October 17, 2016 TSBVI Webinar, Visual Arts for the Visually Impaired. ****************DISCLAIMER!!!**************** THE FOLLOWING IS AN UNEDITED ROUGH DRAFT TRANSLATION FROM THE CART PROVIDER'S OUTPUT FILE. THIS TRANSCRIPT IS NOT VERBATIM AND HAS NOT BEEN PROOFREAD. THIS IS NOT A LEGAL DOCUMENT. THIS FILE MAY CONTAIN ERRORS. THIS TRANSCRIPT MAY NOT BE COPIED OR DISSEMINATED TO ANYONE UNLESS PERMISSION IS OBTAINED FROM THE HIRING PARTY. SOME INFORMATION CONTAINED HEREIN MAY BE WORK PRODUCT OF THE SPEAKERS AND/OR PRIVATE CONVERSATIONS AMONG PARTICIPANTS. HIRING PARTY ASSUMES ALL RESPONSIBILITY FOR SECURING PERMISSION FOR DISSEMINATION OF THIS TRANSCRIPT AND HOLDS HARMLESS TEXAS CLOSED CAPTIONING FOR ANY ERRORS IN THE TRANSCRIPT AND ANY RELEASE OF INFORMATION CONTAINED HEREIN. ***********DISCLAIMER!!!************ >> Hi, everybody. Thanks for coming. This is visual arts for the visually impaired tactile drawing tools, and I'm Scott Baltisberger, outreach specialist and education of the visually impaired for Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired. So thanks everybody for being here, and this is the second of what we're hoping will be an ongoing series of webinars addressing visual arts with students who are blind and visually impaired. And I felt like this was an area that had not been  that had been somewhat neglected amongst education of visually impaired students. We've done a lot with students in the areas of math and science and technology and a lot of really wonderful things, but art has always kind of been  visual arts. We've done a lot with music and a lot with drama, but visual arts has to some extent been something that we've sort of pushed to the side and maybe thought of as not really being appropriate for many of our students. But my experience was that it was, and I found that there were a lot of benefits to it and I think it's important that we investigate what kinds of accommodation we can provide for our students in order to get involved in these classes. So here's our agenda for today. First we'll talk about the rationale for teaching drawings to students who are blind. And then talk about the considerations for the types of materials, the types of drawing tools that we can use. And then go a little bit more indepth and talk about tools which create a positive image while you're drawing and tools that create a negative image while you're drawing. And I'll get more into that later on. And finally, if we have enough time, there's some resources, books and web pages, that we can talk about if we've got time for that. So first let's just talk about the rationale for teaching students who are visually impaired. First of all, when and why do we do that? So you've got  the way I see it or the way I've divide it had here is to look at two different things. You have your art class, your special area elective which students would leave their general education class and go to. And the importance of that is one thing  we're mandated to give our students access to the full range of the general education curriculum so we really should be making a true and honest effort to make sure that art classes are available for them and not just sort of shuttle them off or encourage them to do a different class because we feel that might be more appropriate. Really it gets into issues of selfdetermination. If the student decides that they want to investigate visual arts, as we're calling them here, they should have  they should be able to make that decision on  based on their own preferences. It shouldn't be something that we sort of do for them. Then the other area when you're looking at art and drawing is the early elementary classroom, talking about grades preK or early childhood, prekindergarten, kindergarten, first and second grade primarily, because let's think about that. In those classrooms, most of what they do or a whole lot of what they do is based on drawing and coloring. Kids are always doing a lot of their assignments involve drawing a picture or coloring a picture or finishing a picture, all those kinds of things. So for our students to be fully included they need to have some way of doing that. I know when I was a TVI I was told when an assignment was to draw a picture of your family and label them and color them, I was told to just have your student make a list of who is in their family. So it's really not the same activity at all. And that gets into the integration with peers because kids when they start doing these activities they share the work with another one, so kids learn from each other as much as what they're learning from their teacher. So when the sighted children draw a picture of their dog and their dog  they color their dog brown or the dog has got a black nose, and another kid draws a dog that's red and maybe the visually impaired student draws a dog and it's red and somebody says oh, you drew your dog red. Dogs usually aren't red. Oh really? What color are dogs? So you get the whole sort of learning situation that goes on there. Looking at developmental skills and concepts, just what goes on with your fine motor and wrist, that's a real important thing. And the concepts that draw imparts. And this is an example. Let's look at an example of some? Early elementary worksheets. So these are just a few. I don't think they're coming out really well on the  I don't know if you guys can see those okay. But the first one is draw a story, so you can draw a story of what's going on there. And the second one, that's a math worksheet, again, where they're supposed to draw the  the number of items there. And then the third one is just a story sheet. You just draw a picture and then you write a story about it. So those are three real common types of activities and three things that we could use, we could integrate tactile drawing into for our kids. So looking at just some of the things that drawing teaches, you know, you've got your hand skills, your hand strength, your fine motor, your handeye coordination, concepts, spatial relationships, symbolic representation. All those things will apply for other areas of tactile learning and learning in general. And it's a fun way do it with drawing so those are two things that drawing can teach. And the third thing just creativity and flexibility. There's a number of studies out right now that are correlating student success in academic classes with inclusion in art classes. So there's something about the way  the way that a challenge or a problem is approached in an art class is a little differently and often is approached in your other academic classes. It's a little more openended and encourages different ways of looking at things. And so they found that those things have really helped kids who are in art classes, are included more generally and regularly in art classes, actually do better in standardized testing and in just their achievement in academic classes. So one thing I wanted to talk about too a little bit was just about the weather tactile drawing is appropriate  whether tactile representations of the visual world are appropriate, as we call the visual world. At one time I remember having conversations where people felt that it was not appropriate that  that people experience the world so tactilely that trying to express it through a line drawing was really not accurate and not appropriate and perhaps in some ways even harmful. But one thing I've been reading a lot, if you've got a chance to read this book, it's by John Kennedy, Drawing and the Blind. But he did a longterm study with blind artists and children who were blind and the point he makes is that a drawing is basically  a line is a border between surfaces. And so visually we know the difference between those surfaces, but tactilely you do too. And people have thought that tactilely you can't represent things that way because they've looked at tactile as being static. You touch something and then you have to look at it only one point, you're only seeing one part tactilely. But the truth is when you're seeing is tactilely, you're active, moving your hand over it. And strangely enough, that's the same way when we look at things visually. When we look at things visually, we don't look straight ahead, our eyes are constantly moving and defining the surfaces. And Kennedy did some really interesting work showing images that are drawn by individuals who are congenitally blind or born without any vision and there's a lot of correlations between what they represent in line and what sighted people represent in line. Anyway, that's a pretty interesting book. Pretty cool. Let's look at considerations for tactile drawings. I'm going to present a series of real common tools that are on the market right now. And share what my experiences are. And I wanted to know that we have the chat goings and if you want to make any comments please throw them up on the chat. If you want to come in and actually talk you can unmute your mic, just let me know and you can make your comments. So please do  if I forgot to mention something or you have information that I don't have, I would really appreciate it. I think I'm just now beginning on this road of making  focusing on tactile art and I really could appreciate the help of all you guys out there that have more experience and perhaps know a little more than me. Anyway, so considerations for tactile drawing first of all is do you make a positive or reverse image. So a positive image of course is while you're drawing a line will rise up  will rise up under your fingertips. You can see that image as you're creating it. Reverse image is more like you're carving it out. It's more like a wood cut or lino cut, something of that nature. So actually, once you finish the drawing, reverse image drawing, you need to flip your media over, your paper or what are you're using in order to be able to see the image. So today I'm going to talk about positive images and I'm going to talk reverse images. The second consideration is the portability and the ease of use so that is how easy is it to carry this thing around? Can you just pick this up and move with it or does it have a lot of pieces or is it really heavy, is it really bulky? And how easy is it to actually use it? Would a student, would a child need a lot of training? Would they need a lot of guidance in order just to pick it up and use it? Or is it something that you can just out of the  out of the starting gate start to use by themselves? The third thing is the versatility. Is that drawing, is that tool pretty much limited to that device? Is any drawing you create limited to just that device itself? So that's the thing about can you  how easy is it to incorporate drawings that you've done with your tactile drawing tool, with other media? Say if you wanted to do like a collage or maybe use water color or a wash or add something to it in that way. And the fourth consideration is of course bottom line the price. And for those of us who work in the school system, that is also often the deciding factor. So let's just jump right into it here and look at tools to create a positive image. And I'm going to start off with one that I'm sure a lot of you guys know, the APH Draftsman. That's available through American Printing House for the Blind and it's and I think it's on CODA's site. So it's very common. I think probably a lot of you guys know about it. It was originally designed as a drafting tool like for geometry, but now it's  I think for the purposes of art it works very well. So here's a little video where I'm going to show how it works. Okay. So there it is. Comes in that nice little box. It's a plastic frame as you can see. It's got a rubber Matt, got a little ruler there. So you open it up like this and you have a drawing film that you place on top of it and then you lock it in place like that so it doesn't move. Now, the stylus, a hard plastic stylus, I put velcro on mine to keep from falling out of that little reverse because I found I lost a lot of these when I was a TVI. So it makes a really nice line like that. And you can use colored pens if you want to incorporate color. Just about anything with a hard tip will create a raised line. You can even use a fork, chop stick. So it's really  kids really love to experiment with different things and see what  you know, what shape they'll make. Like real young kids you can do those early lessons. And there you've got the ruler that comes with it. It's a nice little device. The one thing I wish they would do with this, the Draftsman, it's not real heavy. It's kind of light. And I wish they would put some type of rubber footing. So when you're using this you might want to get a rubber mat or something or otherwise it can slide around on your table. It's a really nice tool. And that's the APH. And I think it's currently like $196, but you get it through CODA funds, and  so these are the drawing sheets that you get. I think you get 25 for seven bucks is how these come. Now, there's different places sell different sheets. I like these the best. They're kind of thick and they hold a line real well. There's other places that sell their own tactile drawing sheets and we'll talk about those in a minute. Okay. So the next device is the Intact Sketchpad. Now, this one comes through National Federation of the Blind. And it's really kind of the same device, the same principles as the Draftsman. That's not it! [Laughter]. I'm sorry, they brought up the video. So this is it. The Intact Sketchpad. And let's look at this video. There it is. Same principle. It's got a plastic frame and a rubber mat in the middle. The nice  nice touch is that your stylus is inside the frame and it uses magnets. The APH Draftsman just has clips so it has magnets and holds it down on all our sides so it holds it really nice. And on the back it's got rubber feet. So it's  the device overall is heavier and more solid than the Draftsman. The Intact is selling for I think 125 bucks, but really nice line. Creates very nice lines. I'm not sure how long this has been on the market. I know I didn't have it when I was a TVI. I would have looked to. There's also  and this I haven't seen, and it's an eraser that you can use with it. The eraser is 150 bucks. So I haven't had a chance to look it. I would really like to see, but it would be really nice because that is one of the drawbacks of tactile drawing  tactile drawing pads is once it's on there, it's on there. You can't take it off, except evidently with the tactile sketchpad. I think it works through heat, it actually shrinks the paper back so you've erased your line. So that's Intact Sketchpad. Like that. And next Sensational Blackboard. So this is the Sensational Blackboard and this is sold by Sensational Books of Lakewood, Colorado. And Ann Cunningham, who many of you guys may know or know of who has done a lot of work in tactile art, she does some really nice  she's an artist who does really nice tactile  creates tactile art herself. This actually won an award from NFB and it's really simple, elegant, very thin, very light and it's basically just a plastic sheet with a thin rubber mat on it. Very, very portable, very easy to use. And very affordable. It's 50 bucks. And you could actually have several of these. If you wanted one of these in your classroom, one in your art room, the orientation mobility instructor could use one. And here it is. So Amanda wants to know does the Intact Sketchpad use the same paper as the APH Draftsman? And yes, it does. All of these tactile positive image tools use the same  can use the same paper. So you see the Sensational doesn't have like a clip on it like the other two did, the Intact, the APH, but the surface is really sticky. It really holds the paper well. You notice on this one I'm actually using the APH drawing paper. So that works well with this pad. And I want to point out if you want to use these to create a reverse image, so really with any of the positive image papers, you could also use regular paper or Braille paper. This is a piece of regular paper. The other was a piece of Braille paper. You could use it to create a negative image if you're low on drawing film. So yeah. Let me show you one more device and I'll talk more about the paper. So that was the Sensational Blackboard. And now I'm going to talk about the Sewell Raised Line Drawing Kit. This was the one I originally used when I was a TVI back many years ago. And here it is. It's basically a clipboard  let me get it out, get it out of the box. So it's a piece of clipboard with a hard rubber mat on it, so similar to the Sensational Blackboard. Then when you put the paper  so you see this paper is a little different than the APH. So this is  it's more like  it's called polyester drawing film. So this you have to unscrew these things and then slip the film under. This polyester drawing film is very thin and very  it's a little bit hard to work with, like younger kids might have difficulty manipulating it. I don't think it holds quite as nice a line as the APH drawing film. But it does. So it pretty easy to use. And this is 35 bucks, $35. Now, those screws I felt were a little bit difficult. They're a little  a little bit more challenging. One thing  let me show you this. They also sell this, though. This I got through, where was it, Maxi aids. And it is literally a clipboard with the rubber mat on it. So this one might actually be a little easier to use for younger kids than the other one that had the screws. So here's the drawing film that you use with it. So you see it's a little  you compare it. It's a little thinner, a little more bendy and crinkly. This one holds up and I think is a better line. Again, all these papers can be used with all these devices and let's look at another drawing pad. So this one is the Tactipad. And this one  it's really neat. And I was able to get hold of one just recently and it's a much more substantial drawing pad than the other ones. In some ways. It comes in this nice case and look at all the tools. It even has more than this now. They've actually come up with like a grid that can fit on it and also a  like a circle  a circle  I forget what they call it. A circle frame. Anyway, so it's the same idea as the APH and the NFB one. And the sheets are a little bit larger. They sell their own sheets and they're a little bit larger. The other ones are kind of the regular eight and a half by 11 inches. These are a little bit larger. And it has the magnet so it holds it down on all our edges. And if you see all those on the side, those little knobs, those are used to hold the drawing devices in. And you can see it gives a really nice thick line. The Tactipad is very nice. It doesn't move around. It's got so much weight on it. Once you set it down you can really get in and do some intense drawing and it will not move. I've not been able to experiment with this, but you can hook it up and get software for it and attach it to your computer and make a digital copy of what you're drawing. So I think that that has all kinds of neat ideas, you know, for being able to and go back in later on and work on it some more, being able to use multiple sheets to develop a work. Being able to create something and then share it with other people. I think originally my understanding was the tactic  they were trying to develop something to use for tactile graphics, for creating tactile graphics for kids. I think that for applications for art, though, are pretty tremendous. It's pretty expensive., the Tactipad is. The price I got on it was $500 so it's a little bit more pricier. But if you could afford it and if you have students who really want to explore art, this might be a nice way to go. The Tactipad. Ann Cunningham says if you draw a little harder on  Ann Cunningham  oh, hi, Ann. I didn't realize you were here. Ann was the designer of the Sensational Blackboard. She says if you draw a little harder on the copy paper it will pop the line up so that you can have a positive line in paper. So yes, she's saying if you do really bear down with your mark he, you can draw a positive line on  you're talking about just regular like copy paper or Braille paper, Ann? Yes, Ann says yes. Okay. If I  let's see. I don't have any Braille paper or copy paper or I would explore that. Actually, I do. Let me use this stylus. You're right. It's not a real heavy thick line like you were seeing with the  like with the other paper, with the tactile drawing film, but it does create a line, you know, so if you  that's all you've got available or you want to create something to use  be able to go and back with water color and do some more work, this might be a nice way to go. Thanks, Ann, I really appreciate that. See, I've already learned something new. Michael Coleman is talking about Terraskin made from stone art paper and plastic coated to get really good raised lines on any of the drawing kits. I'm not familiar with Terraskin, but I would love to talk with you some more about that, Mike. By the way, hi, Mike. And  oh, the aluminum foil I'm going to show in just a minute, but I didn't realize you could use that on the drawing to get a raised line. Excellent, okay. Well, let me see. I think I have  oh, yeah, I do. Here's the aluminum foil. So I'm going to use this with I know, Mike, the NFB machine. I don't know if you can see that, a little bit of a line. To me it's more of an incised line. I can feel it. I definitely get a tactile sense from that, but it feels more like an incised line to me. Anyway, let's talk more about that. Moving right along  one more tool for getting the raised line is a Swail dot convert inverter. And this has like a little harpoon, so what you have is a rubber pad and you put your paper and you press it and this little barb comes out so you can set your paper on it. You can use Braille paper or copy paper. Either one will work. Braille paper will give you a nicer line, and you just use this to make a raised line. It's kind of tedious, you know. And I don't know, it's kind of maybe pushing the idea of drawing, but it's a nice little tool to have in your kit, and it's 45 bucks. The other thing is the pad, the rubber pad that comes with the Swail Dot Inverter, you can get it for about $11 of. And in a pinch if you really need a drawing tool, a really cheap drawing tool, you can get the rubber pad and the paper and it will work just fine. This rubber pad by itself will work just fine to create raised line drawings. Oh, okay. So Mike wanted it clear that Intact is made by his company, which is EASY, LLC and NFB is part owner of the company and you can get it there. NFB doesn't actually make it is what I'm understanding. That's what I'm trying to clear up. Last thing, I believe it's the last thing I'm going to talk about as far as positive image is Quick Draw Paper. And this is also  this is another APH product, and it is specially treated paper and what they say is any time you draw on it with any type of waterbased marker you will get a raised line. It's $35 for 10 sheets. It's a little expensive, I felt. It's easy to use, those. Those are the markers that came with it. I didn't think they worked that well. What I thought worked better was like a brush with water when I did that I got a really substantial  what happens is the water causes the paper to swell up. Hilary Keys says you can use both sides and that helps a bit on price. Hi, Hilary. So it's real easy to use and real portable. Real good in a pinch, I think. It would be interesting to see how  I haven't used that a lot. It would be interesting  I wonder how it would work with mixed media, how to work water colors. I know I just used with a water on it and made  swelled up really huge. It actually swelled up both sides. It might be neat to draw the Quick draw paper and then also use some of the other tools to create lines on it. Hilary says that with that Quick Draw Paper the thick wedge highlighters work pretty well too. Fink I used a heavier highlighter, a bigger, fatter highlighter, I would have gotten a better line. So that's the raised line paper. So now we'll talk about tools to create a negative image. So these are things that when you make your mark you're kind of carving into the paper, you're incising into the paper or to your  to whatever it is media you're using. And then you can see what you're drawing as you're drawing, but not really with the raised line. So really with the work, you need to flip the page over and have a look at it. I'm a little more partial to raised line just because I think it's easier to follow as you're drawing. That's my prejudice, perhaps. But it seems easier  rather than having to draw and flip it over and flip it back to draw again you just kind of stay on one  on doing it one way. But there are some  there are some good options for reverse image. And let's start off the first one is the raised line drawing board. And so here's the raised line drawing board. So it's basically just a piece, some plywood with a border around it. And it's got sort of a screen, almost like a screen you would get off of like your window. And that's attached to the backing. I don't think you can see it very well in this  in the video. And this you just use regular paper, copy paper or Braille paper. It's real thin, real light. Again, it would be nice, because it  it doesn't have anything on the back to hold it, it would be nice to put some rubber feet on there or put a rubber mat to hold it while you're working. So you can just use the same stylus. You could use a pen. Again, anything that you have around. And it creates a raised line drawing. The drawing is not a real heavy line but you can see it. That's the raised line drawing board. You know, you might even be able to make one of these. I haven't tried it. I'm going to try and see if maybe about  I was thinking about doing another session later on about homemade drawing kits. That might be a nice thing to try. I know there's actually instructions for how to make one online, I found. I'll try to throw that up next time we have a meeting. Okay. So next thing to talk about  oh. The raised line drawing board they sell that for 15 bucks from the Braille super store. Now, the tactile graphics kit, that's from American printing house for the blind, and that was  the idea with that was to  for creating graphics for kids. And you get this kit and it's got a lot of stuff in it. What I wanted to show you were the tools that come in it, which I think would work really well for drawing because there's a variety of them. Maria Salazar wants to know if I have any examples of studentmade artwork. I didn't bring any today, I'm sorry. I do have some, I didn't include them in this webinar. Okay. So here's the tools. And it's got  over on the left you see all those stylus  styli? There's wheels and there's burins and there's markers. And it comes with this rubber pad, the famous rubber pad that I was telling you about. And again, you can just  it's nice because you can create a variety of different types of lines, thicknesses of lines, types of lines. So here's a wheel. Different type of wheel. That's kind of  yeah, I think that in the very first video when I was showing the Draftsman, yeah, you can use  you don't have to use tools that are specifically made for this. You know, you can use a fork, you can use a chop stick, you can use a spoon, you can use just about anything that will make a line, make different kinds of lines. That can be kind of fun to do for younger kids, particularly when you're working on that just, you know, experimenting with learning about the world and just take different things and see, you know, one of the why did you can have when you're exploring like properties of objects, you know, what kind of image do they make when I draw with them? So that kit, the APH kit, costs like $284. Now, you can get just the tools or just the pad and it's a little cheaper, but another thing you can do, going back to if you didn't want to spend that much money and say you only wanted to spend two or three dollars, you can get a tracing wheel from your local sewing shop. So this is just  it's what it is. It's a plastic tracing wheel. Plastic handled, aluminumbladed tracing wheel from a sewing shop right down the street. It's not  it's really, honestly, the wheel is not that easy to use. I mean, you can kind of see I'm having to kind of like  it's kind of awkward. It makes a nice, thick line. Sometimes too thick, too deep, but it's a little less naturalistic and a little harder to create subtle images with something like that. And I found like the stylus really does more of that. So you can see that  if you get too carried away like I did, it kind of rips all the way through. But then again, you know, that being said, what you could do is take it and purposefully use it to cut out a piece of paper, you know, if you're going to do a collage, it might be neat to kind of use it for that. That was the tracing wheel. Okay. And the  like I say, the tracing wheel, just your local Jenny's sewing circle shop, they'll have those for anywhere from two bucks, three bucks, five bucks, really cheap. Now, I wanted to just  Mike had mentioned the aluminum foil and I showed you  I showed you the drawing film, the polyester drawing film. And I wanted to talk a little bit more about the aluminum foil. So you can buy aluminum foil, you can buy sheets of it. The ones I got, this particular sheet that I'm going to show in the video, this one came from APH. This is actually part of the tactile graphics kit. And so the piece of pretty heavy aluminum and you put it on your plastic sheet, plastic pad, and then you mark on it. Now, what's kind of cool about this or what I like about this is that once you've created your image it's very durable so it will last up under repeated viewings. So the one thing that can happen with tactile art is, you know, if it's on paper or even on plastic film it can get mashed out pretty quickly. But you see this is metal so it holds up. So if a student wants to create something and be able to have people view it tactilely, this is a really nice medium because it holds up so well. You don't have to worry about your art being viewed to death. And now  so that one is from APH. The one that I used earlier when I was using  when I was using the Intact Sketchpad, this one  I actually got these from Maxi aids. And they were pretty cheap. I think I got 25 for 15 bucks or something like that. You could also use just heavy aluminum paper, the kind that you use in barbecues and that would work pretty well too. I think a couple of people said they were going to come from  attend the webinar from some museum programs, and so this  you guys are doing accessible art in museum programs. I know like at meadows and San Antonio museum of art, I think Dallas museum of fine art, this might be a way that you could produce some tactile reproductions of art and have it accessible for your blind and visually impaired patrons that would be  that's pretty fast and pretty  relatively cheap and would hold up for a long period of time. Aluminum foil. I like the aluminum foil a lot. So that's  those are all of the negative image things that I wanted to show, but I wanted to talk about one more thing for drawing, and that is our friend the Perkins Brailler. And I just wanted to mention the Perkins Brailler. I didn't do any  a video of it or I didn't talk about it. I'm thinking about doing an entire webinar on drawing with the Perkins Brailler because it's really the nice thing about the Perkins Brailler, the versatility of it because it's what kids are already using, particularly in early elementary. They're already using the Perkins Brailler a lot, they're using it throughout their classes. And if you teach them drawing skills with it, for one thing it reinforces the writing skills and the reading skills, and if you use the Perkins Brailler it reinforces that, and it's right there. It's right at their fingertips and can you incorporate  it's very easy to incorporate text with pictures. It's very easy to label pictures. And I have some really nice Braille drawings that I'll share when I do that, when I do that training. But I just want to give a shout out to the Perkins Brailler before we go even though it's a little different than the other tools we were talking about. So Mike wants to share some images with us in the group. I don't know if we are set up to do that. >> [Off mic]. >> Nathan is telling me we can't do that right now, Mike. Too bad, I would have liked to have seen that. Maybe we can talk in the future and incorporate some of that when we do another training. So do any of you guys have any other comments or questions about the devices, the tools we looked at so far? Let me know. Please share. Okay. Oh, yeah, let's talk about some resources. There is something I want you  I wanted to talk about in a second here. Oh, Maria Salazar says what tools do you suggest for MI/VI students? In the area of tactile drawing, that's a real  it would really depend on the individual students who are a little bit more involved, this may not be the most interesting thing to them. Depending on how well developed their tactile skills on, you might want to start off with more hands on activities rather than going right to drawing. But I have had students  I have had students with multiple impairments that were also tactile learners did really like doing drawing, so I would think  I would encourage to you do that. There was another comment there I thought  okay. Amanda says it would be great to see some examples of students using those tools. Could you somehow email or share them with us? Yes. If you will send me your email and there's a  at the end of the course I'll throw my  my information up there. If you would send me an email I'll be glad to send you some panels of those. But right now  I do a little of bit  since we have a little bit of time left I want to talk about some resources, some books. And these are some I wanted to mention. There's a couple of books, art beyond sight, learning to draw, draw to learn, tactile graphics and drawing in the blind. A couple of websites, drawing with your Perkins Brailler and so what about drawing? So the first one is art beyond sight. And I believe we have a video. This one, unfortunately I just found out it's out of print. But it was a joint publication between American federation of the blind and the  what are they called? I'm sorry, I dropped their name. Anyway, it's a thick book and full of information about art for persons who are visually impaired. And this month is actually art beyond sight month, I understand, and they've got  they're doing  some of the museums are doing special programs for that but the art beyond sight have sections on theory and research, it's got sections about how to create effective tactile reproductions. It's got sections on tools to use for helping blind and visually impaired students create art. It's really a fantastic resource. I recommend it to people, anybody who is interested in teaching art to the blind and visually impaired or creating art for them. Unfortunately it's out of print and I think the last time I saw it it was like $100 on Amazon. Originally I think it was 30 or 40. So it's  hopefully they will get it back in print sometime soon. The next one I wanted to share, and this one is not in  this one has not come out. It's in development. Learn to draw and draw to learn. Mike, this is your thing, right. Mike Coleman who was talking to us earlier, this is something he's worked on. And the neat thing about this, the really neat thing about that is it's specific to a tactile drawing pad and it's how to teach students in a very structured way to initially begin teaching drawing. I'm really looking forward to that coming out. I think it will be a really nice resource for us. So Mike, do you want to say anything about the learn to draw, draw to learn? Is Mike still here? Maybe Mike left. Oh, okay. So I guess  oh. He says my mic is not working. Well, Charlotte wants to know when it will be available. You can reply in the chats, Mike. That's what I like to know  do you have a projected date for that book to come out? The end of 2017 so about another year. Mike shared the  kind of the rough draft, let me look at that, and  yeah, Mike says yes, slower than desired. That's almost always true. [Laughter]. Yeah. He shared kind of the rough draft with me or the working draft, and I really  it was really neat. It kind of went through just saying here's how you draw this shape, here's how you draw another shape, here's how you put them together to create a picture. On your mic working now, Mike? Oh, okay. All right. Well, Mike, lets you and I talk and get together and next time we do this we'll make sure we get you to chime in because I'd really like to hear more about your work that you're doing because it seems like you're way away from the curve than me on this thing. So I would like to pick your brain some more. Mike says I did a great job describing it. Thanks, Mike. Real quick, we're kind of running out of time. I wanted to mention a couple more books. The next one is tactile graphics by Polly K. Edman. This is also through American Foundation for the Blind and is also out of print and also costs around 100 to $120 these days. It's also a very thick book and it is full of things about tactile graphics. Tactile graphics in general, maps and charts and graphs, but also there's whole sections on art and talking about how blind children see and how they create images. It's worth getting if you're really wanting to promote art for the visually impaired. And finally we've got the next one  this is the book I talked about at the beginning, Jon Kennedy and drawing and the blind. If you're a tactile drawing nerd you might like to have a look at this. It was published in 1993 so it's a little old, but I haven't seen anything more recent. But it has a lot of neat information about the tactile graphics, tactile perception and tactical drawing. And the final two books, this is drawing with your Perkins Brailler through APH. I'm going to present and talk more about that when I do the drawing with your Perkins Brailler webinar. But it's got a lot of formulas for how to draw images. You know, like a Christmas tree, a turtle, a bear, things like that. It can be fun for kids. It's a little bit  it's very structured. It's very teacher driven. But kids might  a lot of kids might really enjoy that. And it would be good practice. It's something fun to do with your Braille writer, but it's not really  it's not really creative in the sense that art maybe would be. And last of all, this is a  this is something you can download from the web. All these things  if you guys download the handout that goes with this webinar, all this stuff is on that webinar, is on that handout. So you will be able to get that  you can find the website, you can find where to buy it or where to look for it. This has a bunch of drawings that you can do with your Perkins Brailler. So that's that. So anyway, we're just about out of time, but I wanted to say before I go, I want to give you my contact info. So if you would like to be included in any group emails, I'm going to try to start a regular email out about the art of art instruction. You can send me a chat or email. That's my address, baltisbergers@tsbvi.edu. If you have any information to share about tactile art or about art instruction, anything about art for the blind and visually impaired students, I would love to hear about it and disseminate it further. And also, if any of you guys are working with students in the area of art and would like to share, I would be glad to come out and do a school consultation with you or just work together with you in maybe presenting some of the things that your kids are doing out there. I think the more we can share this information, the better it will get for our students in the area of arts. I know I've gotten quite a few calls recently or in the past few years since I've been in outreach of people saying, you know, what's up with art teachers how to get a student? And they don't know what to do. And even the teachers of visually impaired aren't sure what to do because there hasn't been a lot of sharing in my experience in that area. So anyway, that was my presentation. Final words, Michael Coleman says he is behind Ann Cunningham on the curve and many ears. I am too. Please share that n. Thank you for being here today. And you guys have a great week.