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Showing posts with label iPad. Show all posts
Showing posts with label iPad. Show all posts

From the Publishers of 2e: Twice-Exceptional Newsletter

iPADS TO ENGAGE. A Las Vegas charter school provides each of its students with an iPad to help foster the school''s project-based learning approach, according to the Las Vegas Sun. Teachers seem impressed by the kids' rapid pick-up on the technology, by the engagement the technology seems to bring, and by the opportunity for students to learn at their own pace. The article says, "Students use the iPads to access educational websites and applications as well as electronic textbooks. They use the iPad to take notes and the tablet’s camera to photograph whiteboards filled with teacher’s lessons and chemistry formulas. Some even record lectures using the iPad’s digital voice recorder or video camera, referring to them when they review for tests." Find the article. Separately, a 40-year study of the use of technology in the classroom found a small to moderate positive effect on learning and attitude, according to an article about the study. Read more.
REBUTTAL. The Child Mind Institute carried a rebuttal to a New York Times article extolling the distraction of AD/HD and conflating it with creativity. The rebuttal accused the Times' article's author, who has AD/HD, of romanticizing his childhood, and linked the article to two other recent Times pieces, one on Asperger's and one on dyslexia, which you might have read about in this blog. Read more. Separately, the Child Mind Institute also carried an excerpt from a new book called Pride and Joy; the excerpt takes issue with the "dangers of praise," focusing instead on the ill effects of criticism. Read the excerpt.
THE IEP PROCESS. Need an overview of the IEP process? An attorney provides one at SpecialNeeds.com.
DIY DUE PROCESS. Attorney Dorene Philpot, who has written for 2e: Twice-Exceptional Newsletter and who was involved in the case we described in our article "Fighting for FAPE," has written a book titled Do-It-Yourself Special Education Due Process, published this year by Learning Enabled Publications. According to the publisher, the book offers tips on representing yourself and your child at a due process hearing with a school district. Find out more.
GIFTED EDUCATION PRESS QUARTERLY. The Spring edition of this newsletter is out. In it, Maurice Fisher reviews a book by Joan Franklin Smutny and S.E. von Fremd, Teaching Advanced Learners in the General Education Classroom: Doing More with Less. Other articles in the newsletter focus on teaching the arts and humanities (to the gifted, of course). Find the newsletter.
SENG WEBINAR. Paul Beljan will present a webinar (SENG calls it a SENGinar) titled"Giftedness and  Learning Disabilities: Unearthing the Missed Diagnosis." The aim of the event is to empower parents, teachers, and counselors to spot and act on LDs in gifted children. The webinar is to be held during the evening of March 15. Find out more.
AND FINALLY, THIS. A new paper at the Dana Foundation site is called "Musical Creativity and the Brain" and examines what happens during improvisation, covering:
  • Creativity and prefrontal cortex function
  • Creative processes and underlying brain mechanisms
  • Perception and communication of improvised material
The authors also speculate on the future of the neuroscience of artistic creativity. Find the article.

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.