An A+ for ingenuity
Legos are part of the equation for blind math students
By Melissa Rake

Terry Fultz focused on her students' hands as she taught Algebra 113.

She stared as twin sisters Sara and Stacy Patnode glided their fingertips, splashed with pink and red nail polish, across bumps of braille on white sheets of paper. George Hall Jr. sat next to the twins, his hands adjusting a small tape recorder as he listened to Fultz's complex language of numbers and symbols.
 
 

Rick Fatica Instructor Terry Fultz reviews a math lesson as twin sisters Sara (left) and Stacy Patnode read their problems in braille and George Hall follows along using Legos.

"The distance between two points - X1, Y1, and X2, Y2 - is the square root of the sum of the difference of the X's squared plus the difference of the Y's squared," Fultz read from the skeleton notes she had translated into braille for the young women.

Hall shook his head. Although he was recording her lecture as he did in all his classes, he couldn't imagine working through the math problems without scribbling them down on notebook paper. Like his two classmates, Hall is blind. But unlike them, the 27-year-old does not read braille.

"Close your eyes and imagine trying to solve a long equation in your head. That's what George was trying to do, and it's very hard," said Fultz, MS '92, a part-time math instructor at Ohio University who taught the three students in a specially designed class during winter quarter 1999. "I realized I had to find some way to communicate with him, a simple way for him to actually feel the numbers and symbols."

Fultz first thought of creating equations for Hall using number-shaped refrigerator magnets that he could identify by touch. But the magnets moved too easily on their metal surface. Then she thought about experimenting with puff paint, but she knew it wouldn't move at all.

"Then one day I was watching my kids play with Legos, and it hit me. I think I stayed up until 4 in the morning arranging pieces on a Lego panel," she said. "The next day, I came in and said 'Hey, George, I've figured it out,' and he said, 'Oh no, you can't be serious.'"

Fultz had created a unique kind of braille for Hall by assigning numbers and algebraic symbols to different Lego pieces. A small plastic fence stood for absolute value. A tiny clear windshield represented a square root sign. A square with four bumps was the algebraic "X."

During class that day, Fultz gently guided Hall's hands across the toy pieces, explaining their meanings. After several days, Hall's index finger was scurrying across lines of Legos, and he was easily interpreting the math problems. Although the twins used braille to comprehend most of the lessons, they occasionally graphed equations with Legos.

Soon, Fultz was bringing as many as nine Lego panels to the daily classes, each board featuring a crazy mix of brightly colored pieces designed to match the day's lesson. She spent about two hours out of class preparing the Lego panels.

"When we started with the Legos, it helped tremendously," Fultz said. "The girls were really fast on braille, and George got really fast with the Legos, and we were up to speed."

Even Hall was surprised by how quickly he caught on to the new system.

Above is an actual Lego equation used in Terry's class.

"I really didn't know if I could pull off passing this class. I've never learned to read braille because I was sighted until I was 19," Hall said. "It was kind of weird, realizing that using Legos could help me get through it."

It's this ingenuity and creativity on the part of professors and students that make classes for the disabled successful, said Katherine Fahey, assistant director of Institutional Equity at Ohio University.

"What Terry had to do was put this subject full of symbols into a language," Fahey said. "It took her so much time, but in the end, she found a way for George to get the information he needed. This is an example of some of the creative ways we try to make the university's academic experience equitable for students with disabilities."

Besides struggling to find a way to communicate with Hall, Fultz faced another challenge when she attempted to translate her class notes into braille for the twins. When she ran her typed notes through a machine that transforms writing into braille, certain math symbols came out garbled. For example, a parenthesis in braille reads like the number seven, and the multiplication sign is similar to the number nine.

"I had to use an incredible amount of brackets and parentheses to keep things separated for them in braille, and I had to write out the problems with many more words and far fewer symbols than usual because of translation problems," Fultz said.

When Fultz was approached about teaching the class by Math Department Chair Sergio Lopez-Permouth last year, she excitedly accepted, impressed that the university was willing to invest in teaching the three students rather than waive the class for them. But once the quarter began, Fultz quickly realized that her entire classroom demeanor had to change: everything from giving up the chalkboard to making sure she didn't step on the tails of her students' guide dogs.

"I have to admit that it was odd walking into the classroom the first day and they were sitting there with the lights off. I was the only one who needed the light," she said. "Those are things you just don't think about every day."

Fultz's students are glad she decided to teach the class. The Patnode sisters, seniors this school year, and Hall, who graduated in June, had to take Algebra 113 as part of their studies leading to bachelor's degrees in interpersonal communication.

"I enjoyed taking the class," Stacy Patnode said. "I didn't really want the university to waive the class because I wouldn't have felt like I earned it. Some universities wouldn't have considered it important."

Fultz, who now works in the university's Office of Research, appreciates the friendships she formed with her students and said she has grown from the experience.

"I think I've learned to be a better communicator because I had to be so precise when I explained things," she said. "But overall, the class challenged me creatively. And I'm still finding Legos tucked away in corners all over my house."
 

Melissa Rake is assistant editor of Ohio Today.