Someone said they were successful with this:
I was in the first training class in Orlando, Florida back in January. I feel late to the party because I did not understand how to navigate the APH Hive discussion board. Thanks to Stephanie Walker’s guidance and understanding, this butterfly has blossomed!! I am having so much fun with my adult students using the Monarch. The excitement on their faces when they feel the monarch appear, navigate the text and change the width of the space between the lines, and realizing the potential the Monarch has for the future and for future college students. One of my adult students wants to even help with the development and field testing of braille technology. He had a Zoom call with Stephanie this morning regarding this. I could hear the excitement in his voice and the excitement when we discussed the call when it ended. He is losing vision, although stable now, yet he will be able to continue in his field in a new capacity. He is so excited! I am attaching a picture of him (shown in the middle) showing the Monarch to two of my other adult students. The lady on the left does not have vision and the young man on the right is also very interested in technology. He is low vision. I am, myself learning so much about the Monarch everyday.
1 Like
Thank you for responding, Virginia! I will definitely look into this.
1 Like
Glow - I so enjoyed watching one of our students experience lines appearing on her display after we would enter a new equation in KeyMath. Although graphing is not a math skill she has experienced before, she realized that the equations were lines running through the axis. I look forward to trying similar activities with other students.
Grow - I need to use the Monarch each day over the summer so that I don’t forget the shortcut key combinations.
3 Likes
Glow: My 6th grade student grew self-conscious this school year with using his braille writer in the classroom because he felt it made him stand out. He requested to stop using the braille writer and use his Chameleon. However, we all know how hard it is to do math on the Chameleon. When I introduced the Monarch to my student it was a game changer! Not only was my student excited but his peers found the device fascinating! My student has been using the Monarch in his Science and Math classes since after spring break. We hook up his Monarch to a monitor in his classes so that the teacher can see what he is working on which has been a huge plus! I have also found that it gives teachers less of an excuse to not provide me work for that week ahead of time!
Grow: It would be super helpful if the Monarch had a strap. My student stated it was too big to fit in his book bag and would make it difficult for him to carry in one hand when he is using his cane with the other. We cannot wait to have access to the sketch app to start working on perfecting his signature.
1 Like
I have tried the Monarch and I really enjoy the fact that I can connect it to a monitor to help me navitgate it and to allow General education teachers the ability to see what the student is doing with his/her writings and graphs, which is great for immediate feedback. I love the tactile graphics as well as the math component to the Monarch.
I know that it is a brand new device, but as someone else shared earlier, maybe providing a carrying case or backpack that makes transportation easier. This really is an amazing product.
I agree that this has been one of my biggest “glows” with the Monarch as well! I support one of my students in Honors Algebra 2 Trig, and the class is doing a lot of graphing with sine cosine and tangent. When making these graphs on tactile paper, the class has moved on to several problems ahead by the time I get done making the graph for her. The ability to have the graphs displayed in the same amount of time that the rest of the class has access is game changer!!
My Glow: is that I was able to download a Sudoku puzzle book from www.bookshare.com & the graphics of the table the numbers is in showed up fabulously! (But of course the numbers are meaningless). My Grow: Is that I found a nine frame for Sudoku in the TGIL but it is not usable on the Monarch. Perhaps it looks great as an embossed version. I lookforward to completing Sudoku puzzles on the Monarch soon!
1 Like
As I’ve been using my Monarch over the past two months since the Baltimore training, I’ve had the most success with viewing, interpreting, and even producing my own tactile graphics for the device. As someone without eyesight who has been examining paper graphics up until now, I’ve been happy to use my Monarch and some accessible tactile design software on my computer for greater control and independence.
Just for some quick background outside the assistive technology realm, I recently started taking lessons in Spanish flamenco dance in New York. My instructor directs a dance company, whose logo consists of a portrait of her with her arms and legs forming a stylized capital “X” and head turned to the left, all enclosed in a circle with the company name written in all caps around the rim. When I opened a JPEG file of this logo on my Monarch, I was pleasantly surprised to make out most of the raised writing, as well as a low-resolution rendering of the dancer’s shoes, hands, and skirt, along with a profile of her face. All of these details were accessed when I zoomed in and panned around in the graphic, as the initial “overview mode” was all too blurry to say the least. I compared this rendering to an embossed paper version that I separately produced using the TactileView software from Irie-AT, and the embossed version seemed to be more convincing.
As far as maps are concerned, I much appreciate all the outline maps of individual countries available in the TGIL. As the vast majority of these don’t have state/provincial/county borders drawn in, I’ve searched for some blank outline maps on Google Images. Among the best of these was a “coloring page” with a map of India with the state borders (designed to be colored in hence the description). Opening a PDF of this image on the Monarch gave a very clear tactile representation with just the shapes of the states and no shading. “This is the sort of graphic that could be in the TGIL,” I thought.
Aside from these “glows”, I feel that there’s still much room for improvement in the area of multi-line editing of BRF’s. As a braille music transcriber, I was hoping to be able to use the Monarch for some of my work with formatting music scores, specifically those meant to be embossed on narrow paper (at most 32 characters per line). What I find consistently is an occasional extra blank line that appears on the display where there isn’t even one in the document, as well as lines that are meant to be centered instead being shifted much more to the left. In the recently released update, I was most pleased to see the option to disable the edit box brackets, symbols that take up space that could otherwise be actual characters in the document. But as of this update I’m continuing to see those formatting discrepancies. As far as continued growth, I’d like to have the ability to work with wider formats (e.g. documents with 40 characters per line). In these environments I would envision using the D-pad left and right arrows to pan the display past the first 32 characters on each line. At the moment it seems that any BRF formatted for wide paper has all lines with more than 32 characters wrapping to the next line of the display, thereby losing the intended formatting.
Along with these suggestions, I would also hope for the ability to enter page breaks in KeyBRF just as in KeyWord. That said, it would be great if these page breaks could cause the display to refresh so that the top line of a new page is also the first line of the display on all pages. All of this would make for braille documents that are more true to form and easier to proofread for formatting issues.
1 Like
And all the time for you that you’d spent creating graphs!
1 Like
Yesterday afternoon I received Jason Martin’s email about the field testing surveys for the Start up and the Chess. I teach adults braille. My student at that moment in my class has RP and can read large print. He is interested in technology (he is young). He was in my room when I received Jason’s email. Without any prior knowledge, I just asked him did he know how to play chess. The response was an enthusiastic yes. Before this he stated he was tired, did not want to learn the braille writer but wanted to continue to read the punctuation marks in the book. He came over to the Monarch with excitement and no more evidence of tiredness. I downloaded the update. Then when I opened the tutorial for the chess on the Monarch, he was hooked. He listened to the entire tutorial and saw what appeared on the monitor. He was impressed with the potential of the game on the Monarch. He is aware it will be slower for a person who does not know braille at all. Next week we will work on the survey. How exciting this was to witness!
Stephanie Walker reacted to your message:
Hello all,
The glow that I found with the monarch is the scientific and graphing calculator. I have been improving my Nemeth braille skills because this has been so amazing. If I would have had this capability when I was in college, I would not have had such a hard time in math. Statistics killed me and this would’ve made it all so much more comprehensible. My coworker and clients that I show the graphing capability are all stunned by the fact that they can feel the line or coordinates on a graph.
The grow I have is the Internet browser (lightning). I cannot seem to get it to consistently work. However, that could be user air more than the monarch. This device keeps amazing me at every turn. All of my coworkers and clients that I show it to our dazzled by its capability. I hope in the not too distant future, we can get these into every student and adult hands that need it. It has so much capability that it would benefit anybody. The 10 lines of braille alone is phenomenal.
I feel the same way about the graphing!
Lightning is going away. There will be a more functional browser at some point.
Glow:
- Ability to zoom in on a graphic that also includes braille labels so reducing the need for braille letter labels with a separate key.
- Ability to create and export a graph especially for higher level math without having to transition over to an iPad and use a combination of residual vision and TTS
- Partnership with Desmos allowed student easy transition to using the graphing calculator
- Having the ability to read multi-line or single line
- Double-tap zoom function
- Ability to open a PDF file
Grow
-
When refreshing the braille/moving to next page, sometimes the cursor indicator at the beginning of the line doesn’t refresh into a full cell, so it looks like it is part of the text rather than a place marker or line indicator
-
Fluent braille reader was distracted by the overlay because it would move/bubble up a bit
-
Had difficulty with navigation buttons not being on same plane as the triangle/circle/square buttons
-
Consider smaller arrow and + shaped buttons to reduce overall device size because the orange pops really well and the shape is easy to recognize with touch
-
Had a lot of instances where dots were “left over” from previous pages which was confusing because he didn’t know if they were part of the graphic
-
Student did not like the thickness of the axes - was easy to confuse with the lines that he graphed. Suggested that the axes only be as thick as a dot 3-6 line, regardless of zoom level, and make the graphed lines have the doubled braille line width.
-
Student did not like the large size of plotted points - difficult to tell coordinate points especially if points started to blend into one another because of proximity
My glow moment involved a student in 11th grade in modified standards self-contained class. I have always found the student to be bright and felt the classroom staff had expectations that were way too low for him. My glow moment could really be how engaged my student was with the Monarch because his excitement was really what it was about. However, I can’t help but celebrate that the classroom staff finally recognized my student’s capability after watching him engage in an academic task.
An area to grow is staying on top of the staff to find out what topic they are teaching next that way I can have the supporting files ready on the Monarch.
I love how you took an interest of his and turned it into an opportunity for concept development of motorcycles and a broader understanding of types of bikes. There are so many ways to incorporate the Monarch it is almost overwhelming. My fear is actually that I will under utilize this magnificent tool. I relate in the needing to grow in the area of creating graphics!
On May 1, 2024 I promised the AT teacher that I work with that I would bring the Monarch for her to explore for the first time before her lesson with the student. I updated the device right before the recent update of the start-up game and Monarch Chess. I had the teacher orient herself with all of the keys of the Monarch then asked her to tun on the Monarch and keep her hands on the braille display. As the braille cells loaded and the tactile image of the butterfly loaded I heard a SCREAM of EXCITEMENT. The teacher almost cried. She has been using technology from a young age and uses it very well. She had all of the skills and was very fluent. To see her excitement to finally be able to feel a tactile image of a butterfly on her braille display was a huge glow. As we explored through the home screen and navigated in the different Menu Option she most excited to explore the different graphic images. Within the hour of exploring she grew instantly with her navigation skills and started to understand what a scroll bar is and the purpose of it within an image, what the word zoom in and zoom out on an image means and much more. I shared with her that Monarch Chess has just updated on the device and she was excited to test and play. She was so excited and looking forward to being able to finally access the world.
1 Like
That’s always a struggle. If they use Classroom, see if you can be added as a teacher and then you can see what’s coming! I’m happy for your student!
GLOWs
my high school student has taken the initiative to learn the Monarch. She has been taking the tutorial recently and taking notes on how to teach a younger blind user on best practices! This is a big deal for this student as she has always tended to be somewhat disinterested in initializing learning new technology.
Tactile graphics are readily available by just switching programs. I have made several graphics and uploaded them to the Monarch - some curricular and some fun. I’ve even taken to writing jokes on for them to ‘find’ in a file so I know they are navigating correctly.
student is interested in creating own graphics which is encouraging to me.
GROWs
still unable to get into Bookshare account so that is a frustration. All info is correct but not getting books that are assigned.
the tutorial is somewhat glitchy when we get to the broken butterfly part. Student gets aggravated as the point and click doesn’t work as smooth as the other images.
relearning/reusing Nemeth. We are UEB Math people so relearning the Nemeth has been both a frustration but an extra skill for my student.
We are definitely growing. While I do not get the time with my Monarch as I would like (yet … summer is acomin) we are making gains and writing our own instructional manual so my senior student can teach the newbies.