I used the tutorial with a student who was not a chess player. They had no trouble following it. The tutorial does an excellent job of explaining the rules of basic chess. It doesn’t go into chess strategy, but it gives you enough knowledge to play the game. If you are new to the game, spend some time going slowly through the tutorial, until you understand how all the pieces move. Also, when you teach your student, I strongly encourage them to use point and click to move their pieces. They need to have their hands on the display, constantly examining the game board, to follow the game play.
This has been a busy but exciting time introducing and using the Monarch. My glow is being able to introduce the device to a high school student. I also had the opportunity to introduce the device to TVI students at Salus University as well as a principal at a school for the blind. My grow is being able to successfully create and display a graphic (Orion TI-84 Plus Talking Graphing Calculator) on the Monarch.
Hi Jill!
There was certainly a Glow when introducing a braille student with a Monarch to most of her high school teachers last spring. The Math and Spanish teachers were thrilled with the capabilities for instruction in their classrooms. We anticipate a big Grow this fall in using calendars and planners and giving presentations at the high school level! You were trained earlier than I, so you have a headstart for the new school year. Enjoy your Glow and Grow this fall!
My glow was having a meeting with a member of my senator’s team to talk about the benefit of the monarch. It is awesome that it seems like APH has been able to get their request into the bill. It is not complete yet, but a step closer. I have also. Been enjoying the Chess game, and the tutorial was great to help learn the basics
grow is to make the coordinates on the graph smaller. Right now they seem very large. It would be nice if we could have braille numbers on the graph so that we wouldn’t have to have the speech on to find a coordinate.
Is there a way to connect the Orion to the Monarch or did you just enter the information to graph in both places?
Hello!
I have had numerous Glow moments over the last year.
My most recent Glow was observing my student download her Biology textbook from Bookshare after receiving a notification that her brailled textbook would be arriving a few days late. She was able to keep pace with her peers responding to questions and completing assignments in a timely manner.
Grow-She continually received error messages when attempting to read the table of contents.
I am able to place the Monarch in my rolling backpack, but would like to find a case that is accessible for my student, otherwise she will need a peer or a teacher to help transport from one class to another.
Our GLOW is that for the first time my totally blind student actually “saw” a zoom in of a graphic. This was an ah-ha moment for her. I told her to zoom in and she was amazed that the image actually got bigger.
Our GROW is in the math equations in key word. We are so excited that we are able to do more lines of math in one document, however it is still hard on multistep equations. We wish that we could see the equations already written as we are typing and doing the calculations for the next step.
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Glow: My students motivation to improve his tactile skills is increasing since using the Monarch!
Grow: My student and I are learning to play chess together! It is a fun learning activity that improves his tactile skills and challenges us both! It would be helpful to have print version of the directions or have the directions appear in print on the an attached screen.
Glow Moment: I have been testing the Monarch with a student on my caseload and his reaction has been good but I also took the Monarch to another town to visit a 6th grade student one of my colleagues works with. He is used to using a Braille Note or a PC with a braille display. When he touched the larger display of the Monarch and I showed him a few graphics he literally got up and jumped around he was so excited. We ended up sitting together and exploring the Monarch for about 90 minutes before he had to go to lunch. He was overjoyed and kept asking when I’d be coming back.
Grow Moment: I have been able to demonstrate the device with the other 3 TSVI’s on my team, I have shared it with a group of TSVI’s and administrators during our statewide working group meetings, and I have been asked to share it an upcoming conference in our state (Oregon) as kind of a show-and-tell demonstration for TSVI’s from around the state.
The Monarch has so much potential to change the lives of both students and professionals. I am excited to see the ways that my students find to use it.
Glow: My glow moment occurred when I was using the Monarch with one of my students in his braille class. He loves technology but often has difficulty remembering basic commands. My student was trying to edit a paragraph that he had typed in Key Word app. He had incorrectly typed a word and knew what he needed to edit. In the past, he has had difficulty using the cursor routing buttons of traditional braille displays. He usually does not get the cursor where he needs it to efficiently edit a document. He was, however, able to use the point and click function to quickly move the cursor to the necessary position to quickly edit the errors in his document. After his success with point and click for editing, he loves using it. He is excited about how quickly he can move the cursor now.
Grow: It would be great if the case for the Monarch also included a strap that could make it easier for students to carry this valuable piece of equipment. What I have done with the one that I received during the training in Texas is to put the Monarch (with its case) in a 17-inch laptop case. This has given me a way to carry the monarch and has provided an extra layer of protection for the device.
Glow and Grow
I partnered with an O & M specialist to create a map of the route she is working on with one of our shared students. We worked on it in Word using the drawing tools. It took a few tries to get it to look the way we wanted it on the Monarch. However, the student was really excited that we were able to make her route. She enjoyed using the d pad to move through the map. She wanted to add a landmark she had just learned to the map and was thrilled when we could do that and send it to her almost instantly.
Grow
We definitely still need more practice creating graphics. We did not figure out why a line that looked straight on the computer screen was either two or three pins thick in different parts of the line. Visually the PDF looked like a uniform line thickness. This made the student think something was going on in the middle of the line. I would like to see if I have any better luck creating something on a touch screen, but don’t have a touch screen laptop. Maybe an ipad?
Hi Julie, we are working on guidelines for getting the best results with making tactile graphics. One suggestion is to use a true black line and keep the weight consistent.
A 1-point weight creates accurate 1-dot lines, but some lines in a multi-line shape may be missing or incomplete. A 6-point weight consistently creates accurate 1-dot lines in a multi-line shape. A 12-point weight consistently creates accurate 2-dot lines. Horizontal/vertical lines may need different a different weight than diagonal lines. Dashed and dotted lines may be used for contrast. The “More Detail” filter might need to be used to view lines that are too thin
Stay tuned for more!
Good afternoon! The 6-point line weight recommendation was made during an earlier version of the tactile viewer, and I wouldn’t recommend it for single-dot lines now. I have found that 2-point lines work well for me. They double up occasionally, but that can usually be fixed by moving them very slightly, thereby altering their position relative to the Monarch’s pins. I don’t know why the weight of a single straight line is varying; that’s really weird!
I’m going to start with the good news or GLOW first 
My student is in preschool and new to braille. She is beginning to match some braille characters and how to use a Perkins braille writer. During our first lesson on the Monarch, locating the keys with rhymes, she was able to identify and locate all of the keys that are similar to the braille writer layout. She could put one finger on each of the 6 dot keys and find the space bar.
Now for my moment to GROW, she found it difficult to locate the keys that are different on the Monarch such as the action key after being introduced to them only once. I should have given her more time to learn the new keys before expecting her to find them on her own since braille is so new to her.
The lesson must have been a hit because she has requested that I bring the Monarch back for another lesson!
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Hello! I loved the GLOW that you shared as often our students learn parts of the whole. I also showed my students the “zoom” capabilities of the Monarch and they were absolutely astonished at the innovative technology.
I would love to have my student who is hesitant about using KeyMath on the Braille Note taker to take on using KeyMath on the Monarch since there are multiple lines that would enable him to view more text at a time as opposed to the limited number of symbols on a typical one line refreshable braille display.
Does the device have the ability to import a math document (Nemeth within UEB contexts) document with the equations already inputted and for the student to write/show the work directly onto the “worksheet”?
Hi Rosa! You certainly can - the Monarch’s Braille Editor is a great app for importing BRF files that are created using Nemeth within UEB context. Its limitation is that it is braille only - it does not render as print for a classroom teacher - but it is awesome for personal-use, multi-line editing and problem-solving in braille.
The Monarch’s word processor allows a classroom teacher to create a worksheet or notes file or test using Microsoft Word with its math editor, and it will appear on the Monarch in Nemeth or UEB, according to the student’s preference. The student can then type and insert problem-solving steps using the Monarch’s multi-line math editor and it will render as print for the teacher.
The glow for me has been my students growing in their ability to access books and tactile graphics. They are so excited and learn new short cuts and features daily. I am so proud of all of their accomplishments and their excitement about learning. When I have a student who is reluctant to participate in a lesson allowing them to complete the lesson on the Monarch usually aleviates the reluctance.
Glow: I recently provided training to several of our staff members on the use of the Monarch. The visual Braille feature that allows sighted people to track Braille on a monitor during a presentation was a wonderful addition to the training. Our staff also thoroughly enjoyed going through the tutorial, taking turns pushing the buttons and practicing point and click. Our patrons enjoyed this as well. Making the tutorial a gamified experience has really set it above almost any other getting started experience I have encountered.
Grow: Tactile graphics aren’t intuitive to some children and many adults. I have found that many of the graphics available in the APH library don’t make a lot of sense to me as someone with no vision with extremely limited exposure to graphics growing up. When zoomed out, many details in the graphics are obscured, too small to feel, or too crouded. However, when zooming in, the resulting zoom level is huge, takes up many screens, and is very difficult to conceptualize unless you are very good at creating and maintaining a mental map in your mind. Is there a way to have some control over the level of zoom available in the graphics? I understand that this is somewhat available for PNG files but not PDF files. More nuanced zoom options would help facilitate discovery when viewing a tactile graphic. Some graphics, such as the 50 states, could honestly benefit from even greater zoom options so that a person could only see a quadrant of the states or only experience one state at a time with point and click. Other images such as the dog really need more intermediary zoom capabilities. The same is true of mathematical graphs in the Math Editor. It would be great if the monarch could be programmed to keep Braille labels consistently and accurately rendered while changing the scope of the diagram or picture around them. These kinds of manipulations are more than possible in the world of visual images. I would like to see this technology used in implementing more fine grained and customizable zooming options for the end user.
I have a congenitally blind adult student in my braille class. She is in my class to learn to sign her name rather than signing with an “X” and to brush up her skills with UEB. She also assists me with teaching my other adventitiously blind adults learn braille for the first time. The topic of a football field came up. She has always enjoyed watching football but she has never seen an actual football field. With the tactile graphic on the Monarch she saw one for the first time. She thinks it is great and she thinks the Monarch is a great piece of technology. She never knew the football field was rectangular! There were tears of joy. She also learned what a mountain range was even though she had been to the mountains. She did not understand the concept of a mountain range until feeling the tactile graphic on the Monarch. What a wonderful machine!
Hi, Jenny,
Thanks for your response! I am trying to transition my student from using the braillewriter to experimenting using a refreshable braille display in order to complete math problems. It is so exciting to know that the student can insert multi-line problem-solving steps in order to show his/her work.
Best,
Rosa
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