Computer Based Intervention For Individuals With Autism

Valerie Herskowitz, M.A. CCC/SLP shared her presentation slides on slideshare. Her presentation focuses on computer-based intervention for individuals with autism. It provides a good overview of technologies that are currently available, and some that are in development. For more information, visit her website at http://www.valerieherskowitz.com/home.php

Valerie is the mother of a son who has autism, and has written a book, "Autism & Computers: Maximizing Independence Through Technology".

Computer Based Intervention For Individuals With Autism

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From the Psychology Today blog- Resilience Matters in Traumatized Children, and Sensory Activities Make the Difference

Cathy Malchiodi's recent article in Psychology Today's blog discusses the topic of resilience among traumatized children and how engaging the senses through a variety of activities, combined with positive relationships and environments can make a difference.

As a school psychologist, I work with occupational therapists, and over the years, I've learned how important it is to address sensory issues with children and teens who have autism spectrum disorders. Cathy Malchiodi wrote her post while attending the 4th Annual Childhood Trauma Practitioners Assembly. According to the conference website, the following topics were covered:

"Areas of interest include intervention approaches, research, and resource specific to:

• Posttraumatic Growth Resilience
• Complex Cumulative Trauma: Research/Interventions
• School-Based Programs
• Community-Based Programs (hospitals, mental health agencies, family services)
• Interventions for Special Populations (special needs students, children immigrating from war torn countries, Native American Indians – other diverse populations).
• Interventions using Expressive Therapies/Interventions
• Interventions for other trauma related behaviors (OCD like behavior, agoraphobic like behavior) or anxiety disorders – separation anxiety disorder, shyness, social phobia, agoraphobia, etc.
• Research which supports practice (versus theory). Evidenced based research on interventions with traumatized children is limited at this time. "

Cathy's post provides a good overview of research among those who focus on sensory and somatic interventions, which includes addressing support for three regions of the brain - the cortex/thinking brain, the limbic system/emotional brain, and the brain stem/survival brain.

For more information, read the post, and follow the related links:

Resilience Matters in Traumatized Children's Lives -- and Sensory Activities Make the Difference (Cathy Malchiodi, Psychology Today, 7/14/09)

It would be interesting to see how multi-modal technologies could be used to address some of the sensory issues among this group of children!

U of M's Dr. Soloway: Brief talk about the importance of using hand-held devices in education

Dr. Soloway is a professor at the University of Michigan who has been working very hard for many years to spread the word about hand-held devices and mobile computing in education. People are are finally listening. Dr. Soloway has been a leader at HI CE, the Center for Highly Interactive Computing in Education at U of M, and is the CEO of GOKNOW, a company that develops software and resources for hand-held educational computing. He is passionate about his mission. Watch the video!

Elliot Soloway: Ed-Tech Classroom Climate from Education Week on Vimeo.

I will be revisiting the topics of mobile learning & hand-held devices in the classroom soon.

Video Modeling and Social Skills Development: Scott Bellini and Tom Buggey's Resources

Scott Bellini is an assistant professor in the area of School Psychology in the Counseling and Educational Psychology department at Indiana University. His work focuses on social skills development with children and teens who have autism spectrum disorders. He is known for his research in the area of video modeling. He is also the author of the book, Building Social Relationships: A Systematic Approach to Teaching Social Interaction Skills to Children and Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorders and Other Social Difficulties.

Dr. Bellini is involved with the Indiana Institute on Disabilities, which sponsors the Autism Resources website.

It is worth taking the time to explore the Autism Resources website/blog. There you will find a descriptions of resources for children, teens, parents, and teachers. The resources include books, videos, websites, and related events. Some of the links are to education-related websites that also include information related to autism spectrum disorders, such as links to fairly recent article on the Edutopia website by Fran Smith that highlights the problem facing public schools schools in dealing with the increase in the number of students with autism spectrum disorders.

Tom Buggy is the Siskin Chair of Excellence in Early Childhood Education at UT-Chattanooga. Like Scott Bellini, he also focuses on video self-modeling with young people who have autism spectrum disorders. Dr. Buggy is the author of "Seeing is Believing: Video Self-Modeling for People with Autism and Other Developmental Disabilties", authored by Tom Buggey.

According to the description of the book, "VSM involves filming and editing footage to create a video of a person's ideal performance of a skill. The person then can watch whenever they please and gather valuable information about the skill. Seeing is Believing offers and step by step guide about how to get the equipment to begin the technique, how to plan the film, how to edit the video and much more."

Tom Buggey's "how-to" presentation about video self-monitoring can be downloaded at http://www.utc.edu/Faculty/Tom-Buggey/vsmorlandoclean.ppt

RELATED

If you are interested in free software that allows for detailed annotation of video, you might be interested in the Video Note Taker, which is free and open-source. It was developed by IBM researcher Eben Haber. I might give it a try.

In my job as a school psychologist, I use video to record some of my assessments, especially when I'm assessing students who have autism spectrum disorders. I also use it to develop video self-modeling activities and content for digital social stories. I find it to be useful when I conduct functional behavioral assessments. More recently, I have been using it to document student response to intervention, paying close attention to things that are difficult to record in real-time using traditional methods. What results is lots of video footage!

I think the Video Note Taker might help me with my work with young people who have suffered traumatic brain injuries.

I learned about the Video Note Taker from Harry Brignull's blog, "90 percent of everything". Harry is a User Experience Consultant. You can download the application from the SourceForge website.

Here is the description:

"The basic function is to allow the user to take notes while watching a computer video file. The program combines a video playback window and a very simple text editor. Keyboard shortcuts can control playback, e.g. pause/resume, skip back, etc."

This looks pretty cool, considering that video footage of assessments completed by a team, such as the ADOS, require a good deal of collaboration, and of course, rewinding, forwarding, and rewinding video! According to the software's author:

"This software has one other interesting feature: if two people at remote locations are watching the same video file, it can synchronize their players, so that if one person pauses the video, it pauses the other, and if one person skips ahead, the other player shows the same thing. This can be handy for going over a video with someone remote."

Data Systems Standards and Guidelines from the National Center for Education Statistics

If you are involved in data-driven decision making in your school or school district, it is important to keep up with the most recent standards regarding data systems. The National Center for Education Statistics has recently developed a toolbox for educational data system designers and managers who are "looking for ways to build and/or improve education data systems".

According to the NCES website, the Education Data Model, Version I is a "comprehensive, localized, conceptual model that provides a generic blueprint for schools and districts. This blueprint enables schools to evaluate and improve instructional tools, communicate those needs to their umbrella agency or directly to vendors, enhance the movement of student information from one district to another, and in the end, have better tools to inform instruction. Using a standard Education Data Model as a starting point contributes to a comprehensive understanding of the need for data, how data are used, and the questions that can be answered with the data. For instance, the Data Model helps to answer questions such as the following:

• What data do schools, LEAs, and states need to collect and manage at the local level to meet the information needs of students, staff, and other stakeholders?
• What data do they need to effectively manage education organizations in order to increase success in teaching, learning, and school leadership?
• What data do they need to efficiently manage and run an education organization from a fiscal and administrative perspective?

A single, comprehensive model of education data is prerequisite to establishing automated systems with the right data, data that are comparable across time and systems, and data accurate enough to answer our questions".

Educational data systems are developed on a large scale, and generally the "client" is a school district, or administrator of a school district. I am not sure that those who design the data base systems are aware of the work of school psychologists, and how our work is negatively impacted by a system that doesn't address our work needs efficiently or effectively.

So what is a data-minded school psychologist to do? The first step is to become informed about databases and how they are used and implemented in your school(s). Find out who is responsible for making decisions regarding the use of data-based systems, and find out if there is a district committee who is involved in this area. It just might be that it has not occurred to high-level administrators that school psychologists might want to have a say in this matt

If you are interested learning more, you can browse the data model on the NCES Data Model web page. Also take a look at the "How to Use the Data Model" on-line guide.

Here are a few graphics from the NCES website:

Concept map behind the development of the data model:



Taxonomy - entities, classes, and attributes:



Here is the relationship diagram of the data model:


Educational data systems are developed on a large scale, and generally the "client" is a school district, or administrator of a school district. I am not sure that those who design the data base systems are aware of the work of school psychologists, and how our work is negatively impacted by a system that doesn't address our work needs efficiently or effectively.

So what is a data-minded school psychologist to do? The first step is to become informed about databases and how they are used and implemented in your school(s). Find out who is responsible for making decisions regarding the use of data-based systems, and find out if there is a district committee who is involved in this area. It just might be that it has not occurred to high-level administrators that school psychologists might want to have a say in this matter.

Wolfe awarded LEED® Green Building Certification (slightly off-topic)

Only five new schools in North Carolina have been awarded LEED® certification, and Wolfe School (a program for students who have severe/multiple disabilities), in the Union County Public Schools district, is one of them. According to information from the UCPS website, "LEED® is a registered trademark of the United States Green Building Council (USGBC). It stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design and is a nationally accepted benchmark for the design, construction and operation of high performance green buildings."

LEED®-certified schools minimize student exposure to volatile organic compounds (VOC's) and artificial lighting. Both are thought to trigger sensitivities in people who are medically fragile or have more complex disabilities, such as severe autism.

I spend half of my working hours at Wolfe, and I'm impressed by the the positive outcome on the school's environment. The air is fresh and clean, and I've noticed that I have no allergy symptoms when I'm there.