South Dakota Braillist Newsletter
South Dakota State Library
Braille and Talking Book Library
Winter 2002, Volume 4,Issue 4
Connie Sullivan, Newsletter Editor
Mark you calendar now!
From the President, Connie Sullivan
South Dakota Braillist Association will be one of the co-sponsors for Focus on Success II Conference coming in March, 2003.

Everyone is welcome! Individuals who are blind or visually impaired, parents, other family members, students, teachers, professionals in education, rehabilitation and independent living. The program will address education option and issues, vocational rehabilitation and adult services for individuals who are blind or visually impaired.

The South Dakota Braillist Association will be co-sponsoring two of the trainers. Betsy Burnham and Janie Humphries.
Betsy Burnham is currently employed by the American Printing House for the Blind as an Accessible Media Manager and Trainer for the ATIC Division. Betsy is a Certified Literary Transcriber. She began her career in the field of vision working as a paraprofessional for those students enrolled at the Maryland School for the Blind. After attaining her certification, she began developing the Braille production area of the Instructional Resource Center located at the Maryland School. She left the Maryland School for the Blind and her position as Tactile Media Coordinator after 15 years. In 2001 to begin her current work at APH.

She is a member of the board of the National Braille Association and is chair of the Transcriber and Educators Services Committee. She has presented workshops and has written and published many articles. She has just completed co-writing the Training Manual for Braille Transcribers Who Work with Publishers' Electronic Files to Create Braille Textbooks, for the American Foundation for the Blind's commitment to the AFB Instructional Materials Solution Forum.
Janie Humphries is currently the Director of the Educational and Advisory Services Department at the Printing House. Her responsibilities include developing partnerships with university personnel, preparing programs and the development of the National Instructional Partnerships , a project designed to provide training based around curriculum areas and the use of APH products in those areas. The department also administers Federal Quota. Prior to her current position she was a consultant in the outreach department of the Arkansas School for the Blind. She taught preschool, first grade, language arts and a summer program for fourth graders. She is a member of AER and has served two years on the International Board of Directors. She is the recipient of the J. Max Woolly award given by the Arkansas Chapter in honor of the outstanding former superintendent of the Arkansas School for the Blind. Janie Humphries was the co-founder of the "Getting In Touch With Literacy Conference".

I am working with Marge Kaiser to get the CEU credits. We should have more information on this closer to the conference date.

Attached to the Newsletter is a registration form, information about rooms, agenda and information about other presenters for the conference.

See you in March, 2003.


Attitude
By Charles Swindall
The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past; than education; than money; than circumstances; than failures; than successes; than what other people think, say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a company. a church. a home. The remarkable thing is that we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past. we cannot change the fact that people act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have. and that is our attitude.

I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it. Readers Exchange From Dots for Braille Literacy, Spring 2002. All rights reserved. With permission from the American Foundation for the Blind. A recent discussion on the brlhelp-afb listserve on mental tricks and mnemonic devices to help remember details of the braille code was collected and collated for inclusion into DOTS by Dr. Penny Rosenblum, who teaches personnel preparation classes at the University of Arizona. We all remember what the learning process was like as adult print readers learning a new code in preparation for teaching braille reading and writing. The following list will be valuable for new teachers and for people currently studying to become teachers and transcribers, so thank you, Penny, for submitting this, and thanks to the many teachers who submitted their favorite tip. They are quite creative! Ways to Remember Tricky Code Contractions: We call and, the, for, a, with whole word contractions the "royals" as they are special; they are the only ones that can be grouped together. I think of them as quite snobbish as they only stick to their own kind. The contraction for "ch" represents a mother and child (high dot and a low dot). The contraction for "with" looks a bit like half of a printed "w" with the shorter stem in the middle and the longest stroke on the right. That helps you keep it straight from its mirror image buddy, "of." Or you can see the braille "w" in "with" and the braille "o" in "of." The contraction for "less" has the taller dot configuration before the "s" (dots 4-6) than the "ness" contraction does (5-6) because "l" is taller than "n." The contraction "com" is dropped "com"-pletely as compared to "con." The contraction for "which" (dots 1-5-6) is the shape of a "witch's" nose. Rules: To explain the rule of not having two lower signs in succession without being in contact with an upper dot, remember "you cannot build a house with two basements and no upper floor." Another way to explain this is "you cannot leave little children along without a(n upper dot) grown up." Capitalization and Punctuation: The exclamation point guy has his back to the sentence, leaning over to yell at the next sentence. The exclamation point was a toughie for me until we decided that it looked like a dropped "f" which stands for "Fact!" (as in something that is definite and not in dispute). Likewise, the period is a dropped "d" as in "done." The capital sign is "married" to the letter so that students have to remember not to "break up the marriage" by incorrectly inserting things between the capital sign and the letter (such as open quotes). Letters and Numbers: To remember the dot configuration for "e" and "i" remember that "e to the earth, and i to the sky." The symbol for "f" looks like the top of a print capital F; the symbol for "h" looks like a chair, and the word "chair" has an "h" in it. I remembered that "h" stands for "8" and "i" stands for "9" because they sound similar. To remember the "g" stands for "7," I thought of the guitar chord, G7. The word "nine" contains the long I sound, which helped me associate "i" with "9." Sentences to remember the dot 5, dot 5-6, and dot 4-5-6 contraction groups: These over there are theirs. Go through those books. Where in the world did you learn that word? Whose hat is where I sat? Upon my word, these are those whose dots are 4 and 5. Here, there, and everywhere. Many in this world cannot have had their spirit. " The secret of joy in work is contained in one word - excellence. To know how to do something well is to enjoy it." Pearl Buck