There is not enough time to adequately help students learn proper techniques of exploration. In the general education setting, most teachers just briefly go over the pictures and don’t give enough time to have a blind student explore the tactile drawing in the books. If a student has a para, the para may give a description of what the pictures are, but students don’t have time to learn to explore and develop the required skills. In a special education classroom setting there is more time to be more systematic in the teaching of the skills necessary.
THIS!! And sadly it isn’t just the blind student who needs more time to explore the picture.
I agree, we spend a whole class on braille, but just touch on the graphic literacy. I think sometimes, we need to have more training in this area including something for general education teachers to understand that we need time to teach and it isn’t like a sighted person can scan a picture quickly. It would be interesting to time a proficient tactile reader vs. a sighted person to see how much time it takes to gain the information. We talk about how there is more time needed for a braille reader to read vs a visual reader.
I have to teach my paras how to do tactile graphics on the fly too, but that is not always easy for them.
You said it perfectly! This will be my 4th year as a TVI and I am only just starting to learn about digital tactile tools. Basically I started researching on my own because I felt I was not meeting my students’ needs with the graphics I was creating using basic supplies. Now I’m hoping my district approves purchasing licensing for TactileView. I will also be reviewing the BANA guidelines more thoroughly as I teach myself.
The pace of the curriculum is difficult to work with as my students require more time to review tactile materials. When possible I try to pre-teach some concepts during my pull-out sessions but I also need to make sure to leave enough time to work on IEP goals. Sometimes I am not able to meet with my general education teacher in person due to meetings, etc. and we are only able to email to discuss needs. When there is less time to discuss needs in person, my student may end up with gaps in their instruction materials.
- I have a first grade student in mind that I am going to be adopting a standardized layout for. In addition to blindness, this student also has some developmental delays which further slows his pace of learning. I often see this student struggling with prerequisite content knowledge which impacts his cognitive load. With my using different layouts, I am adding to that already large cognitive load. By providing this student with a consistent layout that is based off of BANA guidelines, I will eventually be able to spend more time pre-teaching content as he will require less time to learn the layout of tactile graphics. This will also transfer over easily to state standardized testing when he enters the 3rd grade.
This isn’t my response to the above questions … just my thoughts
I am sitting here going WOW! … 87 responses and most everyone of them discuss time being our nemesis. I know it is a BIG ask but collectively, what can we do to help each other help our students? Do we need a list of starting points for tactile graphics such as
-
The Tactile Image Library
-
The Decision Tree from Lucia Hasty
-
Braille Art with the Perkins Brailler
1 Like
I need your IEP statement rationale in all my student’s IEPs!! Thank you for sharing that.
- Analyze the tension between time constraints and instructional quality in tactile material creation. How do these competing demands shape instructional decisions?
Tactile material preparation can be time-consuming and complex. Time constraints play a huge role in tactile material creation. This means the pace of the curriculum and creating the materials quickly. We want to produce resources that are accurate, meaningful and specific to that learner, limited time makes this difficult to reach the best quality. Classroom instruction is very fast paced and the materials must be prepared quickly. I tend to focus on the most important features needed and exclude unnecessary details which can cause clutter or confusion.
Hi Kira!
I find that the teachers inform us of certain content with not enough time to prepare. Yes sometimes too much can become clutter or confusion. I find that super cool that Dr. Holly Lawson was one of your professors! I’m sure she shared lots of great knowledge!
Hi Jennifer!
APH has great resources that assist with creating tactile materials. I find myself also creating many by hand depending on the content and student. I work alongside some great coworkers and our braillist has helped teach me a lot about creating materials. The article “Tactile Materials in Practice: Understanding the Experiences of Teachers of the Visually Impaired” was full of great information.
This is a question that has been running through my mind throughout this entire cohort as I went through the modules. I went through a university program and received my masters in special education/visual impairment, but I feel like I learned more from the cohort than I did when I went through the program and I graduated in 2022. While I am sure there were some readings on tactile graphics (and I will readily admit I did not read everything I needed to because it was a lot), there was not a lot of discussion on designing tactile graphics. It was a broad overview with an assignment that required us to make a tactile graphic with materials around the house. That is well and good, but a lot of the information about the progression or even the different ways to teach tactile graphics were not really discussed. That information would have been good to start with before even making the graphic. I did not fully realize there was a full method to scanning a graphic until I was going through an Orientation and Mobility certificate program (just need to do the internship).
I would say the biggest gap I noticed in myself is that I did not know the progression and what was fully needed to learn tactile graphics. This can impact our understandings of what is truly important. Additionally, like others have pointed out in their responses, a lot of the advanced tactile graphic makers like embossers or even some of the older machines with special paper to raise lines were not discussed or explained beyond a “hey this also makes tactile graphics”.
Both make it hard for the TVI to truly judge what is important and what the best method to make it. Now that these modules are around, I feel like myself and others will be able to have a better understanding of tactile graphics.
I was blown away by your response to this question. Time has always been the hardest for me. I don’t always have someone else able to help me with designing graphics nor do teachers (despite repeated requests) provide me what they need me to adapt with enough time to do them justice. I love the accommodation you wrote in to share too. It makes me think about how I word it in my student’s own IEP.
I do braille art with my students as a fun activity. They love to choose which one they want to do and we will take some time during my service time to make some art. A couple like to color them afterwards, but I have had some that wanted to show off their work and were extremely exicted to share.
The questions you wrote are ones that I really think about too. I certainly have come to the realization that some of my students do not have all the skills to fully understand a graphic presented to them. I did not know how to help them until this cohort, but grad school didn’t really prepare me on how to make informed decisions.
1 Like
#5
I went through my TVI program 20 years ago. It was a brand-new program at the time. The focus was on braille literacy and Nemeth, with the standard anatomy of the eye and teaching strategies. There was no focus or even discussion on tactile graphics – either teaching or creating. This was all learned on the job.
I find that a big part of the decision making for tactile graphics depends on the materials available. Technology tools can be great when available, however, not all embossers are created equal. They are not all able to produce tactile graphics. So that is a big consideration. PIAF machines are very helpful but take time, as it is a process. Most of the time it is not available in the schools, which means more time is needed to get into the office between students to use it. Often, tactile graphics are created on the fly with whatever materials are available because other, more beneficial materials, may not be available.
I believe students need experience in many different forms of tactile graphics, as they will always have some variations depending on who is creating them. However, if there is a general standard that is followed, such as they key is always in the bottom left, I believe it would be much easier for the student to understand and spend less time in determining what they are looking at.
I agree that getting materials in a timely manner from the classroom teacher is a huge obstacle in getting our students what they need at the same time as their sighted peers. Materials need to be provided at least 2 weeks in advance so that there is enough time to create what the student needs. It is frustrating for everyone. The TVI doesn’t have the time to create the materials. The student doesn’t get the materials when it is needed. And then the classroom teacher gets frustrated when the student isn’t doing well.
Unfortunately, most school districts do not have braillists. At least not here in New Jersey. I have only worked with one student over the last 20 years where the school had a dedicated person, where the only responsibility they had was to create the student materials. Ultimately, it falls on the TVI or paraprofessional to create the needed graphics. And getting the materials in a timely manner is always the biggest challenge.
This cohort has been giving me a more informed decision about tactile graphics and I am blessed to have a good mentor I can call upon.