Challenges and Solutions in Teaching Braille in an Online-Education Model (Louis Braille Celebration‪)‬

During my graduate school years, I was fortunate to take a class with a professor who started each class session by describing a rhetorical problem and requiring us to form small groups and devise six creative ways in which to resolve the challenge. This early work in solving problems has served me well, since those of us who work in the area of teacher preparation are not strangers to challenges. A crisis exists in the United States because of the shortage of competent teachers of students who are blind or visually impaired. One solution to the lack of access to teacher-training programs has been online education. After gaining much experience as a classroom teacher for several teacher-preparation programs throughout the country, I became an online braille instructor in 2001. I had never taken an online course prior to teaching one, and I quickly learned that online environments require the acquisition of a different set of teaching skills, as well as acceptance of a unique teaching environment.