Steps4Kids: DVD-based visual learning system for students with disabilities

"Video media focus on role modeling; the use of real people, places" -from an article in the North County Times.

A link to this article was posted in a recent brief from the Council for Exceptional Children. The Steps4Kids program was developed by Lucile Lynch, a mother of a child with multiple disabilities, and Harmony Piper, an occupational therapist.

Information from the Steps4Kids website:

"Our goal is to provide persons responsible for teaching children with positive, effective support tools so that children can be successful in handling their academic, social, behavioral and physical tasks."

"Examples of products and programs developed by Steps4Kids include the award winning handwriting DVD Steps4Kids to Write Their ABCs, the Gift of Friendship program (inclusion program), customized Steps4Kids learning DVDs (to help children with spelling, reading and other academic and behavior skills) and other programs designed to strengthen children's skills and self confidence."

If you've used Steps4Kids products with students or your own child, please leave a comment!

-Lynn

How to use Firefox to access resources offline- copy of post from the Teaching Learners with Multiple Special Needs Blog

This post is directly from the Teaching Learners with Multiple Special Needs blog.

Kate, the superwoman behind the Teaching Learners with Multiple Special Needs blog, works in a school that has limited internet access, and the computer lab is non-accessible. This is a description of how she works around this problem:

How to Access Internet Resources Offline

....."I have an excellent work around for when I want my students to access online content. Here are some instruction on how to do it (for free).

1. If you do not already use the Firefox Internet Browser from Mozilla you will need to switch, at least for this, but it is such an excellent browser I am guessing you will want to switch for everything.

2. Install ScrapBook for Firefox. You can do this by going to the ScrapBook Site and download (you will need to add ScrapBook to the list of allowed sites when asked to). Or you can go to the file bar and go to Tools, then choose Add Ons, then in the lower right corner click Get Extensions. This will open a new web page, in the top middle there is a search bar type in ScrapBook. From the results choose ScrapBook by Gomita. Download, install, restart Firefox (don't worry all of your other open tabs will restart automatically).

3. Go to a website you wish to access off line. For example a favorite story in the The International Children's Digital Library. Choose a page to experiment with and go to your tool bar and choose ScrapBook. Now you have a few choices. The first capture option will allow you to access that page off line.

4. There are much more advanced option for using ScrapBook. For example you can capture and entire Tumblebook or other .swf such as Pass the Ball. In an attempt to not recreate the wheel I will point you to some excellent tutorials to learn how to do these things. First there is the ScrapBook Website and second the printable PDF of the ScrapBook tutorial.

5. If you wish to move your scrapbooked items to another computer put them on a flashdrive and open them on another computer with Firefox and ScrapBook. (You may need to put firefox.exe and the ScrapBook files onto a flashdrive and install them onto the intended computer as well.)"

Thank you, Kate!

New Technologies: Affective Intelligent Tutoring Systems- Virtual Eve

Imagine a virtual tutor who can recognize when you are confused, frustrated, or simply have no clue about solving a problem or learning a new concept.

In recent years, computer-assisted tutoring systems have been transformed from electronic workbooks to sophisticated applications that harness the power of artificial intelligence in order to provide learning activities that match the specific needs of the individual. These applications, called intelligent tutoring systems, focus on learning objectives that are primarily cognitive in nature, and do not address the reality that learning is a process that occurs within a social, emotional, and motivational context.

Dr. Sarrafzadeh and his research team at Massey University/Auckland Institute of Information and Mathematical Sciences, and the University of Canterbury, have been working on the next generation of intelligent tutoring systems, known as affective tutoring systems, use technology to detect emotions, recognize gestures, and interpret and related biological signals from students, in order to individually adapt instruction, via a virtual tutor named Eve.

During the development of this system, researchers used information from observations and videotaped sessions of students and teachers interacting with one-another, in order to model the teaching-learning process in the virtual environment.

Screen shots of Eve, the affective virtual tutor, from the project's website:



Diagram of the system, also from the project's website:

If you are interested in exploring this topic further, here is a sample of articles from the project's list of publications and other listings from the website:

Sarrafzadeh, A., Alexander, S., Dadgostar, F., Fan, C., See Me, Teach Me: Facial Expression and Gesture Recognition for Intelligent Tutoring Systems, International Conference on Innovations in Information Technology, 19-21 November 2006, Dubai, UAE.

Sarrafzadeh, A., Alexander, S., Dadgostar, F., Fan, C., Bigdeli, A., (2007). How do you know that I don't understand?" A look at the future of intelligent tutoring systems. Elsevier Journal- Computers in Human Behavior (in press).

Sarrafzadeh, A., Alexander, S., Dadgostar, F., Fan, C., See Me, Teach Me: Facial Expression and Gesture Recognition for Intelligent Tutoring Systems, International Conference on Innovations in Information Technology, 19-21 November 2006, Dubai, UAE.

Messom, C., Sarrafzadeh, A., Fan, C., Johnson, M., Affective State Estimation from Facial Images using Neural Networks and Fuzzy Logic, to appear in D. Wang (ed.), Neural Networks Applications in Information Technology and Web Engineering, Kota Samarahan, Malaysia: University of Malaysia Sarawak, 2005.

Dadgostar, F., Ryu, H., Sarrafzadeh, A. Overmyer, S. P., Making Sense of Student Use of Nonverbal Cues for Intelligent Tutoring Systems, Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the Australian Computer-Human Interaction (OZCHI), 21-25 November 2005, Canberra, Australia.

Related References:

Alexander, S.T.V.: Emulating Human Tutor Empathy, Proceedings of the IIMS Postgraduate Conference, Albany, New Zealand (2004)

Alexander, S.T.V., Hill, S., Sarrafzadeh, A.: How do Human Tutors Adapt to Affective State?, Proceedings of User Modeling, Edinburgh, Scotland (2005)

Beal, C. R., Mitra, S., & Cohen, P. R. (2007). Modeling learning patterns of students with a tutoring system using Hidden Markov Models. In R. Luckin, K. R. Koedinger, & J. Greer (Eds.), Artificial intelligence in education: Building technology rich learning contexts that work, pp. 238-245. Amsterdam: IOS Press.

Abstract: Hidden Markov Models were used to model the actions of high school students who worked with an online tutorial for mathematics. Including a hidden state estimate of learner engagement increased the accuracy and predictive power of the models, within and across tutoring sessions. Groups of students with distinct engagement trajectories were identified and replicated in two independent samples. Finalist for Best Paper Award.

McQuiggan, S.W, & Lester, J.C. Diagnosing Self-Efficacy in Intelligent Tutoring Systems: An Empirical Study.