New Student Observations

This past week, I spent two days in a new classroom observing all new students and seeing how technology is being implemented in a new school system, county, and grade level. My main interest in this classroom was a boy who is blind. I had heard before going into this classroom that the student had more mental issues going on and was not only handicapped with vision impairments. I was looking into the possible technology available for helping him as a blind student and learning what technology he used at present in the classroom. The student is in the fifth grade and is in a resource classroom and does inclusion for one class period a day. In the mornings he has private lessons with a blind specialist at the school. These lessons were fascinating for me. All of his text books are in braille, and he is learning the braille contractions for letter combinations like th, ed, and the likes. For one of his lessons during the day, he listened to a book on tape about Paul Revere. During Math class, the blind teacher came back to work with him. He uses an abacus to do his many digit multiplication problems. I was so impressed with how fast he and his teacher moved the beads around and found the answers. I had no idea what they were doing or how they were getting the answers. On the second day in the classroom, the parapro was amazing and took the time to teach me how to use the abacus for math, too. The concept gets extremely complicated with the many numbers involved and carrying over of tens. It took me about an hour to understand and complete some problems correctly, and I could see what I was doing! In the afternoon, I went with the blind teacher and the student to work on his cane skills and mental map of the school. During this class period, the student is focusing on learning how to use different techniques for different types of hallways, rooms, and situations. Each hallway also has a name, so that he can know where he is and where he is going at all times. It is very difficult for him to memorize the different paths to get to different places. Schools are especially different because so many of the halls are exactly the same. He has to remember to read the braille numbers on the doors to make sure that he is in the right places. The main problem I had with the classrooms lack of technology for the student was in the afternoons. This is the time that the other students play on the educational games, but his only reward is to go listen to the others play which is not ok, fair, or right. There needs to be other alternatives that would be fun for him to do as well. No one wants to listen to other people enjoy their rewards while you do not reap any of the benefits from your own hard work.
The most I learned about Blind technology was from the blind teacher. I am going to look up the device she was telling me about that works like a computer, has braille that is removable and can read itself allowed. She said that the device is worth about six thousand dollars, if I heard her correctly. She is working with a student who has one in another area county. I would love the opportunity to see and work with a device like this one day. It reminds me very much of a Dynavox but for people who are blind. The teacher also has a program on her computer to make tests, write out braille, and convert anything into something for a blind person to read. I was amazed and impressed with what she did. When she is not working with students who are blind, she is brailling out different, books, tests, projects, and such for the students.
These two days of learning what technology is and is not available to make life easier for students who cannot see were great learning experiences for me. I am curious to see what possibilities there are for students who are blind and am interested in learning more about the technology available through some internet research.
(8 hrs)