What:
Special Education Program:
Update & Discussion with Marilyn Davis
SEPTA Treasurer and member of the State Special Education Advisory Panel
Where:
Bozeman School Foundation
The Willson School Boardroom
When:
Monday, July 2, 2012
Begins 6:00pm Mountain
Contact:
Alyson Ball - kball977@hotmail.com
Autism Apps is simply a comprehensive list of apps that are being used with and by people diagnosed with autism, Down syndrome and other special needs. It also includes links to any available information that can be found for each app. The Apps are also separated into over 30 categories, and the descriptions are all searchable, so any type of app is easy to find and download.
Autism Apps was created as a resource for anyone looking for apps for people diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder, Down syndrome or other special need. Many people are discovering the many uses that iPads, iPhones and iPod touches can have as tools and resources for people diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder, Down syndrome or other disability. Though there are a multitude of apps in the app store that many people diagnosed with autism, Down syndrome or another special need use and enjoy, they can be difficult to find.
Autism Apps links to extensive reviews of the apps written by parents, specialists, and other users usually from first-hand experience. Autism Apps also has links to video demonstrations or video reviews of the apps when they are available.
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June 16th, 2012 Salish Kootenai Campus: Michele Building- Pablo
Register on the Montana Professional Development Website
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Sensory therapies using brushes, swings and other play equipment are increasingly used by occupational therapists to treat children with developmental issues such as autism, but a large pediatricians organization says there isn't much evidence that such therapies actually work.
Still, the group isn't completely discounting the potential of sensory therapies -- it's a ripe area for research, it noted.
But before parents spend the time and money on taking children to sensory therapy, they should know that, as of now, the techniques are largely unproven.
Everything from our popular Play Sight Words app
★ PLUS - Adfree - No interruptions
Introducing Sight Words 2 with Word Bingo! All new words in this comprehensive Sight Words app with multiple games, including Word Bingo! This app is designed to educate and entertain 1st and 2nd graders, Pre-Schoolers, Kindergarteners!
FEATURES INCLUDE:
★ 1st and 2nd grade levels
★ Professional voiceovers for excellent auditory learning
★ 5 built-in games for playful learning
★ Hard and easy levels of difficulty for games
★ All new Word Bingo!
★ Superb memory building with memory game!
★ Adfree - No interruptions
Learning Sight Words has never been so much fun! Using all touch features which kids love with playful sounds and professionally recorded voiceovers, this is a complete learning experience for any child who is beginning to learn Sight Words or looking to enhance vocabulary and memory.
5 built-in games make is seem like a play act the whole time while the child is learning each word with repetition.
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2012 Wynsum Arts Apps of Distinction Award Recipient
2012 About.com Readers Choice Winner - Best Special Needs App
The Choiceworks app is an essential learning tool for helping children complete daily routines (morning, day, & night), understand & control their feelings and improve their waiting skills (taking turns and not interrupting). Based on the multi-award winning Choiceworks Visual Support System (http://www.beevisual.com), this app is designed for caregivers to provide clear and consistent support to foster a child’s independence, positive behavior, and emotional regulation at home and in the community. It can also be customized for teachers in a school setting. It was created with the support of leading hospitals and child development specialists.
Key Features
■ Three boards: Schedule, Waiting, and Feelings
■ Three Companion Books supporting each board
■ Image Library preloaded with over 165 images and audio
■ Add your own images and record your own audio for limitless customizability
■ Save an unlimited number of schedules for multiple children or different routines
■ Speaks boards out loud with professionally recorded audio
■ Time saving essentials like search and auto-save
Schedule Board
The Schedule Board focuses on making task completion easier and more fun, allowing the user to select up to five steps on iPhone and eight on iPad that can be easily reordered. The schedule is then paired with an all done column to check off steps toward a motivating reward. As the task image slides to the all done column, the user gets both visual and audio confirmation. Schedules can be enhanced by adding a timer. The schedules are easy to edit and fully customizable. Once you have created a schedule, it will be saved automatically. There is no limit to the number of schedules that can be saved.
Waiting Board
The Waiting Board is a great way to teach waiting skills like taking turns and/or not interrupting. The user can begin by reading the companion book, When Do I Have to Wait?, in order to explain to the child the reason why everyone has to wait on occasion. Using the waiting board, the top picture can be selected to indicate the reason why the child will be waiting and a timer can be set to show how long the child will be waiting. Next, both the user and the child can select an activity for the child to do while waiting.
Feelings Board
The Feelings Board provides a tool for helping children understand and express emotions. The user can begin by reading the companion book, When I Get Upset, to provide an example of how the child might recognize an emotion and choose a coping strategy. On the Feelings Board, the user can then help the child indicate how they are feeling from a range of options, select a coping strategy, and then request an activity which would likely help them feel better or re-engage with others.
Image Library
The Image Library comes preloaded with over 165 of Bee Visual’s most commonly used images, each with professionally recorded audio. You can access the images quickly using the search feature or simply by scrolling through the images. Users can add to the Image Library by selecting an image from their own camera roll or by taking a photo. The user can then add a caption and record the audio. The images can be defined as a Schedule Board Title, a Task or an Activity, a Waiting Board Skill or Activity, and/or a Feelings Board Activity. This allows only the images you want to use in those categories to be viewed when you are editing and customizing the boards.
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Autism Tracker can be life changing for families with an autistic child. Explore Autism. Track what matters to your child and your family. Use the visual calendar and multi-item graphs to view and discuss patterns. Share individual events or entire screens with your team using email or Twitter (Twitter lets you set up closed groups). Contact us, let us know how to keep Autism Tracker the best app of its kind.
Before you buy, please try the Lite version of Autism Tracker first. It has the same functionality as the Pro version. The number entries per item is limited to twelve in the Lite version. All data and set up can be transferred to Autism Tracker Pro.
Autism Tracker is an educational app that helps families explore Autism. Each of its screens represents a different domain of Autism. Several screens are already set up to get you started:
MOOD
➤ Happiness, ➤ Stress, ➤ Activity Level, ➤ Hyperactivity, ➤ Weather
BEHAVIOR
➤ Bolting, ➤ Self-injurious, ➤ Property Destruction, ➤ Tantrum
FOOD
➤ Casein, ➤ Lactose, ➤ Gluten, ➤ Colorants, ➤ Caffeine
HEALTH
➤ Sleep, ➤ Bowel Movements, ➤ BM Texture
REPORTS
➤ show and compare all items at a glance
Click here to read more.
A federal bankruptcy judge in Maryland has ruled that a former law student can discharge nearly $340,000 in education debt because her diagnosis of Asperger’s syndrome qualifies her for a federal exemption from having to repay student loans, The National Law Journal reported. The student, Carol Todd, attended law school in the early 1990s but did not finish the program. She later earned a master’s degree and a Ph.D. from an unaccredited online college, according to the Law Journal. Judge Robert A. Gordon, of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Baltimore, acknowledged that students must meet a high standard to qualify for an “undue hardship” exemption. But Ms. Todd’s condition prevented her from getting a job and maintaining a basic standard of living, the Law Journal reported, so Judge Gordon found that it would be impossible for her to repay the loans.
The resources here on the website, along with the on-site training workshops which have been presented to hundreds of librarians around the country, expand on our customer service video to address the real world implementation of best practices and universal service for people with ASD and their families and helps staff to improve their ability to provide excellent, inclusive, universal customer service to everyone who uses the library.
Every library we visit tells us the same story of increasing numbers of families dealing with ASD who are turning to their public library for resources, programs and a community center where they are welcome. We stress communication, customer service, using individuals on the spectrum and with other developmental disabilities as staff and volunteers in the library, programming strategies that work, connecting with local experts, and the importance of empowering staff to be willing to ‘do something’.
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Addressing factors that may cause disruptive behavior from children is one important way that home visiting programs can promote healthier families. Our webinar on June 5 will share effective strategies that both home visiting professionals and parents can use to prevent and respond to such behavior. Leading the discussion will be experts Barbara Kaiser, author of Challenging Behavior in Young Children, and Darcy Lowell, executive director of Child FIRST, a home visiting model with an emphasis on reducing serious emotional disturbances, developmental problems and abuse and neglect. |
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Title: |
Addressing Challenging Behavior in Children |
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Date: |
Tuesday, June 5, 2012 |
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Time: |
3:00 PM - 4:00 PM EDT |
Smoking moms are more likely to have a child with high-functioning autism, like Asperger’s Disorder, according to a new study by researchers involved in the US autism surveillance program at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“It has long been known that autism is an umbrella term for a wide range of disorders that impair social and communication skills,” said Amy Kalkbrenner, assistant professor in the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Joseph J. Zilber School of Public Health, lead author. “What we are seeing is that some disorders on the autism spectrum, more than others, may be influenced by a factor such as whether a mother smokes during pregnancy.”
Click here to read more.Data from the 2011 Survey of Pathways to Diagnosis and Services
Women who reported having had a fever during pregnancy were more likely to give birth to a baby who would later be diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder or a development delay, says a major new study. But the babies of women who treated their fevers with medication fared no worse than babies whose mothers recalled having suffered no fevers at all.
The findings, wrote the authors, "suggest that anti-fever medication used to control fever during pregnancy can reduce or eliminate" the apparent link between maternal fever and autism.
The monthly Support Group Meeting has been moved due to a conflict with the Summit Medical Fitness Center. Please note the new date.
Autism Support Group Meeting
Local non-profit organization, Autism Society of America – Northwest Montana Chapter is hosting an Autism Support Group Meeting at the Summit Medical Fitness Center at 205 Sunnyview Lane in Kalispell on Wednesday, June 6th. Parents and caregivers of children and adults with Autism Spectrum Disorders are encouraged to join the discussion group from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. in conference room #1. Because the support group will be discussing adult topics and no childcare is available, kids are asked not to attend.
For anyone not able to attend the meeting, an online forum to bring together Montana families affected by autism is available on the group’s website, www.MontanaASA.org. For more information, call 257-8758 or visit www.MontanaASA.org .
Autism Support Group Meeting
Wednesday, June 6, 2012
6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.
Summit Medical Fitness Center – Conference Room #1
205 Sunnyview Lane in Kalispell
Patricia Howlin, a researcher from the UK, once said that having autism must be like falling through Alice’s looking glass (from Alice in Wonderland), everything is chaotic and confusing. Nothing seems to make sense, not even our natural social order. A child on the autism spectrum may not understand that the teacher is the boss and he is not, and so be terribly frustrated that he does not get to make up any of the school rules. Such social confusion can easily lead to social stress, anxiety, and even aggressive behavior.
We have learned that individuals with autism tend to work best when taught within visual and predictable routines. Simon Baron Cohen (in press) suggests that if individuals with ASD possess good systematizing skills, it may be possible to use those skills to compensate for difficulties in empathizing skills. This would imply that students with ASD may learn best using visual and predictable “systems”. Dr. Tony Attwood (2006) says that the more someone with ASD understands his or her emotions, the more able that person is to express them appropriately.
The Incredible 5-point Scale (Buron & Curtis. 2003) introduces the use of a scale to teach social and emotional concepts to individuals who have difficulty learning such concepts, but who have a relative strength in learning systems. An example of learning a concept with a scale can be illustrated by a student who often talks too loud for the situation. Telling that person to “be quiet” or “use an inside voice” hasn’t changed the behavior. Using a scale to further break down the expectations might be helpful (figure one). The first step is to decide how you want to break down the concept. In this case, we broke volume down to illustrate silence all the way to screaming. Once you have created your scale, you can write a story for the student to explain the scale. You can then post the scale near the student’s desk or personal space. I recommend you review the schedule often when the student is calm and ready to learn. Do not wait until the person is upset or in the midst of screaming to teach.
The brochure is attached.
