Jean Piaget has said that each time we teach a child something, we keep him from inventing it himself.
Pat Gould, a VI Teacher from British Columbia Canada, presented a paper at the Odyssey 2001 Conference, at the University of British Columbia, Canada, in which she spoke of her experiences of using the Mountbatten Brailler as follows;
“the students loved to make up nonsense words and see how the MB tried to say them. Also, they liked exploring the MB key combinations and discovering new braille contractions. When they did that, the children took ownership of the contractions”. As an example she mentions one of her students who said – “You don’t have to help me with the ‘and’ contraction. I invented it.”
This is an example of where technology can enable exploration and independent learning, and clearly this is a very exciting experience for students.