Achieving Academic Success with the Monarch

With the proper tools and support, students who are blind or have low vision can achieve academic success with the Monarch. Jill Hackman, an itinerant TVI for Macon-Piatt Special Education and Decatur Public Schools, provides support for a high school freshman as they navigate their homeschool coursework. The Monarch, a new refreshable display that has 10 lines of braille and displays tactile graphics, has proven instrumental during math lessons.

The device’s KeyMath app contains a first-of-its-kind tactile graphing calculator. Jill utilized KeyMath as she taught her student about coordinate pairs. “I will give her equations or coordinates to enter, and then she will enter them in KeyMath on the Monarch,” said Jill. Afterwards, they can view the corresponding tactile graph. To make this task more fun, Jill found instructions on the Teachers Pay Teachers website about how to create graphs that turn into visual pictures, such as emoji faces, a panda face, a leaf, and a snowflake to name a few. “She sometimes had up to eight different expressions that she had to enter in, but it would have multiple coordinate pairs,” said Jill. The student had to be precise in this particular exercise, making sure that each coordinate was right. Otherwise, the tactile picture would not appear correctly.

To aid with instruction, Jill had her student plug the Monarch into a computer monitor with an HDMI cable. This gave Jill the ability to see what the student was brailling. “I can quickly pinpoint my student’s mistakes and direct her to the lines that she needs to edit on the expression,” said Jill. “It’s a huge help as a teacher to help her feel more independent and help me feel like I’m not hovering over her all the time.”

Once all of the sets were input into KeyMath, Jill’s student graphed the points by pressing enter with G. The final product depicted a fun image that Jill’s student could feel and explore by zooming in and out of it.

“Being able to graph has really helped my student get excited about using Nemeth and Computer Braille,” said Jill. “Up until the Monarch was introduced, she really relied heavily on large print and zooming on a computer screen. She didn’t see the need to use Nemeth Code.” Jill obtained the Monarch by attending a Monarch Masters Program teacher training in Chicago earlier this year. She hopes to incorporate the Monarch into more lessons now that her student has been accepted to participate in the Monarch Student Pilot Program and will soon have access to a device of her own to use at home.

Jill encourages teachers to work to acquire a Monarch for their students. “The Monarch will be a great tool for students who rely heavily on braille and tactile feedback,” said Jill. “It will help them be able to access the same materials as their peers and not have to wait for someone to adapt the material for them. The Monarch is very user-friendly, and if you get stuck, you can always go back to the beginning and try the steps again.”

Learn more about, and purchase, a Monarch today.