Education Learning Issues

• Colorado Learning Disabilities Research Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder
• Texas Center for Learning Disabilities at the University of Houston
• NIH Multidisciplinary Learning Disabilities Center at Florida State University, Tallahassee
• The Center for Defining and Treating Specific Learning Disabilities in Written Language at the University of Washington, Seattle.

BULK UP THAT HIPPOCAMPUS. Kids who are more physically fit have a bigger hippocampus and perform better on memory tests. The hippocampus is a part of the brain important in learning and memory. Ergo, exercise can lead to better fulfillment of your bright child's potential. Find out more.

SENG WEBINAR. The organization Supporting Emotional Needs of the Gifted is sponsoring a free webinar "Family Event," intended for parents and children, or students and teachers, to watch together. The purpose of the Family Events: to give gifted children "relateable role models who have experienced great success in navigating the world as gifted individuals and implementing out-of-the-box thinking in their lives." The first event features Phil Gordon, former National Merit Scholar and renowned poker player. The webinar is on September 30 in the late afternoon/evening (or the middle of the night), depending on where you are. Find out more.

NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE. The substantial Magazine section of the Sunday New York Times, which we sometimes skip because we find it intimidating, last weekend featured education. Among the articles:

• One on the LiveScribe pen that records sound along with what you write; we blogged about this recently (we say smugly)
• One on the history of classroom technology, from the writing slate onward
• One on using video games to teach
• And one on how technology is "redefining what it means to be a student -- or a teacher.

BACK TO SCHOOL WITH AN LD. The Washington Post offers advice for parents of children with LDs or conditions such as AD/HD who are starting the school year. Drawing on the experience of Pam and Pete Wright as well as other experts, the article offers tips such as: know your rights; communicate ahead of time; prepare a statement of your concerns; and more. Find the article.

2e RESOURCE. Another reminder for the beginning of the school year -- the Colorado Department of Education has an online, 118-page resource book titled Twice-Exceptional Students: Gifted Students with Disabilities. The resource book contains information on identifying 2e students, IDEA considerations, planning and problem-solving, and case studies. Find the resource book.

AD/HD IN MIDDLE SCHOOL. Dr. David Rabiner pointed us to a piece on the ADDitude site about AD/HD in middle school and how to help students there with homework, classwork, social skills, and organizing. If your bright young person needs this help, check out the site.

ASD AND SENSORY PROCESSING. Science Daily reports on a study showing that children on the autism spectrum process sensory information differently than typically developing children. They apparently have difficulty dealing with sensory input from multiple sources -- sight, sound, and touch. ASD kids' brains responded more slowly and to a lesser level to multi-sensory stimuli. Read more.

MEDITATION CAN HELP REGULATE BEHAVIOR? A study showed that students trained in meditation developed new fibers in the part of the brain that helps regulate behavior, but study write-ups did not evaluate changes in subjects' behavior, just the structural changes. The type of meditation is IBMT (integrative mind-body training), evidently not currently available in the United States. Read more.

ASSISTIVE TECHNOLOGY. A columnist for ZDNET reviewed a smartpen by Livescribe recently, then did a follow-up column on the pen's possibilities for students with learning challenges. The pen allows users to record what is written (using special paper) and also what is being said. The sound and writing capture are synchronized. Read the initial review, where the reviewer claims "This is a genuinely disruptive [in a good sense] tool that can change the way students and teachers interact in the classroom." Read the follow-up, in which he gets more specific about how kids with special issues can use the pen.

"WE DO NOT ACCELERATE" -- and so a gifted Canadian 10-year-old who has completed Grade 8 in a private school will not be allowed to enter public school at the Grade 9 level. Instead, the board wants him to enter at Grade 6. The boy, according to the article, says "I'd get really bored doing Grade 6 again." Find the story.

PESTICIDES AND AD/HD. More to worry about -- CBS News reports on a study linking pesticides used in food production to a two-times-higher risk of receiving an AD/HD diagnosis. One thousand kids were tested in the study, which was reported in Pediatrics. Read the CBS report. See the Pediatrics abstract.

ENDORSEMENT FOR "GEEK CAMP." CNN describes summer camps for gifted young people, in particular the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth and the Duke Talent Identification Program. Read how campers past and present appreciate the experiences they had. Sample reactions: "Yes, yes, I'm not a freak..."; and "You can really get into discussions with people and they'll know exactly what you're talking about." The article's lead notes that Lady Gaga once went to gifted camp; so did one of the founders of Google and the founder of Facebook. Read the article.

MORE ON IMPULSIVITY AND DOPAMINE. Another study, this one from Vanderbilt University, links high levels of dopamine in the brain with impulsivity. Researchers there found that when highly impulsive subjects were given a drug that released dopamine their brains released more than four times as much of the chemical as the brains of less-impulsive subjects. Read the report.

iPADS FOR ALL. A college-prep school in Georgia that serves bright kids with learning challenges has decided to use the Apple iPad to learn in a multi-sensory way. One app on the iPad, Dragon Naturally Speaking, will help students with dysgraphia. The headmaster says that there are so many educational apps available that the school will be able to get rid of most textbooks. Read more.

EQUITY IN ENDOCRINE DISRUPTION. You know those things you don't want your kids exposed to because they can interfere with the body's endocrine system, including the reproductive system? They're equally high in both high-income and low-income homes, according to a study in California, and they're present in the air inside and outside as well as in dust inside the homes. Even more worrisome to us: the number of suspected endocrine disrupting compounds the scientists tested for -- about 70. That's lots of stuff to worry about. Read more.

GENES & ENVIRONMENT INFLUENCE PSYCHOPATHY; that according to researchers at the University of Illinois. They discovered that "children with one variant of a serotonin transporter gene are more likely to exhibit psychopathic traits if they also grow up poor." Hopefully your encounters with gifted psychopaths will be infrequent, but now if you do encounter one you can better explain the causes. Read the report.

BOB HERBERT IS FRUSTRATED. The columnist for The New York Times notes that "the U.S., once the world’s leader in the percentage of young people with college degrees, has fallen to 12th among 36 developed nations." He sees college education as important in maintaining a good standard of living in the U.S. and crucial to the country's economic competitiveness. He blames everyone, saying "A society that closes its eyes to the most important issues of the day, that often holds intellectual achievement in contempt, that is more interested in hip-hop and Lady Gaga than educating its young is all but guaranteed to spiral into a decline." If you need more things to be depressed or angry about, read the column.

TREES AND GIFTED KIDS. Tamara Fisher makes a metaphor about growth, potential, and constraints. Read her blog.

READING DIFFICULTIES AND INTERVENTIONS. Two UK scientists compared three reading programs to see which one helped most in children with reading-comprehension difficulties. If you raise or teach a bright young person with reading problems, read about the programs and the results.

CULTURE AND PSYCHOLOGY. The July issue of Perspectives on Psychological Science evidently contained a special section on the "macro" influences on brain structure, brain function, thought, and behavior. Two of the articles were summarized in Science Daily. Find one about the influence of culture; find one about the influence of social and physical environments.

#GTCHAT. If you "tweet," or would like to, you might be interested in Michael Shaughnessy's EdNews.org interview with Deborah Mersino, who moderates #gtchat on Twitter, devoted to discussing gifted issues. Read the interview.

WE MISSED PART OF NAGC'S recent report on gifted education in the United States. In our most recent posting, we pointed to a summary of the report -- "State of the Nation" -- but did not point to the "State of the States" document, the full report; we assumed it was a for-fee publication, our bad. You may find links to the various components of the biannual report at the NAGC site. Be advised that the full "State of the States" report is 293 pages long and covers topics such as state education agencies, GT funding and mandates, identification of GT students, programs, personnel preparation, related policies and practices, and lots of tables. One table consists of state report cards. Another is a three-part, state-by-state assessment of areas needing attention. For example, in our home state of Illinois, funding for gifted education is assessed as "most in need," while the representation of minority students in GT education is assessed as "in need." You may also find the way your state defines giftedness in Table 11.

TECHNOLOGY AND READING. In past posts, we've pointed to articles about Kindle and how it might affect all students, not just GT/LD learners. An article in Education Week explores "the risks and rewards of electronic reading devices" in general. And at CNN Money, you may read about a camera that reads text aloud, the Intel Reader, a device the article calls "profoundly different" from other readers. Instead of using electronically packaged and transmitted text, as the Kindle does, the Intel Reader captures text on a printed page and pronounces it aloud. The article calls the device "a potential godsend for those who struggle to read standard text because of learning disabilities or vision problems." One drawback: the just-released reader costs $1500. Find out more from the article or from Intel.

ASD AND FINE MOTOR SKILLS. Researchers have found that fine motor control, as manifested in handwriting, is different in children with ASD than in typically developing children. According to an article in Psychology Today, the researchers feel that the difference may provide clues about problems with socialization and communication in children on the autism spectrum. Find the article.

DYSLEXIC DIFFICULTY FOCUSING ON RELEVANT AUDITORY INPUT. A Northwestern University study reported in Yahoo News and Science Daily finds that dyslexic children have difficulty focusing on "relevant, predictable, and repeating auditory information," instead becoming distracted by sounds such as banging lockers or scraping chairs. According to the Science Daily piece, "The study suggests that in addition to conventional reading and spelling based interventions, poor readers who have difficulties processing information in noisy backgrounds could benefit from the employment of relatively simple strategies, such as placing the child in front of the teacher or using wireless technologies to enhance the sound of a teacher's voice for an individual student."

IF YOU'RE WORRIED ABOUT WIRELESS PHONE USAGE by your child, check out an article in Science Daily about a Swedish study that found links between wireless phone usage and biological changes in the brain as well as to overall health. Find it.

FINALLY, RESEARCH RESULTS YOU WANT TO HEAR -- from the American Chemical Society and the Journal of Proteome Research, no less. A clinical trial has shown that eating an ounce and a half of dark chocolate a day for two weeks reduces the levels of stress hormones in highly stressed people. While the study did not specifically mention those who raise and teach twice-exceptional children as being highly stressed, this may be the first study to explain how chocolate has those, mmmm, comforting effects. Read about the study. Or, if you're brave and scientifically inclined, read the study.

LD AWARENESS MONTH is October in the US and Canada, points out the LD Online Newsletter. Find out more.

CHINESE DYSLEXIA IS DIFFERENT than dyslexia in English speakers, contend two researchers at the University of Hong Kong. The researchers explain English dyslexia as a "phonological disorder" only, a problem mapping speech sounds onto letters. Chinese dyslexia, they say, combines a visuospatial deficit and a phonological disorder. The difference is related to the characteristics of the two languages. Read more.

VIDEO GAMES AND ATTENTION. Science Daily reported on a study showing that video game experience has a negative impact on the player's "proactive attention," which is defined as "gearing up" or planning moves in games. It contrasts with "reactive attention," which is "just in time" attention manifested in reaction to events such as dealing with a monster that suddenly appears in one's path. The researchers say their findings are in line with other studies showing a relation between frequent gaming and AD/HD. However, the report goes on to say, "This negative relationship between action games and proactive attention can be contrasted with the beneficial effects of these games on other aspects of visual processing." Find the report.

THE DUKE GIFTED LETTER, Fall edition, has been emailed, and one article in it is "Overexcitabilities and the Gifted Child," which describes overexcitabilities and offers ways to support a gifted child with overexcitabilities. Find it. Also in the issue, an article about praise and gifted children -- benefits and pitfalls.

KIDS' SCIENCE CHALLENGE is an NSF-funded competition, now in its second year, for students in grades 3 through 6. According to "Science Friday," a program on NPR, "Teams this year will focus on topics including bio-inspired designs, sports that would be suitable for play on Mars, and forensic science." You can find out more and listen to the program at NPR.

THE ONLINE BARGAIN BASEMENT is the title of a webinar to be presented by Gifted Online Conferences and featuring Carolyn K, webmistress of Hoagies' Gifted Education Page. Here's what the Gifted Online Conferences page says about the webinar: "The online bargain basement with classes, curriculum units and enrichment materials for all grades K-12, all totally accessed on the Internet for free. Curriculum libraries, containing units from English to Social Studies, Science to Math, even the Arts, all organized and including the instructional
standards met for each grade level. Interactive enrichment materials supplement any subject, and free textbooks and classroom materials round out the Bargain Basement offerings." Register ($10) or find out more.

WONDERING ABOUT KINDLE and whether it will play a part in your gifted student's learning? Some of the 200-plus college students using the devices tell what they think about Amazon's e-reader. Read their reactions.