Category: Cram Session
Okay, so I've been putting off taking any math here in college because I just don't know how that's gunna work. My school is a small private school that hasn't had many blind students, and I'm pretty sure none of them stuck around to take math.
It didn't help that in high school, even with a Braille textbook and a teacher that read Braille, I barely passed with a C. I had the kind of teacher who didn't give much help, and didn't really even explain things all that well the first time. And, when you asked for help, you got the whole, "You should already know this" speech! Grrrr!
But now, with no Braille college textbook, and not having any idea how this will work, I could really use some ideas. The only thing I've heard of is using a reader/scribe, but that still doesn't solve the problem of getting this stuff to make sense. To show y'all just how bad this is, my math score on the ACT was a 16, while everything else was high twenties or low thirties.
Any resources, tips, advice would be greatly appreciated.
hmm, not sure if there are things related to college algebra; however, there is one nice one at algebratutor.com and then you can always check wikipedia for different concepts that you do not understand. Use google; the net is a great place to research most of the mathematics field and usually the explanations are accessible. Additionally for writing math and printing it out, don't think the ascii would do much... get yourself to learn a bit about LaTeX and you are good to go. LaTeX is a mark up lanauge that prints math symbols and best of all there is no graphical super troublesome interface. yOu just type, say, sqrt[3] and it prints the number 3 inside a square root. You odn't actually see the symbols until the whole document is ready for printing. Good luck
Yes, I agree with you on that College Algebra is no joke. Anyway, just a few things I want to mention here. Some of the topics discussed in this class are the advanced levels in intermediate algebra. If you take that class back in high school or college, it will give you a general background of what to expect for College Algebra. Anyway, some of the things that are discussed in that class are functions, graphs, polynomials, radical numbers, rational numbers, a little bit of an introduction to trigonometry with more emphasis on complex figures and some other things related to Geometry. I know most of it involves visual aids to be able to understand it, but if you have a good way of visualizing numbers and where they're supposed to be placed, I think, you have a good chance of surviving that class otherwise get extra help from your professor and let him know ahead of time what you don't understand.
Yes, Talk to the professor ahead of time. That really helps. Also, talk to the disability office at college. Maybe they can help.
Heres what I did for a math class is have your brailler in class so you can see the problems and have the teacher say ever thing they are writting on the board. and quiz and test I did in disabilitys
A brailler is not going to show you three-dimensional shapes if you're in geometry, and writing down math problems vertically rather than going across, (while it's more organized), is a pain in the arse. I'll be taking math in the fall, but I'm not sure where I'll end up. probably a remedial class, but that's okay.
The brailler was one of the best things I've used with math. Also, I'm sure you can find things around the home to help get an idea of 3 dementional shapes. For example, a cardboard box is good to give you an idea of what a cube looks like.
Hope this helps.