Slashdot Mirror
Technology to Help with Learning Disabilities?
GotSanity asks: "I have a little brother who is now 18 and still can not read or do basic math. At an early age he was diagnosed with a level 10 mental handicap. I am curious as to what technology is available to help teach him to read. The major problems with most educational software I have found is that they both cater to younger minds (even though he has a learning disability he still is involved with everyday teenager activities like video games and music) and are often far to expensive for a working class family. I originally got him a copy of Typing of the Dead, and through it he has been learning to read and spell better. What novel education ideas can the Slashdot community suggest?"
I learned to read and type as a kid with Nintendo Power magazine and Mario Teaches Typing.
"All it takes to fly is to hurl yourself at the ground... and miss." - Douglas Adams
what makes you think any amount of technology could help? computers can't work miracles. psychiatry ... might.
Almost agreed; I would have said psychology & friends instead.
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
My aunt was a teacher in special education, and I had the opportunity to help out on a few occasions. From talking to her and just interacting with the kids, hands-on learning and human interaction seem to be the best way for many of these kids to learn. Imitation and being able to see the concepts in their hands is probably a far better means of education than just a computer. However, I don't doubt that computer programs coupled with perhaps some sort of hardware controller and a human guide would be beneficial. Good luck to anyone who is helping anyone out with disabilities. Just being there to help works wonders on its own.
Number Munchers. Nuff said.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
From my experience, educational software is usually laughably simple, especially given the price. If you don't totally suck at teh programming, try writing some of your own tools for him and then work with him to refine them and target them towards his specific issues. It doesn't take a rocket scientist. Get a copy of perl/tk or something and start hacking.
-73, de n1ywb
www.n1ywb.com
What is the nature of your brother's disability? PDD? DS? Kanner's autism? Dyslexia? CHI? What defines "effective" software is going to vary considerably based on the diagnosis...
What is a level 10 mental handicap?
Don't take life so seriously. No one makes it out alive.
Maybe FFX and FFX-2. Lots of spoken dialog with captions. Actually any TV that can show CC without having mute on might be good to try. I really don't know what else to tell you. Maybe looking into some adult reading eductation programs in your local area to see if they have any tips.
I have a little brother who is now 18 and still can not read or do basic math.
Get him a slashdot account, he will fit right in.
First, to the parent poster: Often, the issue isn't psychology but neurology. Besides, technology can solve some psychological problems (after all, a psychiatrist is a physician who applies pharmaceutical technologies to psychological problems).
To the submitter: I suspect you'd be better off talking to a support group of families with similar issues than the /. crowd. But failing that, you might try combining screen-reading software with level-appropriate reading that's also age appropriate (perhaps sports or gaming articles on websites), or try combining books on tape/audible with print copies of the same books.
Since most of the replies are crap i am going to post an advice that has helped me learn to read very well:
Read as many books as posible - start with the really easy and move on. In the beginning your brother will properly need someone to read the words to him - he will then reconise them later. A good tool might be festival
As for natual selection post above:
Our society is rich - it can afford (and should) aford to help everybody, how wish to be helped
Freedom or George Bush
--This sig is in beta. Please let us know abut any errors you find.
Certaintly he has a teacher or doctor that could explain his handicap to you and maybe they could explain how technology could help.
I agree with another poster who said that human interaction in a hands-on environment would probably be best. I'm sure you've already explored that route though and I doubt you're trying to circumvent that, but rather are trying to augment his learning.
Have you done any extensive googling? A search for "handicapped education technology disabled" might turn up alot. I did a search on those exact terms and ended up with
http://www.assis-tech.com/
Which I got off of this page here:
http://www.eskimo.com/~jlubin/disabled/all.htm
Perhaps some good searching is in order? Maybe you know about these things already. It wouldn't hurt to look around though.
Nobodies Prefect
Tidbits for Techs Technology Blog
It will OCR the documents and then read it outloud, giving you help along the way. I gather it was designed with Special Ed teachers' advice.
Windows and Mac
I left computer engineering to persue a major in Special Education. My main desire is to work with middle school or older persons with disabilities. And the problem described by the original poster is a common issue. Age appropriate activitied for the mentally handicapped are seriously lacking.
It just isn't right to have a 22 year old man putting colored blocks into the right shape holes -- no matter how severe the handicap. I think that technology can be useful (but most likely you, or someone with programming ability) are going to have to create it yourself. In a similar manner, it is often up to the family to be creative and create age-appropriate activities for their handicapped family member.
The schools, at least my program, are seriously working on approaching this issue and designing activites for people like your brother. But they fail as often as they succeed.
[Don't ask how I ended up in this major from computer engineering. I'm not sure myself.]
---
"Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins,
for they are subtle and quick to anger."
What's the scale?
How about watching TV with the closed captions turned on? I think it's standard in every television now. Poke around the on-screen menus. Start with really easy kids shows and progress from there. I think with a lot of DVDs you can turn on English subtitles even with the English sound track. Maybe it'll help tie the written words to the spoken ones, and some sort of connection will result.
I have Attention Deficit Disorder. Over many years, I have learned how to control it with little to no medication. I struggled horribly in school because among other things I simply could not remember to bring my homework home with me. By the time I got to High School, my disorder had been diagnosed and after trying several medications we were able to find one that worked.
What would have helped *me* more than anything (aside from an earlier diagnosis) would have been a few very simple process changes. If I had been given a set of books to keep at home, and had a list of upcoming assignments been sent to my house, things would have been *much* easier for me.
Again if we can stop thinking about technology and medication as our magic solutions we might be able to help people learn more and over time be better able to manage their disorders. Note that there is a place for both computers and medication, but these need to be secondary to process and an attempt help the individual discover how to best manage the disorder.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Starts here http://gcompris.free.fr/ and works up, you may get here http://wims.unice.fr/wims/wims.cgi before you know it.
It doesn't require money. It does require a desire to help. You help your brother, you help others, others help you.
Friedrich Froebel, who was mentally challenged, founded the idea of the kindergarten. He used sandpaper blocks for each letter so that children could have a tactile feel for them and use other sensory modalities to reinforce memory of them. The Montessori teaching methods use similar approaches to Froebel's (see http://www.montessori.edu/). Repetition until mastery is what is needed. For your brother that may take a long time but wont it be great if he succeeds?
As a special education teacher, a home schooling mother with two learning-disabled children, and l/d adult married to another l/d adult, may I say that frankly there is not enough information to go on.
l essonview_en.htm, http://www.teachers.ash.org.au/jeather/maths/dicti onary.html, http://teachers.teach-nology.com/.
Every LD child (and LD adult) is different, every one of us has different needs and different learning styles. Does he learn better by hearing something, by seeing it, or by touch. In most cases the best bet is to mix all three.
Video games are an excellent resource for this and best bet is to find something he will actually do and then stick with it. Games that require basic reading and simple math skills are very helpful. (We found several Gamecube games work well for this as most do not "speak". Harvest Moon and Animal Crossing are good examples.)
I have found that there are a wide variety of free games on-line that aren't to "childish" but are helpful in reinforcing skills being worked on. A few are http://www.dositey.com/, http://www.internet4classrooms.com/index.htm, http://www.literacycenter.net/literacycenter_net/
The best relatively cheap learning software we have found, that is at least tolerable for adults (not too cutesy) are the http://www.helpme2learn.com/ "Help Me 2 Learn" programs. My husband and I have both used the Spanish software for ourselves and found it one of the few that eaither of us could really learn from. My kids love all the other software and we have found that the style it is taught works for all 3 children, who each have very different learning styles.
May I suggest checking out some home schooling websites, you will find many resources for a variety of learning disabilities and types.
As someone who helped LD kids in k-12 (while i myself was in k-12) its important to remember the differences between someone with LD and someone without. Many people assume that LD is some sort of delayed reaction, that eventually they will learn like a normal person, which just isnt true. Every avenue of enforcement is needed to effectively teach, computers or other 'single avenue' methods are largely useless. They will respond the best to a human teacher approaching them with a very diverse toolset, as opposed to being battered with the same approach like computer learning. Keep in mind its NOT easy and there is little precedent for acheiving good success with people who have LD.
You know we all like the odd troll now and again and nothing wrong with a bit of Linux/Windows/Mac bashing whatever, but it is pretty low to mock some guy with a disability. People don't ask for these things in life.
Some restaint by the usual trolls would be in order. If you have nothing worth saying to help the poster of the original article then just keep quiet and wait for the next KDE/Linspire/Mac Mini mod/Windows is taking over the world thread etc.
I make the ReadSay PROnounce English system, which uses speech recognition to evaluate and diagnose pronunciation, and help with oral reading. I've been offering it for $499, but I'll give a $100 discount to anyone who says they saw it on Slashdot (the $499 price is to keep distributor partners happy.) I've been selling this since September, and all the existing customers (as few as there are so far) are happy with it. I'm (1) in the process of arranging two comparitive evaluations, which will each take months, and (2) trying to sell it to a big educational software publisher.
Turn on closed captioning for every TV in the house. Koskinen, et al (1986) had some good results with this. It wasn't dramatic, but there were some small improvements.
Koskinen, P.; Wilson, R. M.; Gambrell, L. B.; and Jensema, C. (1986). Using closed captioned television to enhance reading skills of learning disabled students. National Reading Conference Yearbook, 35, 61-65.
You should take a look at this software by Jerry Pournelle's wife. http://www.readingtlc.com/
"I would have said psychology & friends instead."
.don't expect them to grow your brother a new spinal column. It just doesn't work like that. They're crutches, and likely will remain so during your lifetime. . .and beyond.
You beat me to it. I am dyslexic, dysgraphic and a bit dyspraxic.
Back in the 60s I served as a test subject for psychological research on these. People have actually come up to me and said,"Hey, I was reading a paper on learining disabilities and your name was in it, is that you?" Yeah, it's me, and my stepfather once won an award from the National Optemetric Society for best magazine article of the year on learning disabilities (which I've never read, and my brother is incapable of reading.
After going through years of testing and research and dealing with the issues personally for decades I can't say I can offer much to the questioner. If anyone had found viable means of correcting such disabilities they would already be applying them to your brother, n'est-ce pas?
Learning disabilities are a neurological disability. Like having a severed spinal column, and it's just as idiotic to tell a dyslexic/dysgraphic he should just try harder to spell correctly as it is to tell a parapalegic to just try harder to jog.
And anyone who tries to do so just makes themselves look like the idiot (dyslexics are, statistically, actually above average in intelligence).
As a physical disability you have to think in terms of physical strategies, patterning exercises and such. They help, but they take a lot of time and energy and don't produce anything like a miracle; and what effect they do have is acute, not chronic, like body building. If you don't keep doing it the "muscle" goes away.
So is there technology? Yeah, I suppose, like spell checkers, but. .
The best thing you can do is learn to accept the fact that your brother is disabled, learn to cope with that, and hence help him to cope with it too.
KFG
I'm a high school teacher, and for the most part school districts in the state of Kentucky are required to help individual students that have disabilities in reading etc.
Read and Write Gold is the app that is used most often to help students with reading disabilities.
From my point of view though, I've seen the use of this technology actually lower testing scores when tests are given and the technology isn't used. This is compared to how the student would have done after several weeks of non-use.
Software, and computers in general tend to cause mental dependency on the part of the learner. I have actually seen something that looks like withdrawl symptoms when the software isn't available to the student. It's scary. I used to spell words very well, but these days I find that I have to keep OpenOffice open all the time just for a real quick spell check! I'm thoroughly dependent on the technology.
I whole heartedly agree with most of the closed captioning posts. Whatever you do please make sure that most of the work is done by your "student" and not technology. People are A LOT like pop corn, the only way to get the good stuff out of a kernel of corn is to apply heat, steam, and pressure.
You didn't specify what kind of learning disability your brother had. The most common kind of disability that affects reading is Dyslexia. It could also cause problems with math since if you don't perceive the digits and symbols in the same order they appear on the page, you are going to have trouble with math. Dyslexia is itself a rather vague diagnosis.
I can't really recommend specific software but I can share some observations from personal experience. Attitudes towards disability can make a huge difference. Expectations of failure can be self fulfilling prophacies.
A friend of mine was diagnosed as Dyslexic when he was young. His parents were told by doctors that he would never learn to read. Fortunately, his parents did not listen. They spent time tutoring him and enrolled him in a special school. My friend not only reads better than the vast majority of the population, he is extremely well read and has a Ph. D. in astrophysics.
I myself was diagnosed in high school as having dyslexia though that came as quite a surprise since I was reading at a 12th grade level in the 6th grade. When I was a kid, my mother read to me a lot.
Another friend has dyslexia. His parents took the attitute of steering him away from activities that he would be likely to fail at. As a result, he is functionally illiterate but slowly making progress on his own. It may have helped that I was able to counter some of the defeatist non-sense.
Your brother might benefit from using the English subtitles availible on most DVD players. As long as he tries to read them rather than just relying on the audio, the effect could be similar to being read to. He could choose content that was interesting to him. An interesting technological twist would be to modify an open source software DVD player such as Ogle to deliberately desynchronize the audio so the words would be spoken only after he had a chance to try and read them himself. Neurologically, being forced to make the attempt and then being corrected or reinforced immediately thereafter is important to the learning process. Of course, he may not be far enough along that he can follow the subtitles. He might be able to try to get the first word out of each subtitle, then work up to the first two words. It is important to be aware that sometimes the subtitles and the dialog do not match (subtitles having been copied from the script not transcribed from the actual performance) but they match often enough that if you take this into consideration it could be useful. Another variation would be to make the DVD player software automatically pause after each new subtitle is displayed.
Similarly, text to speech can be integrated with applications such as instant messaging and slight modification would create a delay between presenting the written words and speaking them. Of course, he would need to be litterate enough to be able to write something back in the case of instant messaging unless he is just lurking in some chat rooms. In the latter case, logs could be used so he doesn't have to keep up with the frantic pace in many chat rooms.
Dyslexic.com has some information on technological aids for dyslexia. Hierarchical Program Tree is a package listed at freshmeat that is intended for dyslexics. There is probably some more stuff out there.
I think there is a lot of potential for educational software that is designed to take particular learning disabilities into consideration that may not have been realized yet. As an example, a dyslexic may be able to make out the individual letters in a word but have difficulty perceiving them in the order they appear. So, "tea" and "ate" might be hard to distinguish. A program could sort through the dictionary finding words that are different morphologies of the same letters and speak a word and present similar words as a multiple choice test. Educational softw
This may seem counterintuitive, but I believe the best way to learn to read is by reading. Grab a book... a good story, from a genre he'd like... and read it with him. Let him do the reading and help him when he gets stuck. But let the story do the teaching. Then read another one together. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Why Vegan? No other food choice has a farther-reaching and more profoundly positive impact on all of life on Earth.
Hi!
With respect and regard, you don't want a "novel education idea." You really want to focus on your brother's specific features, and try to find successful strategies that other people have used with similar disabilities. That's not a novel approach--and it doesn't involve any more technology than ordering a book or five from a good publisher's web site.
My youngest daughter has Down syndrome--and we've found that kids with Down syndrome learn to read in a radically different way than kids with, for example, ADHD. The strategies that work for the ADHD kids in the class probably won't be successful for Annie--the strategies that work for Annie won't do much for others in the class. That's part of the reason that--despite the best intentions in the world--special ed classes don't do as much for kids with disabilities as they should. They can't be everything to everyone.
Here's where you come in.
You have a major advantage over your brother's teachers: you do not have to be all things to all people. You already are his big brother--and he's your only student. Practically anything you do will succeed--to some extent. What you need to do is identify successful strategies to use with your brother--and learn a lot more about language and learning than you probably ever thought possible. While you learn about his particular disability and how to teach to him, you should also learn a LOT about English. You should learn about the "core" of 8000 Anglo-Saxon words that form the vast bulk of our daily conversation. You should learn the difference between the active and passive voices, the detailed specifics of each of the tenses, and you should learn how to identify reading materials that include the parts of language you want--and do not include the parts you don't. Focus on simple sentences of Anglo-Saxon words in the present tense and the active voice: I eat food. Sandy is my dog. I ride horses. You are my friend. I like you. My brother loves me.
For an example of the kind of thing to avoid, look at any memo that comes home from the administration of your brother's (or your) school.
What you'll need most...
This will come as no surprise, right? The most important thing you'll need is patience. Applaud his successes--give genuine praise for genuine accomplishment. Give encouragement when he has trouble--and be critical when he blows you off. Be "real"--don't be yet another I'm-so-proud-of-you syncophant.
And when he can read--know that you have probably done the most important thing you will do in your life.
I have CP (Cerebral Palsy), and friends with CP, as well as a sister who is very similar to what you described. I'll have my father post as well but:
1. Have the school teach him how to read one-on-one through the educational plan (IEP)--they are required to educate any person until age 21.
2. Use ESL books of popular stories or Sparknotes.
3. There are some really good thought-provoking stories written for the third-fifth grade level. I know he is not there yet--get him there.
There is software such as Kurzweil 3000 or WYNN that are reading aids.. that will speak text, highlight text, and have a built-in dictionary. (the dictionary talks too.)
There are also children's dictionaries on CD-ROM.
Ultimately, you need to look at electronic books in general, and audio books. Get him interested in the material, and give him the motivation neccessary to succeed.
Bookshare.org is an organization that provides an e-book sharing service for disabled people, legal under U.S copyright law. This service works with the Kurzweil 3000 software I suggested earlier.
But the ultimate thing that worked for my sister was Instant Messaging. She had to learn how to decipher acronyms, which also gave her the feeling of fitting in. She figured out tenses and complex sentences, from barely reading at all.
Do NOT get frustrated with him. Your mileage may vary. He may not even be interested in IM. But if you can get him to have a screenname and get his buddies to write him as they normally would any other person, he will learn by immersion and things will improve.
--Sam
P.S One more note: Do not prevent him from using materials that are "too young" for him. It is sometimes neccessary, and if he can realize that *on his own* so much the better.
If you're really serious about this, you should check out the software from Scientific Learning. One area where they've been very successful is with helping children with dyslexia and other special needs.
/ main=home/rl/
Here's a relevant link:
http://www.scilearn.com/results/student/specialed
Pretty interesting company, actually... educational software based on brain research on how people *actually* learn.
has several games based on typing... Like Typer Shark- http://games.yahoo.com/games/downloads/tps.html
There are probably many others (PopCap or not) online that might be useful.
No unauthorized use. Trespassers will be shot. Survivors will be shot again.
www.the-underdogs.org
They have all the older educational games that you can't hardly find anymore.
There's a lot of books that have been written on learning using NLP, but I've never read any of them so I would recommend googling for that. One big thing about reading and spelling is that it's important to do it visually, not auditorily. I'm sure there are things that can help a whole lot.
As a sidenote, many slashdotters might like NLP. It was created/discovered by a mathematician/computer programmer turned psychologist, and is all about programming your brain. His name is Richard Bandler, I've so far read two of his seminar-based books, "Using Your Brain -- For a Change" and "Frogs Into Princes".
Berto
I have a friend who is "mentally handicapped" to the point where he can't read or write at the age of 24. I've been testing the method of ridicule and public embarrassment in order to stimulate the motivation needed to learn which, have been fairly unsuccessful. So far in the past 3 years of testing, he has attempted the exercises of trying to get people to read books to him, attempting to learn french by listening to audio tapes, and self loathing. None of these attempts which he's tried have been successful, so I would say my experiment is failing... but on the other hand its REALLY funny so I think I'll continue with the experiment and see what happens.
Our program, eLocutor (download from http://www.holisticit.com/eLocutor/elocutorv3.htm) is a typing assistant for persons with severe motor disabilities. As such, it places no burden on the user in terms of learning to type as such. Functional operations can be run off using the mouse button only. With a little practice, your brother can watch words being created for him, referenced from the inbuilt dictionary. It installs and runs on Windows only.
However, it was not designed for persons with learning disabilities either. Frankly, we do not know, nor have we researched, whether it serves a useful purpose here.
If your brother takes to it, please do let us know. With very little effort, the dictionary can be modified (and it learns, too) to downsize it (it was set up with 250,000 words, which few people actually use, plus a specialised physics/cosmology section). Doing this will speed up the word retrieval function, of course, though this may not even be a requirement for your brother.
Finally, by installing a text-to-speech app like Festival (which others here have suggested too) the screen will read back whatever is typed, which may assist your brother to learn to associate the words on the screen with the spoken word.
Hope this is useful to you.