IEP is rewritten I have some questions. …
1. What keyboarding/typing proficiency does a child need to have before moving on to learn JAWS? [NOTE: JAWS is a software access program that allows a blind person to access a computer with speech output and the use of keyboard commands instead of a mouse.]
2. Is JAWS the next logical technology piece or should it be Kurzweil? I don’t know anything about Kurzweil but I do know what JAWS can do for him; i.e.—Internet access which is a must for high school. He’s fast approaching ninth grade! My opinion is that it is JAWS!
3. What keys on the keyboard does he NOT need to know before moving on to JAWS? Are there any? There are 105 keys on a keyboard (according to his vision teacher)—the alphabet being 52 (26 upper and lower). He knows about 80 of these keys, and the F1 through F12 keys will be simple for my son because they are in obvious positions on a keyboard. So, I’m confident that he could be proficient with about 92 keys in a week. He will continue to work on the few keys that he doesn’t know, but I want to move on to JAWS.
4. Would the NFB send someone into my son’s public school to do a technology assessment, that I would pay for, and how much would that cost?
I guess that is it in a nutshell. I appreciate your time and assistance.
Wednesday, September 01, 2004
Dear Mrs. _______ :
I am pleased to have received an emailed message from you to Barbara Cheadle. You raise a number of important questions, and I welcome this opportunity to share a few of my thoughts about something which matters a great deal to me—that is, ensuring that blind children obtain the very best education and skills training.
As a totally blind person who has worked for more than thirty years in the field of information technology—for the sighted as well as the blind—let me take a stab at some of the questions you raised. As I understand it, your twelve-year-old son became blind some three years ago. The fact that he is now using a BrailleNote very efficiently is, I believe, very fortunate indeed. This would seem to indicate that he has facility with Braille—both in reading and writing. This facility should be encouraged to flourish as he progresses through high school. In the long run, this will enable him to be truly successful. You know, according to a number of research studies, the majority of employed people who are blind use Braille.
You mention in your message to Barbara that your son recently started learning how to type. I myself started learning to type when I was eight years old, and by the time I was twelve, I was clocked at 58 words per minute. While I do not expect your son to be able to type this quickly given that he only started this last summer, I do believe that within six months, he should have full knowledge of every key on the keyboard, and his typing speed should be pushed to at least 30 or 40 words per minute. Moreover, within nine months, he should give serious thought to preparing his written assignments using the computer instead of the BrailleNote.
What this recommendation implies is that for your son, JAWS for Windows is the very next logical step. The Kurzweil 1000 program is used to convert printed information into speech and is a logical complement to the basic use of the computer. However, unless a blind student masters JAWS, it will be difficult indeed to use the computer to produce written documents, send and receive email, browse the World Wide Web, or install software. Once these basic activities are mastered, then consideration can be given to using Kurzweil 1000 to read some printed material. Mastery of Kurzweil 1000 is much more quickly achieved if one starts out with full knowledge of the keyboard and facility with a screen access program such as JAWS for Windows.
In order to use JAWS, knowledge of every key on the keyboard is vital. However, typing speed is not. At your son’s current rate of typing (18 words per minute), he can start to learn JAWS as soon as he demonstrates that he knows all of the keys on the keyboard: the alphanumeric (normal typewriter) section, the center section (containing the cursoring keys), the numeric keypad on the right, and the function keys (located at the top of the keyboard). However, you should understand that along with learning JAWS, your son will need to learn some basic concepts that are important for computer users to know: the basics of the Windows operating system, the Windows Start Menu and Desktop, managing files on your computer’s hard drive, and so on. He will also need to learn how to prepare documents on the computer using Microsoft Word, email using Outlook Express, and browsing the Web using Internet Explorer. These should be specified in any IEP you develop from here on out.
I hope this information is helpful to you. Unfortunately, I am not in a good position to recommend someone who could perform a reliable technology skills assessment for your son. However, I would be pleased to elaborate on what I have said here in a future communication should you find it helpful.
Yours sincerely,
Curtis Chong, President
NATIONAL FEDERATION OF THE BLIND in Computer Science
by Carol Castellano
Editor’s Note: Carol Castellano is widely known and respected for her knowledge and grasp of the essentials in the education of blind children. She is the author of numerous publications, including the NOPBC publication, The Bridge to Braille: Reading and School Success for the Young Blind Child. This article is an excerpt from Castellano’s upcoming book tentatively titled, Making It Work: Educating the Blind Student in the Regular School, which will be published by Information Age Publishing for the Professional Development and Research Institute on Blindness at Louisiana Tech University.
The ability to use a reader effectively is one of the most important skills the blind/visually impaired student needs to develop. A reader is someone who reads print material to a blind/visually impaired person either directly or by recording it onto a tape or CD. Blind/visually impaired adults use readers on the job and in their homes for personal mail and other material. Students use readers for various tasks, such as research in a library, accessing texts and articles that are not available in their preferred medium, and in many testing situations. A student’s need for readers increases in the higher grades and in college. A reader can be either paid or volunteer.
Basically, a reader serves as a pair of eyeballs. If you think about how you might go about performing a certain reading task for yourself, you can understand how a reader operates. If you were looking through a book for a piece of information, for example, you might quickly read through the table of contents, check a few key words in the index, skim the first few paragraphs of several chapters, and skip around, skimming for a name or particular phrase. These are the kinds of tasks that a reader does. The key, however, is that the blind/visually impaired person directs the reader in each of these tasks.
The blind/visually impaired person directing a reader makes all decisions about what is to be read. The reader must realize this. The blind person moves the reader through the material, telling him or her how fast to read (as fast as possible is the usual recommendation!) and when to read straight through, stop reading, skip, skim, read captions, describe illustrations, read graphs, etc., as necessary to extract the information the blind/visually impaired person wants. The reader does not “find the answers” or do the work for the blind/visually impaired person. The reader does not explain what has been read or teach the material to the blind person. The reader is simply the conduit for the information.
In order to direct and use a reader effectively, the blind/visually impaired student needs to know a good deal of information. He/she must be familiar with various print page formats, headings, captions, contents, indexes, etc., and also with the typical elements found in charts, graphs, and diagrams. The student needs to understand the set up of dictionaries, encyclopedias, newspapers, magazines, Web sites, etc. The student also needs to know what information is contained in card catalogs (paper and computer) and library databases and understand how to search them. The student should obviously be included in all school training on library and research skills.
In addition to being able to listen well, the blind/visually impaired student needs to learn how to synthesize and analyze the material he/she is hearing quickly in order to decide what is important and what can be skipped or skimmed. Chances are the student will be taking notes during the reading session, so note taking skills are also of great importance.
In order to give good direction to a reader and to keep the appropriate control of the reading situation, the student needs to develop social interaction ability, communication skills, and assertiveness.
Training a student in all these skills begins with every book the child reads, every social interaction, every lesson on library skills, and every subject that requires notetaking. Most often family members are the child’s first readers, but the TVI, classroom teachers, and the librarian all play a part in making sure the child gains the skills.
Training the Student to Use a Reader
The person who trains a student in using a reader usually plays two roles during the practice sessions, that of reader and that of teacher, stepping in and out of each role as needed. As reader, the person stays relatively quiet and follows the student’s direction. As teacher, the person asks questions to help the student think, and gives suggestions and explanations when needed. For example, he/she might say, “Okay, I’m going to stop being your reader for a second. You know we just came to a graph. What might you want to tell your reader to do now?”
A useful way to get the student thinking about the process is to give him/her an assignment to find a certain piece of information in a book using a reader. Before you begin reading, ask the student to think about how he/she would go about trying to find that piece of information if the student were able to access the book directly. The student can then try giving the reader directions based on how he/she would approach the task.
One beginning training idea is to simulate real assignments but apply them to simple materials that the student is already familiar with. For example, a typical English class assignment might be the following:
So-and-So learns a lesson in the novel. Tell what lesson is learned and give examples from the text supporting your idea.
Instead of using a novel that the class has read, however, use a simple book or story like “Little Red Riding Hood” or “The Three
Little Pigs.” The student then directs the reader to the parts of the story that have the information needed. As reader, sit quietly and await instructions from the student and then follow them exactly, whether they are good instructions or not. Through exercises like this the student will learn ways to give clear, concise direction.
Another training exercise could be to assign the student to research a certain piece of information (for example, the population of a certain country) from an encyclopedia-type article. In this exercise the student would practice instructing the reader to begin reading the article, but to skip to the next paragraph when the student says, “Skip.” The idea is for the student to begin recognizing very quickly when a paragraph is likely to contain the needed information and when it does not have to be read fully.
The student will probably get real experience using a reader at the library when the first research paper is assigned. When trying to decide which books would be useful for his/her topic, the student might direct the reader first to read the table of contents, then to check the index for certain entries. He/she might ask the reader to turn to a certain chapter and read the first paragraph or the first sentence of each paragraph and to look for certain key names or words. The final decision about which books to choose should be the student’s. If it is clear that the student needs more practice before he/she can make these decisions successfully, it would make sense for the reader to step out of the reader role at times to offer further tips and instruction.
One of the difficulties of training a child in reader skills in school is that the readers are usually adults and it can be awkward for a child to take charge and direct an adult. Likewise, sometimes the adult takes over the process. Be alert to this potential problem. If the student is being too passive, help him/her learn to be more assertive. If the adult is taking over, remind him/her that it is necessary for the blind person to be in charge of the task. Possible in-school readers might be a classroom aide, a volunteer from the community, or an older student.
In college and in adult life, the blind/visually impaired person will be responsible for hiring, training, directing, supervising, and, yes, firing readers when necessary. Keep this in mind as you provide training to your student in this critical skill.
[PHOTO/CAPTIONS: This youngster wears sleepshades as she practices her cane travel skills in a long corridor.]
Editor’s Note: Does your partially sighted child or student avoid traveling after dark, or does he or she hesitate and seem lost or confused when he or she steps into a hall flooded with glaring sunlight? Traveling independently under poor lighting conditions is one of the ninety-plus travel situations Willoughby and Monthei examine in detail in their book, Modular Instruction for Independent Travel for Students Who are Blind or Visually Impaired: Preschool Through High School. The following excerpt is a good example of the style, approach, and content you will find throughout this excellent resource and teaching guide. (Information about how to order the book is at the end of the article.) Here is what Willoughby and Monthei have to say about promoting independent travel even under poor lighting conditions:
Module 8
Poor Lighting Conditions:
Independence at Night
In Dim Light and With Glare
OBJECTIVE: The student’s independence will be consistent regardless of lighting conditions—including glare, inconsistent lighting, dim lighting, and day vs. night.
AGE OF STUDENT: All ages (Note: Ages are mentioned in relation to circumstances given in a particular Example—e.g., recess in an elementary school. Concepts and techniques apply to all ages.
Manner of presentation would be altered according to the student’s maturity.)
PRIMARY SKILL EMPHASIS:
Attitudes toward blindness
Understanding vision and partial vision
Detecting step-downs or drop-offs
Flexibility and confidence
General travel
ADDITIONAL SKILL EMPHASIS:
Finding a person
In a crowd or a line
Finding a seat
Responsibility and citizenship
Weather and temperature
SEE ALSO (Other Modules):
Inclement Weather
Visually Confusing Appearance
Sleep Shades
Walking Independently While Following Someone
Unexpected Drop-Off or Step-Down
Auditorium or Theater
TEACHER PREPARATION: Inquire about present level of independence in dim light and in extreme glare. Look for situations and times when the student could encounter these conditions during lessons.
REMARKS: Many persons with partial sight travel fairly well in normal daylight, but have significant difficulty at night or under glare conditions. A person may use a cane at all times, yet continue to rely mainly on the eyes for certain things—e.g., finding doorways or watching for traffic. Or, he may decline to use a cane in daylight at all, believing he “doesn’t need the cane unless the light is bad.”
The remedy is consistent reliance on good cane technique.
First, the student must learn techniques thoroughly while wearing sleep shades, not using sight at all. Outside of lesson time, he may supplement the cane with the use of sight when it is convenient. However, the cane remains in use at all times, and alternative techniques are relied upon whenever sight may be unreliable or inconvenient. (See Handbook, pp. 182-185.)
ACTIVITIES:
EXAMPLE 1: SUDDEN CHANGE OF LIGHTING CONDITIONS
(Primary grades)
“Mrs. Brown tells me that coming in from recess has been hard for you. People have been helping you find your coat hook and find your seat. Would you tell me about that?…
“Thank you for explaining. So, it’s very bright on the playground, and then the hallway seems awfully dark. It takes awhile for your eyes to get used to the change…
“Mrs. Brown tells me that you have your cane with you when you’re coming in, and we’re glad you’re remembering. I’m going to help you get the cane to work even more while you’re coming in, so that you won’t need extra help.”
Proceed with the following practice:
Have student wear sleep shades and practice “coming in from recess” during a travel lesson. Have him go in and out of the rest room; find his coat hook; find the door to his classroom; etc.
Simulate coming in from recess (again, with sleep shades) while you follow with a stopwatch. Everything must be completed in the five minutes normally allowed.
In a special extra lesson, do the same things without using sleep shades. Emphasize relying on the cane regardless of what is seen (or not seen) visually. Again, have the student simulate coming in from recess while you follow with a stopwatch. If he hesitates, trying to focus his eyes, prompt him: “Use your cane! Three more minutes!”
Observe the end of an actual recess, and note that the student arrives at his seat without extra help.
Ask classroom and playground teachers to help you spot-check maintenance of good habits.
EXAMPLE 2: LIGHTING IS DIM OR UNRELIABLE
(Middle School or high School)
Problem: The student travels well under sleep shades in various environments. At school, however, even though he has his cane with him, he tends to run into people in the west stairway and the north hallway. He has great difficulty finding a seat in a classroom if the lights are off for a film.
You note that the north hall and the west stairwell are rather unevenly lighted. You say, “I’d like to tell you about an unfortunate high school student I once knew. Although he didn’t see well at all, he refused to use a cane at school. One stairway, especially, was rather dimly lighted. One day he was going down in a hurry and ran into another student—hard.
“The other student thought he had done it on purpose, and slugged him. The blind student hit back, and they both found themselves in the principal’s office. As an added complication, one of the young men was White and one was African-American; each thought the other was racially motivated.
“They were both suspended for three days.
“Now, I am pleased to point out that you are not making that other student’s biggest mistake—not having a cane at all. If he had had a cane, it’s very likely that the other student would have given him space, or at least would not have thought he ran into him on purpose. There probably would not have been a fight. Just having a cane with you provides identification and prevents a lot of problems, as we have said before.
“But I think maybe you sometimes have part of the same problem: you may not be using your cane consistently here at school. I think sometimes you rely on your eyes and your memory, and just sort of carry the cane. Then when the light is poor, you run into people or can’t find your way. What do you think?…
“It’s been quite awhile since we’ve had an actual lesson here at school, since you’re doing so well downtown. I think we’ve been neglecting certain points, and I’d like to do some work here…”
Proceed with the following practice:
The student, wearing sleep shades, practices walking up and down the west stairway; going to an unfamiliar room in the north hallway; finding a seat in a darkened classroom (with prearrangement, in a room which is vacant at the time); etc.
If desired, the above is repeated as a special extra lesson without sleep shades.
Explain that you will occasionally observe while the student is going from class to class. You will not say anything at the time (you will just walk along casually nearby, and not make it obvious that you are observing), but will discuss it later.
EXAMPLE 3: AT NIGHT
(Middle school or high school)
Problem: the student never walks independently at night. In fact, he dislikes going anywhere at all at night. He travels quite well in the daytime, and while wearing shades during lessons; however, at night he hangs onto someone else.
Talk about daytime travel vs. evening travel. Emphasize that travel under sleep shades trains a person to use techniques not requiring any sight. Even if a person uses partial vision to some extent in daylight, he should easily be able to change emphasis at night and place more reliance on the alternatives.
“Imagine you are wearing sleep shades,” you might say. “You get along fine when you are really wearing them. Try imagining that you do have them on.”
Depending on circumstances and the student’s abilities, arrange experiences such as the following:
Practice in poorly lighted areas of the school, as in the Example above.
On a very bright day, ask the student to walk around outside and then come inside to complete specific tasks immediately (as in Example 1, above).
Practice outdoors when weather causes extreme glare or other adverse visual conditions.
Arrange a session after nightfall. This might be in conjunction with an evening conference; after the early sunset in winter; or by some other scheduling arrangement.
First, practice as usual with sleep shades in situations which particularly bring out the value of the cane: crossing streets, meeting unexpected step-downs, etc. Then continue with comparable practice as a special extra lesson without sleep shades. Urge the student to “imagine the shades are still on” and rely mainly on alternative techniques. Disregarding visual input is wise when it is unreliable or so incomplete as to be confusing.
The above practice (first wearing shades, and then immediately practicing in a similar way without shades in poor light) may be done without the travel teacher being actually present. A mature student may practice alone. Parents or others may assist. But the helper must really understand that alternative techniques are superior to the attempt to rely on inadequate vision.
In time, the student will learn to integrate the use of his vision with alternative techniques in the way most advantageous for him individually. But, especially at first, it is often good advice to say, “Never mind what you see with your eyes.”
It may be helpful to time activities with a stopwatch, record the number of hesitations, etc., both with sleep shades and without.
REMARKS: A student may comment, “I get along fine in good light, even if I’m not really using my cane. Why can’t I just leave it—or use a folding cane and keep it folded—in the daytime? I only need it at night!”
The Handbook discusses this question in detail. Essentially, these are the main points:
We never can be sure what lighting conditions will exist from one minute to the next. A light bulb may burn out; the weather may change; lighting may vary for any number of reasons.
If a person uses a cane only part of the time, techniques will never become automatic, polished, and reliable. Techniques will not be fully effective even when they are used.
If a person really cannot travel well under poor lighting conditions, then his eye condition is such that he actually would benefit from using the cane at other times, even though the need may not be so obvious.
The main reason for avoidance of a cane is the lack of acceptance of blindness as a respectable characteristic. When positive attitudes are attained, the subject is viewed objectively.
REFERENCES:
Willoughby and Duffy, Handbook for Itinerant and Resource Teachers of Blind and Visually Impaired Students, pp. 157-198.
Richard Mettler. Cognitive Learning Theory and Cane Travel Instruction: A New Paradigm, pp. 66-106.
Editor’s Note: Published by the National Federation of the Blind, Modular Instruction is available for $20 plus $9 shipping and handling. Readers may place a credit card order with the NFB Materials Center by fax at (410) 685-5653 or by phone at (410) 659-9314. Checks made payable to the NFB may be mailed with a request for Modular Instruction for Independent Travel for Students Who are Blind or Visually Impaired: Preschool Through High School (order number LSA01P) to NFB Materials Center, 1800 Johnson Street, Baltimore, Maryland 21230. This information applies to print orders within the continental USA only. For information about alternative formats or the cost for shipping to Alaska, Hawaii, USA territories, and to other countries, please contact the NFB Materials Center by mail, phone, fax, or by email at <nfbstore@nfb.org>.
Editor’s Note: Has it happened, again? School has started but, somehow, the orientation and training your child’s new classroom teacher was supposed to get about how to include a blind student in her or his class simply never happened. We all know that a successful school year for our kids depends heavily upon a well-informed classroom teacher. We also know how difficult it is to schedule time for that training. Here’s good news from the NFB Jernigan Institute about a program that can help solve that chronic problem. Mark Riccobono, Manager, Education Programs, NFB Jernigan Institute uses a question and answer format below to describe this new initiative:
Q: What is the online education program?
A: This new program is training on blindness provided by the blind themselves. The NFB Jernigan Institute has established a learning portal from which online educational offerings are now available. The first four courses include:
Introduction to the Education of Blind
Children in the Regular Classroom
Introduction to Braille
Introduction to Access Technology for the Blind
Introduction to Non-visual Web Accessibility
These initial courses are just the beginning of an extensive Online Education Program the NFB Jernigan Institute will offer. Through partnerships with parents, educators, rehabilitation professionals, university programs, and others, the NFB Jernigan Institute will bring together the unique consumer experience, the skills of professionals in the field, and the valuable knowledge of parents into an education program unlike any other.
Q: Who can benefit?
A: The initial course offerings are targeted at those who know little about working with blind students, Braille, and access technology. However, many parents will also benefit from content in these courses. Courses in this program can be taken for continuing education units (CEUs) through a partnership with the Council for Exceptional Children at no additional cost. Future courses will be developed to target specific areas of need which will be identified by the Jernigan Institute and its partners. Efforts are underway to establish an “NOPBC Parents University” under the Online Education Program in order to establish new ways of delivering the rich content and support that only the National Organization of Parents of Blind Children (NOPBC) and mentors from the National Federation of the Blind can provide.
Q: What are the costs?
A: Each of the first four courses is available for just $89.95 per course. The course cost is the same regardless of whether or not you take the course for CEUs.
Q: What does this mean to you?
A: The NFB Jernigan Institute Online Education Program provides parents with another tool to present to educators in order to raise their awareness about blindness and working with your blind child. Consider writing one of these courses into an IEP to ensure that the educators working with your child have appropriate training or simply encourage teachers you know to include these NFB courses in their professional development plan. If the current available courses are not ones you are interested in, the NFB Jernigan Institute values your input and welcomes your suggestions for future online courses.
To learn more, visit the NFB Jernigan Institute at: <www.nfb.org>.
You can also visit the Online Portal directly at: <http://learning.nfb.org>.
[PHOTO/CAPTIONS: Dr. Stuart Wittenstein, Superintendent, and Mary Willows, teacher, California School for the Blind]
by Dr. Stuart Wittenstein, Superintendent & Mary Willows, Teacher of the Blind
Editor’s Note: It has been decades since schools for the blind dominated the education of blind and visually impaired students in this country. However, despite the decline in the numbers of children they serve directly, the schools continue to exert a powerful influence in the education of blind children. This is so even if the level of the programs, services, or expectations in a particular school is mediocre or worse. Local schools, administrators, and teachers look to their state school for the blind as a model for programming and as a source of information and outreach services. It behooves us—meaning parents, educators, and blind alumni—therefore, to develop some means of evaluating these specialized schools. However, it is hard to put our emotions into perspective when assessing a school with which we have some familiarity. Our personal experiences—good or bad—with a school may or may not be part of a larger pattern. No school is perfect, and even the very best of schools may be the wrong placement for a particular child at a particular point in his or her education. That said, I decided it would be useful to solicit articles about schools that—from the NFB consumer perspective—demonstrate some highly desirable qualities. I was delighted, therefore, when Dr. Wittenstein and Mary Willows came through with the following piece that highlights two qualities that are especially high in my book: Braille literacy and consumer partnerships. Here is, beginning with a note about the authors, a description of the California School for the Blind:
About the authors:
Dr. Stuart Wittenstein is in his ninth year as superintendent of the California School for the Blind (CSB). A strong advocate for Braille literacy, Dr. Wittenstein was the Braille teacher at the Texas School for the Blind. He also taught the Braille and Nemeth Code courses in the teacher preparation programs of Hunter College and Teachers College, Columbia University, in New York State. He has written and presented on the issue of teachers’ attitudes towards Braille. In 1997, the National Federation of the Blind of California (NFBC) commended Dr. Wittenstein for his emphasis on Braille literacy at the California School for the Blind.
Mary Willows is a classroom teacher at the California School for the Blind. Mrs. Willows is a long time leader in the National Federation of the Blind. She has served as president of the National Organization of Blind Educators and received the “Educator of the Year Award” in 2002. Mrs. Willows has taught students with various skill levels including those who are working toward re-entry back into the home school district. Recently, Mrs. Willows has been teaching students who will use Braille in ways that are more functional.
History: CSB and NFB
The California School for the Blind has a long tradition of promoting the use of Braille. As Federationists know, CSB is the home of the National Federation of the Blind. Dr. Newell Perry taught math there in the 20’s. Dr. Jacobus tenBroek was one of his students. Braille was taught to all students attending CSB in those days. Dr. Perry emphasized the need for good skills. He knew from personal experience how important literacy was for the blind. He knew that Braille had made the difference in so many lives.