Paige Ellis' Blog Assignment #12
After watching/reviewing Paige Ellis' "Blog Assignment #12", "What is Peer Editing", "Peer Edit With Perfection Tutorial", and "Writing Peer Review Top 10 Mistakes" I have learned that peer editing should be fun if you know exactly what it means and how to practice it correctly. I also learned that even though I believed there should not be anything new that I should really learn from these videos, I was sadly wrong. I did not know that with peer editing there were 3 steps, per se, and in order those 3 steps are compliments, suggestions, and corrections.
Another thing that I believed I learned (just because I guess I didn't really think about it) was that during the suggestion step you should make sure that you are being specific. Instead of being a "Jean the Generalizer" and being very broad with the comments and suggestions to my peers writings I need to say exactly what I have noticed needs to be changed, why and what I think it needs to be changed to because this will ultimately help his or her writing to improve and that is the goal.
Assistive Technologies
"The Mountbatten" on YouTube posted by fsdbvideos is a video describing and introducing me (and whoever else watches) to the Mountbatten, an electronic device used to write braille specifically developed for the blind, but can be used by anyone. It gives immediate feedback both audio and tactile-its like a printer for braille. In my career in the education field I would use the Mountbatten as a professional resource because of its ability to help develop an awareness of Braille symbols and characters both for myself and the students. We can use it to convert whatever we are talking about into braille and then discuss what we have learned. It would also be a great resource for me because of wanting to be a counselor due to all the conversations I will be able to start from the Mountbatten alone.
I watched several videos on the assistive technologies subject and they were as follows: "The Mountbatten" created by The Florida School for the Deaf and Blind in St. Augustine, FL, "Teaching Math to the Blind" created by Art Karshmer at The University of San Francisco, "iPad Usage for the Blind" demonstrated by Wesley Majerus, and "Teaching Mom What Her Deaf/Blind Child Is Learning On the iPad" by Denise Robinson. The videos had both a positive and negative effect on me. It was positive on myself because I learned new things like the issues that both the blind and or deaf people have with learning different skills (example: Math) and how technology is developed and then used to help the blind/deaf. I learned from watching the video "The Mountbatten" that a Mountbatten is an excellent resource for both students and teachers because of its' ability to give immediate feedback both by audio and tactile. It basically is an electronic machine that converts speech to/from braille. Its like a printer for braille. The Mountbatten would be beneficial in any classroom environment, especially for the blind due to its' ability to allow those students to participate and feel included because they could be. The other positive for me that I enjoyed learning about was that there are groups of people who dedicate their time just to find new technologies for the blind like as in "Teaching Math to the Blind". This video really helped for me to see and understand the problems and issues that arise when blind students are trying to learn math. Mathematics is hard enough as it is to learn with vision, but I learned from this video that being a blind student the simplest of math problems are even more extremely difficult due to the 2 dimensionality and using braille for learning math is complicated with too many troubles because it is linear in nature. However, Art Karchmer and his group came up with a way for blind students to do math as seeing people would horizontally on paper using small blocks, a scanner to scan the numbers on the blocks, and an electronic grid to place the blocks. All of which is in both visible and in braille.
When watching the videos about iPad usage for the blind I did appreciate and enjoy the fact that Apple has products that can configure many accessibility features such as VoiceOver, however, I felt as if the audio spoke too quickly and unnatural and I did not quite like it at all. I learned that ibooks was very important for blind people because it was a "mainstream e-reader that is accessible to blind people right out of the box" where other devices are not. The iPad is very easily used for both blind and deaf people once they do configure the accessibility feature(s) of their choice.
