TRANSCRIPT - A Deep Dive into Multi-Media Learners with Low Vision Ð 3/8/24

>>Kathleen: I am a teacher for the visually impaired and I actually was a special ed teacher before I was a vision teacher. So I've been teaching -- I don't know, 37 years. Something like that. So I did 15 years I was a special ed teacher. And I did mostly life skills and preschool. And I did like one or two years of resource room. And then back in -- it was 2002 we ended up getting three students in the district I was in at the time, three students who were blind. They all had RP. And it was also a very small district, like the one I'm in right now. And my director came and asked me if I would get my vision certificate so I could work with these students. And I had no idea what that meant. You know, and I said, sure. Not realizing that I had to do two internships and basically two years of training. So I did it. It was a last program through Stephen F. Austin that you could actually do the dual certification. So I did the dual certification and it was a lot of work, because I was doing both programs at the same time. And then I got my vision certificate first and then I got my O&M certificate second. And I actually did my internship there at the Texas School for the Blind, which was pretty cool. It was exciting to be able to do. Right now I teach in Washington State. I teach in a really small, small school district called Sultan or I'm at Sultan Elementary but at Sultan school district. Sharla McKeon is the Braillist who is on this presentation with me today. And she does all the Braille from home. And her Braille is extremely beautiful. I think she might be the world's fastest Braillist, I'm not sure. But she's really fast and she does a great job. She's with me today and she and I are going to talk together. And the reason that we're going to be talking about this together is because I'm using her daughter as the child to be able to train you for multimedia because I felt like the program that we did with her was really good at the time that I was with her. Now, she's not my student anymore because I used to be in the district that Hayden was in, but I'm not anymore. I'm in Sultan. So Sharla is here to help me and make sure I stay in line. Because sometimes I don't. Anyway, can you give -- do you have any questions before I begin? Okay. Then I will go ahead and start. Can you move the slide? Thank you. All right. So when I talked to Kathi Garza about this, she wanted something about dual media. And the reality is that all the students now are more than dual media, they're multimedia. So I switched it to multimedia. And when I talk about multimedia, we'll talk about the different parts of just -- the different parts beyond just large print and Braille. So we're going to talk a little bit about technology and how that can help increase access as well. So, any questions about that? All right. Let's go to the next slide. Okay. What is multimedia? I'm sure that a lot of you already know this but I'm going to go over it anyway. It's print, Braille, and audio. And it's content that uses a combination of different content forms such as text, audio-visual, digital text, hard copy, Braille, paper, electronic Braille, such as a Braille display, low vision tools, AI, screen readers, dictation, and images. So there's a lot of different types of multimedia. I really like using a lot of the other multimedias, especially a lot of the screen readers I think are useful. And a lot of the low-vision tools I think are also useful. I'm just kind of starting to learn how to use AI. I know there are other people that are using it too but I'm just starting to work -- well, actually I've been doing some of it for a while but not in depth. Can you go to the next slide? Okay. So when we get ready to set up a program for a student for how we're going to teach the multimedia for all the different content that's presented within a year, I always start with the transition. And the transition always begins spring of the current year for the following year. So as you guys know, it's -- I was reading a question. Sorry. It's always difficult to be able to get teachers to be able to get ready for the next year coming up. So I try to start that back, you know, in the springtime. So soon after Christmas break is over, I talk with the principal and I talk with the current teacher. Now, part of the transition can have a little bit -- they have a few bumps because sometimes the principal wants to keep their process the way it is. They don't want to be able to let the student or myself know who the next teacher is going to be. I like it that the student knows. However, sometimes if the principal is really opposed to that, we usually negotiate and I am the one who knows and the other teachers that are going to be her teacher for the following year. And then also her current teacher would also know who the next year's teacher is going to be. The middle school and high school it's a little different. We communicate with curriculum specialists, a Gen Ed teacher, counselor, resource teacher, and a principal. Because you're not going to be able to know who six teachers are going to be. Sometimes you're going to know some of them but most of the time I won't know who all those teachers are. No one will because the schedule isn't even made yet. So we try to get the curriculum so that we can create the alternate format and just kind of a schedule for how we're going to set up like the docking station, where some of her tools are going to be. How it will work for her within the environment that they're going to be in. And then Sharla wanted me to talk about parent IEP and school kit. Do you want to talk a little bit about that, Sharla? 

>>Sharla: Yeah. So a couple of things. The bullet before the coordination of Braillist with curriculum team, I'll touch on that really briefly. Basically what I've been doing for Kathy is I communicate with the curriculum team the spring before we know we need Braille or large print for a student. And we actually created a spreadsheet of all of the digitally-available curriculum that the district already has. And they then created links in that spreadsheet for each grade levels: English, history, writing, all of it. Math, everything. And that way it creates a database for your para or your Braillist to be able to just go in there without bugging anybody or having to send an e-mail. And they can go, okay, we know Timmy needs math in enlarged for September. And he's going to be in fourth grade. So we're going to go to fourth-grade math and then it's already available for the Braillist or the vision para. That's just a really smooth way to handle it so there's less energy on everybody's part of e-mails flying back and forth. And we found that that makes it a lot smoother when we need something additional from the curriculum team is they're more likely to be willing to cooperate and be really supportive. And it creates a good working relationship with them. And then the parent IEP school kit, this one's really cool. NOAH has created some resources and they're going to be linked later in the presentation for you guys. But there's actually an IEP database on there and so if you get pushback from either parents or staff, it's a great resource to go and look by grade level and see kind of what other students that are receiving multimedia have qualified for. And it can be really helpful just to bring an IEP and all of the personal information is redacted on those. You can bring an IEP to the meeting for the family or the admin. You can say there's others in the country getting this accommodation. It can be really helpful and there's a lot of other helpful aspects as well. But the NOAH resource is really amazing, so that's a good one for you guys to keep in mind. 

>>Kathleen: Thank you, Sharla. Can you go to the next slide, please? Thank you. Determining the media with the classroom teacher. So now that the teacher has been chosen, so let's say Hayden was going from first grade to second grade. I'll get together with the teacher coming up. And what we do, we sit down and we review the daily curriculum schedule with the teacher. It doesn't necessarily mean you need to know exactly what that schedule is going to be. You might not. But you kind of have an idea about what it's going to look like and how it's presented by the teacher. So maybe the teacher does reading groups and they do one of the reading groups might be a reading group where she reads to the students at a circle time. Maybe the other reading lesson would be the guided reading, which would be during an actual reading lesson. So you kind of get the flow of how the classroom is going to look or the schedule for the classroom is going to look for the following year. And then with that, I sit down and discuss with the teacher determining when Braille will be appropriate in the classroom, when audio will be appropriate, when large print will be appropriate, or digital with accessibility features, or which settings will be used. So, again, I'm working with a teacher. However, you have to think into the future, as the student gets older, the student is also a part of determining when he or she will use the medias for that classroom time. We may have something set up already and the student is thinking, well, it would be a lot better if I used an audiobook for this because I have so much content to get through. I'm not even getting it through with the Braille. So the student has some flexibility with this as well. But more so when they get a little bit older. Okay. Next slide. Okay. So this is our student here. And when I say "our student," it's Sharla's daughter but my student -- used to be my student. Actually, she still is. I do some private work for Sharla to help beef up her Braille just a little bit. So she still kind of is my student but she's not on my school caseload, she's on a private caseload. When we talk about this program and the dual media and how it's used, it's when she was in primary school. That's what I'm going to be focusing on. She has albinism. She has severe light sensitivity. Very, very severe diplopia. She never sees one single image. It's always doubled, layered on top of each other and it's really difficult for her with that. She also has low visual acuity. Now, her light sensitivity is so severe that when the sun's out, she chooses to travel with her eyes closed because it's so painful. There are times she is completely blind and even when she's out traveling, in a building or outside, the light really affects how she sees. And I think the doctor, I think the official acuity was 21/50. But that is the very best of conditions. Sharla, did you want to say anything else about this? 

>>Sharla: Just that her vision's extremely fluid. She can go from 21/50 to 20/400 based on the type of lighting in the room. Her doctor considers her legally blind but she can see a little bit better than legally blind in the office with dim lighting. That's kind of where she's at. 

>>Kathleen: Thank you. Next slide. Okay. So what I'm going to do is break down how I teach using multimedia based on the schedule for the general education classroom. So for the guided reading group, that reading group is not the reading group that you sit at the circle time. It's where she pulls back, she has that light level, and teaches reading through the reading curriculum. It's the general education curriculum. It's not a curriculum that I'm using. So here we use print only in the classroom. I use a different setting to teach the Braille. When we did this, we did large print and the standard book, separate from the books and images as it deteriorates the pictures. She was given a large-print copy of the book but she also had available to her, either her CCTV, which was an acrobat CCTV, but she had a large electronic magnifier, the Amigo. I think it was the first generation of the Amigo. It was a little bit bigger. She would read the print -- she didn't have to worry about reading Braille but she's just learning to read in the general education classroom for this reading group. And then the teacher uses pictures a lot to be able to refer to text. So when she needed to see the actual image, the teacher would give her the standard-sized book and she could use her acrobat CCTV or the small handheld electronic magnifier to look at the images. A lot of those books have -- they're difficult to see. You know, for our low-vision kids with all the lines and some of the low contrast, different abstract pictures can make it difficult for them to see. So having the standard-sized print with a magnifier was more helpful than deteriorating it with enlarging it. So, next slide. So the other part of the reading group that we did was circle time. And it was a whole group story time. So this way of teaching in the general education classroom was the same all the way from kindergarten up through fifth grade. Actually, I think it was fourth grade. There was always a circle time or a whole group story. Now, during this story time, the teacher would read the story to the student. She wanted them to get the content and the comprehension out of the story. But when we decided this, to have Hayden be a part of this group, I wanted her just to be able to practice following along in a Braille version of the book. She got a Braille version of whatever story they were doing that week. And it was a new story every week. So the Braillist would create the Braille and then at that time Sharla was also at the other district too. But before Sharla was there, Rhonda was the Braillist. She would interline over the top of the Braille. And the interlining wasn't so much for the student as it was for the teacher to figure out where she was. So Hayden would sit in the front of the group and she would follow along while the teacher read. Now, I had to convince the teachers that it was a good idea to follow along, even though she didn't know the Braille as well as she should have at that time -- not that she should have, she didn't know the full code of Braille. And so I convinced her that this is part of learning how to read is following the lines of print -- I mean, the lines of Braille. And being able to navigate a page and just learning to follow along. It also did help with some of the learning how to read as well. So she followed along. And so the page numbers were large and the interlining, it wasn't as large. Sharla uses a spot dot now so it actually makes a better interline over the top. But as the teacher read the story, Hayden would follow along and the teacher would check down to make sure that she was close to where she was in the story. And that helped her to be able to just move her fingers along lines of Braille to locate the next line down. If she had to go back, she was able to move backwards, forwards. It was really good for helping her with navigation with the Braille. So it was one area that worked really well for Hayden in learning how to read Braille in the general classroom. Because if you're not going to include Braille into the classroom, then you're not really teaching the student to be a true dual media user. This was our first way of introducing the Braille into the classroom. Sharla, did you have anything to say about that? 

>>Sharla: The only thing I would add is that it also helped with her -- especially when she was still just learning the alphabet and non-contracted Braille. Just her following along and every once in a while, while she might not know all the characters yet, she would recognize the characters that she was working on with Kathy in Braille lessons. It was really good to get that extra reinforcement in the Gen Ed setting as well. 

>>Kathleen: Yeah. That's a really good point because at the time, when it was being Brailled, I had them only put in the contractions that she had already learned up to that week. So then the next week we would do the other book and add the contractions in. Really good point. Thank you, Sharla. I appreciate that. Does anyone have any questions up to this point? Okay. If you do, don't feel bad about raising your hand or whatever, virtual hand. And I'll try to answer the question. Or Sharla too. Okay. Next slide. Okay. Silent reading time in the general ed. We're still in the reading area. In the classroom, when Hayden was in second grade, there was a silent reading time and the teacher had, you know, one of those cozy reading areas. She had a rocking chair there. And this was a time that I wanted the student, I wanted Hayden to be able to learn how to choose what kind of format she wanted. So we use three different alternate book formats. Two of the days she had to choose a Braille book and it was at her independent reading level. One of the days she had to choose an audio or an audio-visual digital book. One of the days was a standard print book with a CCTV or magnifier. We used an iPad and we had lots of books downloaded on her iPad that she could choose for reading. She was allowed to use the large-print font on the iPad. She was also allowed to use the audio version. Now, Hayden is a neurodivergent in another way. It's called pervasive developmental disorder at this time, right, Sharla? 

>>Sharla: I don't think she has an exact diagnosis yet. But, yeah, she's definitely neurodivergent. ADHD/autism-like traits. 

>>Kathleen: And she is going to be tested here soon. And then we'll actually have a diagnosis. For her, because of that, sometimes the audio was way too stimulating so she had to be able to have the option of being able to opt out of that audio if she needed to. So I wanted to give her some respect with letting her making enlarged print on that iPad instead of always having to do it audio. There are times when she was using audio that she would actually cry because it was overwhelming. We gave her that option also. One of the things that I thought was really important about this is teaching the student how to determine -- to make a determination about what format can be used. And that other formats can be used in more than one way for the same curricular area or the assignment. It doesn't necessarily have to be Braille during silent reading time every time because Kathy Dalbeck said so. We want the students to be able to do some self-determination. Yeah! So question. So, yes, she did have a preference. When she was younger, in primary school, she preferred to use the print. However, when she got into fifth grade, she preferred Braille reading and writing all the time. That's what she wanted to do was Braille. In fifth grade she had a lot more autonomy. We let her go pick. If she wanted to go get her Perkins Brailler for writing, she would get her Perkins Brailler for writing. If she wanted to read a book in Braille, she would let us know what book she wanted. We could also put a book on her chameleon but the chameleon wasn't working well at the time so we didn't do that and there weren't very many cells so she preferred to have Braille on the actual hard copy Braille. So in fifth grade Braille, younger grades print. I'm going to talk a little bit about that. Oh, here. I have found that I spend less time working on print since my students are usually more motivated -- sorry. I lost the -- motivated to use their vision. Yeah. Yeah. That's what I was just going to say. So many of our students, they want to use the print. And it's one of the most difficult things about a dual media user. And the other thing is really working with the teacher to make them understand why it's so incredibly important that this student is receiving their Braille. They have to have their Braille. They have to have their CCTV. If their face is smashed into the book, you need to tell them you need to make a choice. You need to use a CCTV or you need to use the Braille. And most of the time even the print -- back in second grade Hayden would have that book pushed all the way up to her face. I needed to remind the teacher to tell her, when I wasn't there, that you have to make her make a choice. Do you want Braille or do you want audio? Do you want to use a CCTV? So part of getting these kids to want to use a different medium is making sure that the classroom teacher is really supporting you in the other medias. And that can be really difficult, depending on the teacher for the year. They have 30 kids and they're trying to get through their curriculum with all these students. So often -- and this is absolutely not really anybody's fault -- but a lot of times our kids get moved to the wayside and I feel like it causes them to just push their face into that book and just use print. So -- 

>>Sharla: Kathy? I was going to say that I think Hayden's tipping point, which is when she decided in fifth grade to use the Braille instead of the large print. It was because the year before we did this structured you have to use Braille this day and then you're going to use audio digital this day and then you're going to use print this day and on Fridays you get to choose what you want to do. It gave her some autonomy on one day but the other days she got that exposure and that practice. As she got more and more fluent in the Braille code it became easier to use. Not just Hayden but a lot of our students, when you're not fluent in something, of course you're not going to choose it over the thing that you're fluent in because it's a struggle. So you really have to get them over that hump of not being a fluent Braille reader to be able to encourage them to use it or for them to want to use it over the print. I know for me, if I'm really good at something, I'm going to choose that route over the one that makes me struggle, every day of the week. So you have to really get those skills equal for them to actually have a choice of am I going to use large print or Braille today. 

>>Kathleen: Yeah. Now I have had students -- Hayden wasn't -- this happened to her but not as much. They don't want to look different from the other kids, in their mind. And that's another struggle that I have with a lot of students, not just Hayden. And so here's another question. I have a first-grader that is learning Braille. It has been slow going. Her face is on the page -- yeah. Last week she -- I'm sorry. Now I lost the question. Last few weeks -- oh, yeah. That happens. You know, it happens with all the students. One thing that I do is I so believe so deep in my heart that when I'm one-on-one with the student and there's no one else around, just the relationship between me and the student is so incredibly important. And to remind them that it's okay that it's hard. It's going to get easier. It's okay that you have a visual impairment. Every single person has something that they have to deal with. And sometimes letting them cry -- I've had students cry. I know that probably many of you have. About their eye condition. Let them know that it's okay that they're sad. That they don't have their vision. And then push them back into the Braille and keep encouraging it and let them know it's going to get easier. I promise you. There are times that I have set up -- oh, my gosh. I had another student, which Sharla knows because she also worked with me with this student. She absolutely hated Braille. I mean, and she needed 72-point font to be able to see print. It was crazy. She came to us in third grade. We set up a really motivating behavior plan for her and it was a positive. There was absolutely nothing negative that would ever work with her -- not that you should go to negative first. But she would get quite belligerent and there was nothing negative that ever worked so we always did positive with her. She got to earn Barbie clothes. A Barbie, actually. I have another student who does Barbie clothes. She would get so many points a day for picking up her speed on her contractions. I would time her on her contractions and then we would go into the rest of the reading lesson. At the time I was using a combination of Braille too and some of my own stuff. And she ended up getting really fast and really good at Braille. So there are times that I put in a behavior plan that really motivates the student. Sharla, do you have anything you want to say about Joele? 

>>Sharla: I think in general, not specifically that student, but in general I think bribery works. You know -- 

>>Kathleen: Yeah. 

>>Sharla: Even with Hayden in her private lessons with Kathy, we have a container of jelly bellies and if she finishes a page she gets a jelly bean. It's that positive reinforcement, making it fun, giving a goal to work forward. Personal goals between the student and the teacher to earn something. It doesn't have to be a physical thing. With one student, it was a dream picnic at the end of the school year because she met all of her goals. Or you get to go for a walk instead of do Braille one day. Just fun things you can do to motivate the student that isn't just sitting there and reading the Braille. And then there's other things that you can do outside. You know, like fun Braille games outside that can be a reward, instead of sitting wherever you do your Braille lesson. And just making things a little bit lighter so it's not so heavy for the kiddo. 

>>Kathleen: Yeah, yeah. That's a really good point. I ended up having to take a leave of absence last year in January and I was gone pretty much the rest of the year and Sharla worked a lot with her and she did a lot of the non-material-type rewards for her and it worked great. Okay. We found we really needed to structure when she could use Braille and vision to make sure that her Braille -- yeah, yeah. That's a really good point. In the early grades, for sure, I think that letting the kid know when they're going to do Braille and when they're going to do print is important. And then I guess I'm going to call fading into teaching them how to be able to choose themselves and hopefully they get to a point where they're using all the medias fluently. Okay. Next slide. And I think I might -- I talk about a lot so I'm going to try to get this done in an hour. Content area for math. So for math we use large print with standard size available for like the measurement units. Those are really hard to get large print and then the ruler is longer than a 12 inches or whatever you're measuring is longer than 12 inches. We do use large print with the CCTV. We have large print worksheets we put on blew buff paper so it wasn't a glare for the light. It was difficult for her in elementary school to use white paper but now she's better at using white paper, so she gets white paper now. We got the large print math book ordered from the ORC. You can also do the PDF option for math for printing large print. So actually, Sharla, I'm going to let you talk about that because you did so much of that. 

>>Sharla: Yeah, so this is just tagging on to what I mentioned earlier with having that relationship with the curriculum department. And having that PDF or the link available so, again, you know Timmy is going to be in fourth grade. He's going to need his large-print math book. You can prepare that in May and have it ready for September or August, whenever you start school, ready to go ahead of time. And this really comes down to having a really good relationship with your para or your Braillist. They really are going to be the person that's going to be supporting you the most. And having this system in place makes everything so much smoother and easier for everybody so there's not a bunch of e-mails flying back and forth. It streamlines everything. Most math production companies have PDF versions of all of their math books and math curriculums and you can contact them if your curriculum department at your district doesn't have it already. And they will send you every book that they have in PDF form. And then you can just download those files and send them to your print center and order them in large print. We like to do math in color, especially in elementary school because it asks how many blue fish -- if you add the blue fish and red fish together, how many do you have total? If you can't see the colors, that makes that difficult. We always order our math books in color. And, yeah. It makes it a lot easier if you have the PDF. It's also cheaper for the district as well. So because then they're not having to order a large print version from somewhere else. Yeah. 

>>Kathleen: Thank you, Sharla. Okay. Next slide. Please and thank you. Content area social studies. So we alternated this. There was something like -- usually there was a reading sample provided for the social studies unit. It usually wasn't one a week. It was one every two weeks or every three weeks. So let's say it was Rosa Parks. We would provide it in Braille. If the student had a lot of usable vision, you can use the bold interline over the top. In this case, the student would be given the Braille but be able to be supported with the interlining. Like I do have to say though when you're writing over with pencil it's not easy to see. If you're using something like a spot dot Brailler to be able to print over the top of the Braille, you can make really nice bold print over the top. And I love that machine. It just makes a really nice bold interlining. So the student can read the Braille but can also check with the print if they need to. You can alternate print and Braille for lessons each week, if you choose. I think we did end up doing that and the reason we did it was mostly because the poor Braillest had so much to do that she wasn't able to keep up. And there was sometimes a lot of social studies content. So we ended up alternating a print and then the print Braille. The other thing that you can do -- I have to say that I want to be able to teach myself how to be able to teach the student how to do this better. But when the student does have a -- let's say a worksheet that has print on it. You can use the iPad. I did teach my students how to do this and I taught Hayden how to do it. They're seeing AI, which is available on iOS. You just take a picture of whatever worksheet is and it will read it to you. And I really want the students to do this when their eyes are fatigued. This one's been a little bit more difficult for me. Sometimes they'll just not use this piece of equipment. But it's so handy that I want to work more with some of my students to be able to use this tool because it's so helpful when your eyes are tired. And it's so darn easy to use. You just take a picture and it reads it to you. It's an amazing tool. I really like seeing AI. So, okay. Any questions about social studies or math? Okay. Next slide, please. Okay. Content area science. It's actually different. Large print with low vision tools CCTV and a hand-held magnifier. Hayden and the students traveled group to group this year, that we were working with her. Oh, it is? Oh! Seeing AI is available on Android now. I didn't know that. Thank you for telling me! I appreciate that very much. I got very excited about it. So in Hayden's classroom that year, the students traveled from group to group. And she used print for this. Sometimes she didn't even do the reading. Sometimes the other students would do the reading and she might figure what was going on in whatever problem they were having or whatever they needed to solve. Now I have to tell you that since then, Sharla and I together, we actually worked on developing ideas to make science equipment more accessible to students. So was it last year or the year before? I don't remember what year it was. We went to -- I'm skipping up to eighth grade now. Or sixth grade now. We went up to the middle school and we looked at what science equipment they had. And together, with the science teacher, we kind of determined what might work for some of these students. I think, Sharla, do you have the beaker with you? 

>>Sharla: Yeah. 

>>Kathleen: Show -- would you show them? 

>>Sharla: Let me turn off my background. I think it will be more successful if I do that. Just a second. Okay. So we made these graduated cylinders. My husband does 3D printing and so he actually printed these little markers of different colors. And they actually have grooves on the inside that hook on to the tactile kind of lines that are on a graduated cylinder. So they're stuck there. You can move them around but they click on. This is really helpful because then you can say, hey, 60 milliliters is the orange one so fill up to the orange marker. This is tactile and it's high contrast and all the things. So and these are so cheap to print. So if you know someone in your school community that has a 3D printer, happy to share the file with you. They fit on standard beakers and graduated cylinders and it makes a successful way to measure liquids when you are low vision. 

>>Kathleen: Thank you, Sharla! Any questions? All right. Let's go to the next slide. Okay. Content area: Writing. So in the classroom, the year in second grade, they had usually -- oh, they said they would love the 3D files. Maybe you could send the link to Kathi Garza. 

>>Sharla: I'll make sure that the school, TSBVI, gets a link to my e-mail address and you guys can shoot me an e-mail and I'm happy to send it your way. 

>>Kathleen: Thanks, Sharla. So for writing -- and you're welcome. Oh, in the classroom, there was a weekly project. So what we did is one week she would write with her hand, actual handwriting. And then one week she would do -- she actually used perky duck on her computer. And the reason that we didn't use a Perkins Brailler for this is because I wanted her how to use some of the electronic software that was available for writing. And I know that most of the time perky duck is probably considered for us. Oh, a 10-minute warning. Okay. So she did use the QWERTY keyboard once in a while. I did put it in here but most of the time it was handwriting and the Perkins Brailler. Oh, perky duck is not a translation program. It's an actual program that you can download on to your computer and you can use six-key entry to be able to Braille into the app. And if you want you can also emboss from there. But it's actually intended for students -- it's like a Word document for either us who are learning Braille or someone who is blind who wants to be able to write with their computer using six-key entry. Six-key entry is just a conversion of your QWERTY keyboard into a Braille keyboard. So you would use FDS for dots one, two, and three. And JKL for four, five, and six. Spacebar is its own spacebar and enter is the enter key. Their Brailler was six-key entry on the computer. By fifth grade she was choosing whatever she wanted. And she usually chose the Perkins Brailler, which was fine. To me it didn't matter. As long as she was choosing and she was using different formats that she thought were appropriate. You know, and not making excuses why she only wants to use print. I wanted her to be able to give a reason why she was using what she was using. So the programs, perky duck -- yeah! So perky duck is just go to -- oh, gosh. I forgot. 

>>Sharla: APH, I think. 

>>Kathleen: No, it's not APH. I forgot. If you type in perky duck Braille, it will open up a download. It will say "download perky duck." You just put it on your computer and open it up, just like Braille blaster. Oh, Duxberry. It opens up just like a Braille translator program but you just start using the six-key entry like it's just a Word document. You can emboss on it or send it as an e-file. 

>>Sharla: You use the first three keys on each hand on the home row and that's your Perkins Brailler. FDS is one, two, three, and JKL is four, five, six. Google says -- yeah, it's free. Yes, it is free. That's another very important aspect for public schools because getting things paid for is difficult. It's kind of a fun tool to be able to teach with. I like it. Okay. Any other questions about that before I move on? Okay. Next slide, please. Okay. So teaching Braille I did a separate area. I did not do that in the general classroom. I'm going to read this question. I used it when I was learning Braille. Yeah, so did I. Kaycee said she used it when she was learning to Braille to be able to practice. Yeah, that's how I did it too and it was really nice. I think I even turned in some my assignments with it but most of the time it was on the Perkins Brailler. We did Braille in a separate classroom completely. I guess you could call it a Braille or vision resource room. I worked with Hayden one-on-one. We worked every day, except Fridays. It was four days a week that we worked. And she used print in the classroom until she was able to do the Braille. And just like I told you, with the exception that as we push the Braille into, for her, she would use print until we pushed in what parts of the class that we wanted her to do the Braille with. So any questions about that? Sharla, any comments? 

>>Sharla: I don't think so. I think it really helps to have the print and the Braille being taught at the same time but in separate settings. 

>>Kathleen: I agree. 

>>Sharla: So it wasn't too much at one time. 

>>Kathleen: Yep. Okay. Next slide. Non-Braille vision related goals. I would also teach typing and low-vision tools and then the software and devices. And pull out. And then I would push in to show how to use those, when she was in the classroom. Once she learned how to use them, I would push in. There were times though when some of the CCTV stuff, I did teach her in the vision classroom. But we were short on time so some of this I actually taught in kindergarten. I taught her how to use her CCTV in the classroom. Some of it was in the classroom. Here's Hayden using her monocular doing an O&M lesson. I was also the O&M there too. She was learning how to find things on the wall there. Any questions about that? 

>>Sharla: I just wanted to mention I think that the push in really helps, especially when the students are first learning to follow along in that Braille, that initial introduction of Braille in the classroom. When the teacher is reading the story and the student's just following along to practice tracking and tracing. It really helps to have just even ten minutes at the beginning of the reading time to have someone sitting there, maybe like for the first two days, just showing them how you follow along and how you find the page number. If you get lost, how you pull it up closer, put it under your CCTV to find out where you're at. Push in really helps with that. 

>>Kathleen: Thank you, Sharla. That's a very good point. Okay. Next slide. Okay. Communication with the team. The student presentation for the IEP team. So I have almost all my students -- not all but most of them -- do presentations every -- well, every year, starting at about third grade. So what they do is in this presentation they learn to determine and explain what their eye condition is, what parts of the eye are affected. How it affects their vision and what their accommodations are. And then they have to present it. Here you see Hayden presenting to her class. But she also presents to her actual IEP team. So let's say she's going from third to fourth grade. She would present to her third-grade teachers that she's leaving, the upcoming third grade teacher, maybe a para, the principal, the school counselor. Sometimes resource room teacher, depending on who's involved in her team for the following year. This way students have to know what their accommodations are. If they don't understand their accommodations, they cannot advocate for themselves appropriately. Most of our kids have so many different accommodations that we can't expect the teacher to fully understand what all these are. And the student has to be able to understand them and use them. It's how they're going to be functioning in their life. So it's imperative that they understand everything about advocacy in relationship to their eye condition, the parts of the eye that are affected, how it affects their vision, and the accommodations that they use. Now, I have, in the past, I have gone into a school where a student -- I had a student one time who had a very tiny small amount of vision on the left side. When I got to see her, she was already in third grade and she had never been taught anything about her vision. She didn't know what her condition was. She didn't realize that she actually saw significantly different from her peers. And so it was a process to really start teaching her about her vision. A lot of times you'll have students cry during this time. And that's okay. There's a loss. And they are allowed to grieve that loss. And having someone there who loves them and understands them, like their vision teacher, is very important. So understanding all this is not just important for themselves but also to be able to be a multimedia user. Because they're going to learn how to use their accommodations and advocate for themselves. So any questions about that? 

>>Sharla: I did want to pop in and say it also helps with the feeling different from their peers. Their peers, when they do this presentation for the class, their peers understand why they're using the tool that they're using that looks different from what they're getting. And there's not as many whispers and questions and things like that. It really destigmatizes everything. Oh, that's why Hayden has the bumpy paper. It's called Braille. It really took away all of that for Hayden. 

>>Kathleen: This year I had a really unique situation, and I loved this. This was so cool. I had two girls that are sisters and they're at the same elementary school. And this was also their first time understanding their eye condition and presenting. So this year I had -- their names are Aliyah and Addalade. Plus they got to make candy eye balls when they were done. And when it was Addalade's turn, Aliyah came and they presented again about their eye condition, how it affects them. They hadn't known a lot about their accommodations so they only did a little bit with their accommodations. They're still learning those. They got to do the candy eyeballs and it really does take that stigma away. And it's not just her class but it's the fifth grade classroom and it's the third grade classroom. And the other kids can start standing up for those kids, like somebody starts bullying them in a class that may not necessarily even know who these kids are. So it's not just for the multimedia but it really helps with just relationships with students in the classrooms and the building that they're in. Sharla, did you want to say anything else about that? 

>>Sharla: No, I think we're running short on time. 

>>Kathleen: Oh, I know. I always go over. I'm so sorry. Okay. Next slide. Okay. These are some resources and I want to tell you though there's not very many resources on how -- well, actually there. There are resources on the methodology of teaching a dual media user. There are not many resources on how to set up a program and actually go through the motions of teaching it. So honestly a lot of this stuff that I've done in this presentation, this is stuff that I learned by watching another teacher or I made up myself. And it is one area that I would like to see more help with for all of us, just because we are so inundated with having to know everything. We have to know everything and it's just one more thing that we're supposed to try to get into a day for our students. So my point is there's just not a whole lot out there on how to do it. There's enough in methodology. But not for how. Sharla, do you want to talk about the NOAH school kit? 

>>Sharla: I talked on it a little bit earlier but there's a lot of resources from NOAH, especially for kids with albinism, but they can be helpful for any student with low vision. How to communicate with educators, IEPs that are available, and just the NOAH website is chock full of information about how albinism affects the eyes. I know a lot of students who are dual media or multimedia are students with albinism. That's really helpful.