Note-Taker 2.0: The Next Step Toward Enabling Students who are Legally Blind to Take Notes in Class

摘要

In-class note-taking is a vital learning activity in secondary and post-secondary classrooms. The process of note-taking helps students stay focused on the instruction, forces them to cognitively process what is being presented, and better retain what has been taught, even if they never refer to their notes after the class. However, note-taking is difficult for students with low vision, or who are legally blind for two reasons. First, they are less able to see what is being presented at the front of them room, and second, they must repeatedly switch between the farsight task of viewing the front of the room, and the near-sight task of taking notes. This paper describes ongoing research aimed at developing a portable assistive device (called the Note-Taker) that a student can take to class, to assist in the process of taking notes. It describes the principles that have guided the development of the proof-of-concept Note-Taker prototype and the Note-Taker 2.0 prototype. Initial testing of those prototypes has been encouraging, but some significant problems remain to be solved. Proposed solutions are currently being implemented, and appear to be effective. If ongoing usability testing confirms their effectiveness, they will be implemented on the planned Note-Taker 3.0 prototype.