NEW MEDIA: BLESSING OR CURSE? Worried about what new media is doing to your children's brains? To yours? A Newsweek blog contains a review of The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, a book by Nicholas Carr. The book's thesis is that the Internet is changing the way we think (for the worse), and making us distracted and even less empathetic. Interestingly, a recent New York Times op-ed piece by Steven Pinker took exactly the opposite stance, claiming that "new forms of media have always caused moral panics" and that "experience does not revamp the basic information-processing capabilities of the brain." In what has to be a direct rebuttal to Carr, Pinker concludes, "Far from making us stupid, these technologies are the only things that will keep us smart." Find Pinker's op-ed piece.
MORE ON MEDIA. How about your child and video games? A recent metastudy notes several interesting things. First, the popularity of video games has not led to an overall increase in behavior problems or violence among children. Second, whether video game violence causes aggression in a particular child depends on the child's personality. And third, researchers have found that video game play can have a number of positive uses. Read more.
WHEN TO LITIGATE WITH SCHOOL. Suppose your twice-exceptional child is not getting the services you feel he or she needs at school. When do you stop requesting, advocating, cajoling, or threatening... and move to legal remedies to try to get what you think is best for your child? Wrightslaw's Special Ed Advocate from June 8th contains several articles dealing with this difficult decision, as well as one exemplifying the challenge of taking on the school system. Find Special Ed Advocate. (For another article on this topic, see "Fighting for FAPE" on the 2e Newsletter website.)
SUSAN BAUM ON THE MOVE. The peripatetic Susan Baum, director of professional development at Bridges Academy and member of the 2e Newsletter Advisory Board, is presenting a free workshop in Salt Lake City on June 17th, 7-8:30 pm. The title: "The Enigma of the 2e Child: Dispelling the Myths." The workshop is by the Utah Parent Center and Granite School District. For more information, call Michelle at 385.646.4190 or go here.
END OF THE SCHOOL YEAR. Late on this sunny, late-spring morning we were driving through the middle of All-American Wheaton, Illinois, and were startled by a horde of elementary-school students running excitedly up the street, yelling. We surmised that, rather than lunchtime, the excitement stemmed from the last day of school. As we parked in the downtown, packs of middle-schoolers roamed the sidewalks, similarly freed. The experience reminds us to wish the parents and educators among our northern-hemisphere readership a fruitful summer vacation. (Too bad the adults can't take the summer off while the kids work.)
DOCTORS VERSUS EDUCATORS. Whose assessment of a child with Asperger's or some other exceptionality is to be acted upon when medical professionals and school professionals differ on the cause and treatment of a child's behavior at school? The Arizona Republic describes a family in Gilbert, Arizona, whose son has high-functioning autism but whom the school deemed simply had "skills delays." The family struggled all year, although by the end of the year the child was doing well. Read about the conflict.
RTI IN EARLY CHILDHOOD. Should RTI be extended "downward" so that pre-schoolers with potential issues can be identified early? Three groups concerned with early childhood and education are developing a position statement for applying RTI in the context of early childhood. Find out more.
ADOLESCENT RISK. It's the mesolimbic dopamine system that drives risky behaviors in teens, says a University of Texas researcher. As it turns out, the system causes large "reward prediction error" -- the difference between an expected outcome and the actual outcome." Read more about the study.
NON-INTUITIVE RESEARCH RESULTS OF THE DAY -- and nothing to do with giftedness or twice-exceptionality, but interesting none the less. Researchers now claim that caffeine consumption is unrelated to alertness. Their thesis: that coffee merely reverses "the fatiguing effects of acute caffeine withdrawal." See what you think, coffee drinkers.
TESTING FOR AD/HD. A Harvard psychiatrist, Dr. Martin Teicher, has invented an objective test for AD/HD, according to The New York Times. The effectiveness of the test has been reported in professional journals, and several insurers will cover the test, called the Quotient ADHD System. Find out more.
CHECKING KIDS' MENTAL HEALTH. The American Academy of Pediatrics, in this week's issue of Pediatrics, has recommended that pediatricians screen for possible mental health issues on each visit to the doctor. Read about it in the Wall Street Journal. Or, check the Academy's website for more information.
AD/HD, ACCOMMODATIONS, AND ABUSE. An article in the San Antonio Express-News describes an adult with what sounds like severe AD/HD on a 16-year quest for his associate's degree at a local community college. Along the way, the article covers accommodations colleges can or must make for learners with disabilities, and how those accommodations are sometimes abused. Find the article.
WORRIED ABOUT EDUCATION? Check out "The Condition of Education 2010," the latest in a series of annual reports summarizing developments and trends in education. The assessment is based on data for 49 indicators and covers all levels of education. Find out more.