Category: Cram Session
Hello,
I really haven’t been an active poster or anything, but I’ve been a member for years now.
I just recently started back in school about a week ago, and one of my program requirements is to take anatomy, which is a very visual course. I was wondering if anyone has any experience with this class, or any like it? And if so maybe you could give me your experiences with adaption, accessibility ETC…
When I took it in high school we did the following:
teacher described photos to me, and show models where she had them and could.
I worked with a partner as well, who described it all to me.
I would talk to your professor, and see. He or she may have great ideas or models.
Models if available will help, instead of focusing so much on how they look, see if your professor will adapt things to where you focus more on what the function of the organ is. So on the test for example, it will say: organ that is responsible for breathing... or something like that. Also, I think you still need to be responsible for where they are in the body too.
All of these things, I've done in the past, especially with having psychology and stuff.
Models are great, but you can still know where in the body they are, and the functions. Books usually describe this stuff well, and if not have your professor clearify.
That all sounds great, thanks. I have talked to my professor, and fortunately he seems to be very open minded, and does indeed have quite a few interesting models.
I'm taking anatomy and physiology in high school currently. Well, the teacher
describes what's on his powerpoint and if I'm confussed, he draws it out on
the draftsman board so I could feel for myself. fortunately, I didn't need it
much so, yeah. it's a hard class but at least the teacher is pretty nice!
Good to speak with accessibility staff at your ... i'm assuming this is university level? They might be able to offer suggestions for adapting things for your class. I would also recommend subscribing and posting your question to the national association of blind students list serve. this way you can try different things out and pass suggestions on to accesibility staff at your school if they have not had to work with a completely blind student before.
Never heard of a draftsman board before.
Reyami,
My university has had experience with other blind students before, just none that have ever taken anatomy so although they have suggestions I am looking for more specific things that I can implement. Thanks for the suggestion about the listserve, I'll be sure to do that.
Good that he seems cool!
Hello. I took A&P in high school, but it was a dual credit class and I got college and high school credit both for it. I took it for the whole year instead of just a semester which helped a whole lot. I had a teacher that was very cool too! I'm so glad I had him as a teacher, he was open minded and willing to go the extra mile to make sure I understood what I needed to know. Here are the things my teacher, paraprofessional, and myself all did to help with the visual aspect of the class. For one thing, there is a book that American Printinghouse for the Blind makes called Tactile Anatomy Atlas or something to that effect. It's 2 volumes, it comes with raised tactile diagrams of all different parts of the body and braille descriptions of the diagrams to help you know what things are and where they're located. That helped tons. My teacher also had lots of models, 3d models of bones and muscles and things and they helped so much as well. Where there were no models or diagrams in the anatomy atlas, my paraprofessional made diagrams with duxberry and embossed them out. I know that's pretty difficult but it helped a lot in some cases. You'd have to talk to someone in your disability office if you want to do that. For dissections, the lab partners would do the cutting and then I'd use gloves made out of polyeurothane (not sure how to spell that), basically walmart bag material, to touch the parts of the animal that had been dissected. The reason I used those gloves instead of rubber gloves was because they're so much thinner so I could feel all the specific details of the body parts without getting all messy and gross. I use those for cooking sometimes too, they're great. For tests, when other students were tested on pictures or visual material, I was tested with either models, tactile diagrams, or just verbally by description. For example, the teacher would say, "What is the name of the bone in your thigh?" Or something like that. That worked very well in some cases. Those are pretty much all the techniques I used to take that class and I got through it with great grades. That was one of my favorite classes I ever took. It was so interesting.