LD GOES TO COLLEGE. US News provides eight steps for students with LDs who want to attend college: Start preparing early; experiment with technology; be creative; put the student in charge; and four more. Find the article. (The article says that 3 percent of teens are diagnosed with LDs, a figure that sounds low to us.)
DIFFERENTIATED INSTRUCTION WEBINAR. Compass Learning is offering a complimentary, one-hour, on-demand webinar on differentiated instruction. You may find more information and register here.
WAR: OPHTHALMOLOGY VERSUS DEVELOPMENTAL OPTOMETRY. We've run articles in 2e Newsletter about developmental optometry and the use of vision therapy for reading problems. In the second of two articles in the St. Louis Beacon, titled "Ophthalmologists express skepticism about vision therapy," you can get a look at what appears to be a dispute between two professional organizations concerning the use of vision therapy. Find it. Read the first article, the one presenting the point of view of developmental optometrists, here.
BOOK DEAL. Until December 10, Prufrock Press offers 20 percent off the cover price of Beverly Trail's new book Twice-Exceptional Gifted Children. Find out more.
AUTISM MARKER? Yale School of Medicine researchers may have found a fMRI pattern that could characterize a predisposition to ASD. The study included kids 4 to 17, and discovered three distinct "neural signatures. Read more.
SOCIETY FOR NEUROSCIENCE MEETING HIGHLIGHTS. Glen Close and Representative Patrick Kennedy both addressed the annual meeting on the topics (respectively) of the stigma of mental illness and brain research. You may view their presentations here.
PARADE MAGAZINE ON TEEN BRAINS. Last Sunday, Parade ran an article characterizing the teen brain and why it's like it is -- and what we can do about it. Find it.
CULTURAL NEUROSCIENCE is the topic of a podcast and brief article at the Scientific American site. Neural responses to similar situations differ across cultures. For example: "Scientists found that when American subjects viewed a silhouette in a dominant posture (standing up, arms crossed) their brain’s reward circuitry sparked. Not so for Japanese subjects. For the Japanese, their reward circuitry fired when they saw a submissive silhouette (head down, arms at sides)." Find out more.
FOLLOWUP ON CYBERTHERAPY. A Scientific American writer comments on a New York Times article we blogged about recently concerning therapy by machine.The writer brings up the "Dodo effect," which (if you're heavily into therapies) you can read about here.
STUDY IN SPAIN, FLY FOR FREE. But the offer is restricted, of course. It applies to high school students enrolling in a particular Spanish-language immersion program and flying from Los Angeles to Madrid on Iberia Airlines. The deal is supposedly to mark the resumption of non-stop service by Iberia between the two cities. None-the-less, if your bright young person happens to need to learn Spanish next summer, check it out.
APP FOR HEALTH CARE. An emergency-room physician has developed an app for iPhones that helps parents track various aspects of a child's care, helping to coordinate providers, keep food diaries, provide medication alerts, schedule appointments, record therapists' recommendations, chart sleep habits, and more. Originally developed to help the physician's wife care for their autistic child, the free app may help manage a variety of chronic conditions. Find out more.
LITERATE AND DYSPRAXIC. A young woman in the UK who has strengths in written and verbal communication writes about her dyspraxia, a condition characterized by difficulties in motor coordination which can also manifest itself with other challenges. Read more.