SUBJECT: Helping blind students
DATE: 12/95


Merry Christmas Labbers,
I have a blind students coming into my 2nd semester biology course
this quarter and would like to know if anyone has dealt with this before
and have some ideas. I do have some models from Carolina Scientific for the
plant stuff which are in high relief but we do starch and glucose tests,
plant reproduction, cellular respiration and transport in vertebrates. The
animal development lab is also going to be interesting as we view chicken
eggs. HELP!!!!! We have about one blind student per three years but i feel
that they have as much right to a good and interesting experience as the
rest. Any ideas?

=======================
Alison Morrison
Dept. of Biology
Georgia Southern University
Statesboro GA 30460


We have blind students in our labs periodically and I try to assign one
of our undergraduate "interns" (one hour pass/fail course types) to be a
helper in that lab, and I try to releive the TA of some other duties on
the assumption that he or she will have to give special tests to the
student.

We also use models where appropriate, and sometimes, if there is some
sight, we use projected slides to get giant images of what other students
are seeing in the microscope.

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
Jean DeSaix
Department of Biology Coker Hall CB#3280
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3280
Work Phone: 919-962-1068 Home Phone 919-929-1580
FAX 919-962-1625 email jdesaix@email.unc.edu
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%


We are getting more hearing and sight impaired students every year and we too
are challenged (no pun intended) to come up with ways to give these students
a meaningful lab experience.

With the help of a creative TA and and excellent lab partner, we devised an
intro zoology lab for a blind student two years ago. Instead of models we
used plasticene. The TA and lab partner and technicians all made starfish and
tubefeet, earthworms and their circulatory and nervous systems, etc. out of
plasticene. Sometimes it was done a head of time, sometimes "on the go". For
the developmental labs (urchins and chicks) we also used plasticene and made
the various stages of development. There was lots of one on one work but it
worked! This student finished with a BSc/BEd and is now teaching biology to
visually impaired students.

She (our student) helped us create some tapes where we described systems,
experiments, etc. for other visually impaired students. We do have the
students attend a regular lab session and then an hour tutorial a week. We
were pleased with the results, despite thinking how hoking it was at first.
We are now not so frightened when student services calls to saw we have a "
" impaired student on the way.

Maggie Haag
Dept. Biological Sciences
University of Alberta
Edmonton, Alberta
T6G 2E9
mag_haag@ualberta.ca


One important question is whether s/he was blind from birth or it occurred
later in life. At least by that answer, you have some idea of what kinds
of background information can be used for your descriptions (e.g., colors,
sizes).

We had an exceptionally motivated student a year back who had been blind
from a young age. This made it very difficult to descibe things relative
to other things which she had never "seen." Purdue was able to provide us
with some useful tools to help her in the lab, namely a special pad that,
when drawn upon with a stylus, created a raised image on the pad surface.
With this, Colleen (the student) was able to "feel" shapes and proportions
like cell shapes and relative sizes of organelles. We also had at our
disposal a machine that would take any image on paper (or overhead) and
"raise" it onto a special page that she could then "read" with her fingers.

MS Word has a special font for Braile, so we converted many text documents
(handouts, overheads) to Braile, at which time we could send them into a
Braile reader supplied by the university. Apparently there are federal
monies (via the ADA act) available for schools to purchase such things for
special needs students.

Colleen also had supplied to her by the university a student "reader" who
would go with her to lecture and lab and act as an extra set of hands.
Colleen taped all of her lectures, while the reader took notes and
collected handouts, etc. to go over later. She would also explain the
overheads to Colleen as the lecture progressed and would speak into the
tape machine to supplement the lecturer's words.

Colleen was as active in lab as she could be. We wanted her to manipulate
everything the students did, including pipettes, physiograph equipment,
centrifuges, and the like. As she touched and manipulated items, her
reader would explain what was going on. Other students were absolutely
fabulous with her, being very supportive and helpful but not
condescendingly so.
We actually used her presence in lab as a "learning opportunity" and had
her work with a different group of students each week, exposing all
students in that lab to a handicapped individual. Boy, you talk about a
TRUE learning moment for those kids!

Colleen took the same lab practicals, quizzes and exams as the other
students. Her reader read the material to her straight-up, with no
interpretations or extensions of what the question asked. For the first
attempt or so, we watched over the pair of them, to make sure nothing out
of the ordinary was going on. After awhile, however, we realized that they
were full of nothing but integrity and maturity, so we left them to their
own devices from that point on, offering whatever assistance was needed.

I might add that Colleen and her reader are exceptional individuals, highly
motivated, extremely bright, with morals above reproach. I can't say that
these things would work for everyone, but our experiences with Colleen were
positive from all sides. For what it's worth, Colleen received a high "B"
in the lecture part of the course and a low "A" in the laboratory, using
the same grading scale as the rest of the class. She was recently featured
in the local newspaper as a lead story: Colleen is headed to medical
school.


Todd Bennethum, Instructional Coordinator
Purdue University
Department of Biological Sciences
1392-Lilly Hall of Life Sciences
West Lafayette, IN 47907-1392
Voice: (317) 494-8194
FAX: (317) 494-0876
e-mail: tbenneth@bilbo.bio.purdue.edu


I second Todd Bennethum's comments about blind students. One of
the best students I ever had in the general zoology lab at the U
of Calgary was visually impaired. Richard had a very small amount
of vision so I only had to make things big enough that he could
see them. He would look at projected slides a foot from the
screen. The first lab in the course involved learning the major
groups of animals in one lab. I gave him an individual practical
with living specimens to assess his abilities. He was presented
with 10 animals, each more difficult to identify. Richard
identified them all quickly. The last one was a three foot long
wormlike sea cucumber (Apodida)! He had never been shown anything
like it before.

The ABLE proceedings Christine referred to is Chapter 1 of volume
3 "Biology for the Visually or Orthopedically Impaired" by
Dorothy and Roy Tombaugh. They gave an inspiring talk at the
Stony Brook meeting which said look at abilities, not
disabilities. Birth defects and injuries affect people with a normal range of
intelligence. For many individuals, the challenge of day to day
living has shown them they can do anything they want if others
will not treat them as handicapped and will help them get around
physical obstacles. Joe Larsen invited the Tombaughs to the
meeting because he had worked with them over the years. Joe
suffered from a Chris Reeve type injury and spent most of his
life from a graduate student on in a wheelchair. He told a
wonderful story about a confrontation with a physiology professor
where Joe came into the lab and cut the legs down on a lab bench
so he could do the work. He told the professor to get out of his
way and let him do the work. An interesting story for a man who
became one of the few post docs of one of the most well known
insect physiologists - Vincent Dethier when he was at the
University of Pennsylvania. After Joe left his position as
Director of the School of Life Sciences at the University of
Illinois he took on the directorship of the rehabilitation
division for two years before he died of bladder cancer.

Fred Barthel of that division put a message on the Plant-Ed
listserver which I will forward to biolab. It asks biologists and
teachers to participate in a survey and gives a URL
[http://pursuit.rehab.uiuc.edu] for a web site. It may be a good
resouce for up-to-date information. It sounds like Purdue has a
similar division. My wife, who works with visually impaired and
other special ed students, has the following note on her bulletin
board. "Nature makes differences, Society makes handicaps" My
advice would be ask the student what they need and use the
Tombaugh article and other resouces to discover what tools are
NOW available to meet those needs.

Don Igelsrud

From: "Donald Edward Igelsrud" <deigelsr@acs.ucalgary.ca>


Biolabbers:

The discussion of how to provide laboratory experiences for blind
students reminded me of a successful botany lab I helped plan this past
semester. The botany lab coordinator and I were talking about ways to
present the different types of tree bark to students. It occurred to
me that many times humans rely too heavily on vision to collect
information about their surroundings, so I suggested that the students
be blindfolded. This would force them not to take tree bark for
granted--to "see" it in a new way.

The students worked on campus in pairs, one blindfolded and collecting
data on the tree bark, while the other was recording dictated
observations. Students took turns collecting data; each was to
investigate a minimum number of trees. They compared the depth of the
cracks in the bark with their thumbnails (previously measured) and
recorded data on texture, etc. of the bark. Much to the student's
surprise, they also found that many trees have aromatic barks. The
next lecture was then structured around reasons for the differences
they "saw". The students enjoyed the lab a great deal and, better yet,
learned a lot.

Doreen

Doreen J. Schroeder
Lab Coordinator
University of St. Thomas

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