Yesterday, when our Rise technical group met, the two Jasons, Bill and I were talking briefly about how Monarch can help younger pupils studying code or older students trying to master computer science.
I have several thoughts on this topic and would welcome more discussion.
First, to help people just learning to code, I strongly believe the Monarch needs a simple easy-to-master scripting language.
The original Braille 'N Speak had a BASIC language interpreter, and boy was that fun. So, so many games were written in BASIC, many ported to the B&S and others invented by blind kids. A blind child who likes to play games, but can be enticed in to actually writing games already has a foot in the door when it comes to building a career, even if actual coding will not be part of that career.
The modern BTSpeak from Blazie has a wonderful Python tutor and of course a Python interpreter. Again, teaching blind kids and adults how to think logically, plus solve problems helps them become career-ready.
The iPad has the Swift playgrounds, again for helping people learn how to code an iOS app. It’s accessible, and I can tell you quite addictive.
There’s probably stuff for Android, someone chime in.
And of course we have the iOS shortcuts app which is a very effective menu-driven scripting language. I tell people, both sighted and blind, if they want to explore learning to code to try playing with the iOS shortcuts app. No need to master any syntax but creating shortcuts helps you think like a coder!
So a simple scripting language for the Monarch would fill the same role. Maybe it’s a microPython. Or maybe, it looks like the menu-driven shortcuts app. Or a more graphical language might even work.
I think the first game I’d code would be a Simon game as that’s really easy to do and fun to play for all ages.
Regarding older students, I have some concerns. Instead of flow-charts, modern object oriented design often uses the UML language; so instead of manually drawing, these items can be selected from menus in a design app. Here’s agood intro, and if you are blind, use AI to describe the graphics on this page:
I wonder, could any of these UML symbols be reliably rendered on the Monarch? The problem with many diagrams is that simplifying them enough for tactile understanding works well for little kids, but less so for adults.
Another concern is that we must encourage the screen reader manufacturers to better support multi-line Braille. My programmer’s editors work well enough with the Monarch, but things could be better. I can easily switch to 8-dot computer Braille but I often want to look at code both above and below the line I’m focused on and find that I’m either focused at the top or the bottom of my Monarch’s display. Trying to get the scrolling to sync the way I want is tricky and often just doesn’t work. Thoughts on this would be helpful.
Reading technical books on the Monarch works great with a good grasp of Braille. But if you aren’t a wiz at Braille, and you depend on speech, punctuation isn’t usually voiced and the punctuation level cannot be changed. Luckily my Braille, both UEB and 8-dot computer Braille skills are quite good. But that’s not true for everyone.
Skematic symbols probably render faithfully on the Monarch as they are simple. So if you studied engineering that could help. But once you start designing any complex electronic circuit, I don’t think the Monarch will be much help. But for an intro to electronics, I think it would be fantastic.
Honestly the three big things I use my Monarch for are typing minutes in realtime in meetings and proofreading documents I write. I also use it to read technical books on bookshare. And when my boss makes me work on a spreadsheet I use the Monarch. But I don’t haul it out of its bag to write a few lines of code; I often just grab the NLS eReader out of my purse for that.
Let’s share some thoughts here about this topic as it was something our group would like more input about.