My Notes from class April 7

T560 Notes
Monday, April 7, 2008

We tend to think of educational needs like a medical model--triage...but this neglects the change in medicine away
from crisis management to public health model that figures out what triggers the problem and then try to prevent it.
Education needs to work on anticipatory aids rather than patching things up when the fail totally for someone.

curriculum is non-responsive to individual differences

What is different about images? Art does not read like a sentence. you see the whole, as well as details.

different to view the parts from the whole...can view the parts sequentially and separately, but also SIMULTANEOUSLY
view the whole--(picture of sitting room and chair). A blind person can only see things point by point, so need to
find ways presenting two-handed information...one hand gets the whole picture, the other details.

text tends to be sequential, which is better than oral, which is sequential and time-locked.

images are good for
1) representing concrete objects or settings
2) representing the relationships between objects or ideas: illustrating or capturing their relationships--concept
maps, etc.
3) representing the relationship between things and their context--maintain both figure and ground
4) capturing simultaneity: eg. parts and wholes simultaneously
5) direct representation: not encoded, fairly direct and accessible

can recognize things in context--parallel info. actually facilitates, makes it easier to recognize in context,
plate on table, letters vs. words vs. sentence--priming effect. ex. two concentric ovals don't mean much alone,
but when placed in line drawing of table, silverware, chair, we suddenly realize it is a plate.
context processers

brain separates elements of an image...color, motion, even objects...like faces, processes them in different areas.
Damage to one area inhibits processing of the associated element

web site Face Blind--bill's face blindness pages http://www.choisser.com/faceblind
damage to the part of the brain the processes faces. he uses other cues to identify people. didn't know until he
was an adult that other people recognized others by their faces!

illusions as top-down constraints on understanding images--size, shadow, background knowledge about orientation,
etc.

background knowledge--old picture (damage) man, officer, military (inferred from clothes, hair, etc.)

alternate means of representation--
image to tactile transformation
tactile diagrams
finding how to translate images into *meaningful* tactile representations. Picture of woman in a dress, with raised
surfaces, does not translate to a dress for the blind people who tested it.

images...using words to describe...are we describing it for? what is a house? what else is meaningful or not to
them? making it tactile does not always communicate the content though.

have to know the purpose for which you are describing it before you can do it before it is meaningful. making the
content accessible should not delete the goal of the activity. Federal style house...if the goal is to count the
windows, should not say "there are 13 windows"!

start with the broad overview--big picture in context

focus on a few relevant details--see purpose
describe relationships and comparisons, facts
leave interpretations to the observer

image detective--website for how to strategically look at images.

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Final Project

cast lesson plan builder, especially for those who haven't made lessons before
UDL lessons start out detailed, but as you do more, they don't need to be quite so explicit
there are existing lesson plans online to look at as examples

can download Word template to fill in offline

what is an anticipatory set? thinking about what you are doing and how you set the stage for the lesson. what
background knowledge do the students have or need?

lab 3--should be getting feedback this week if you haven't already
lab 4 due next Monday

sections--Rachel and Yvonne will be doing one on turning lessons into UDL lessons--workshop format, so bring
projects and can have open discussion

Chris and Bart will be doing section on using images

for final project proposal, will be getting feedback this week. rubric will be posted
if you have trouble viewing the webpage, e-mail peter to get access to the documents
look at each other's book builder projects

final project due may 12