Assistive Technology

We often get questions from parents that send us back to our blog to see what we have written about a particular subject. Sharing the link to a blog will often help a student or family who has questions about a particular topic that we have discussed - and written information that can be reviewed and even printed can be particularly helpful.

Such is the case with the issue of assistive technology (AT). In response to a question from a New York City mom, we took a look back at our past posts on this subject -- and found a wealth of information that we hope you might also find helpful. As we hope our readers know, our blog has a "search" feature that lets you find posts by topics, key words, or even the date posted. It's a quick way to check on any subject about which you may have questions.

There is a simple video that explains the basics of AT with information about finding out about how to locate AT resources throughout the U.S.

Our posts about various aspects of AT go all the way back to 2012, so some of the tech we discuss as "new" may not be so new anymore. But we think that you will find these posts a useful starting point for understanding what AT is, how it works, and how it can help you or your student with specific issues.

• Back in 2012, we looked at CAST (The Center for Applied Special Technology) and the wealth of resources they offer 
• We recommended a wristwatch that sent a vibrating reminder signal and an app that might help teenage procrastinators 
• We discussed audio books that have highlighting features, something we often include in our recommended strategies for students
• We shared information about a blog from the folks who bring you TED Talks about how to navigate educational technology
• We look at the accessibility features available from Google
• We describe some top time management and homework resources, a number of which we frequently recommend to students
• In a post from 2017 we review a number of excellent AT tools for managing dyslexia.

And we also wrote about the low tech subjects of handwriting and the benefits of teaching children to write by hand and other kinds of low tech AT

Finally, there is a helpful blog post from earlier this year on the InsideSchools blog about high tech tools for students with a variety of disabilities and the New York City Department of Education has a web page with information about the nuts and bolts of getting appropriate technology for students with disabilities in New York City.

TED Advice for Navigating Educational Technology

We love TED, both the talk series and the blog, and were so impressed by one of their recent education blog posts we had to share it. Called “There’s No App for Good Teaching,” it provides ideas for helping parents and teachers navigate the ever-expanding array of learning technology. Although many apps, online learning opportunities, and tech-y tools can be helpful, educational technology is a very lucrative industry, meaning that lots of programmers are producing content in the hopes of cashing in. The upshot is that there’s a lot of chaff to be separated from the wheat. TED shares this list, based on research, of eight factors to keep in mind when assessing learning technology:

1. Keep learning goals ahead of the technology.

2. Opt for the open-ended.

3. Don’t let tech making learning easy.

4. Take feedback seriously. (This refers to feedback the technology gives to students.)

5. Stay skeptical of individualized learning – for now.

6. Bring in student interests, authentically.

7. Start conversations (i.e. look for tools that get kids talking).

8. Make it open, make it better. (This one, which applies to teachers, suggests that teachers can all benefit from sharing their lessons plans with each other to enhance student learning.)

We enthusiastically recommend reading their post in full for more details on the list.

Our thoughts? Number three caught our attention in particular. We agree that real learning takes time and effort. Young people, and all people, often need to wrestle with new concepts, laboriously considering all angles and trying and failing a few times to truly understand complex material.

But remember to make a distinction between learning and accessing/expressing. Students with disabilities need the opportunity to wrestle with new material just as much as anyone else, but some may need to rely on technology to access that material. A dyslexic child who uses audiobooks is not taking the easy way out; he is using a tool to help him do what other kids can do easily. He still needs to comprehend and interrogate the ideas in the text, which audiobooks certainly won’t help with. Similarly, a child with dysgraphia may need to dictate what she has learned to speech-to-text software to show her teacher the complexity of her thoughts. When other students can transcribe their ideas easily, such software allows her the same opportunities as peers to show what she knows. Our colleagues at CAST do a great job explaining this concept of universal design for learning, or UDL. A visit to their website provides excellent resources, including explanatory videos.

Baby Blogger

These days, more and more communications happen in cyberspace. To introduce your kids to online networking, why not create a family blog, or allow them to share posting responsibilities for an existing blog? Creating posts gives kids practice generating discourse, keyboarding, editing, and more, and it can be an excellent opportunity to discuss the crucial issues of online safety and privacy with youngsters in a relevant context. Here are a few ideas for launching the younger members of your household into the blog-sphere:

  

• Bestow the title of "family journalist" on your child. She could be responsible for a weekly post of family news bites or for writing up special family events and excursions. Remember that posts don't have to be more than a few sentences for beginning bloggers.
• Children just learning their way around a keyboard can have a voice too. Rather than writing whole posts, they can contribute their own typed sentences. For example, a post written by a parent could include a prompt such as, "Carrie had this to say about her first ski trip:" This is an excellent opportunity to introduce kids to features like spell check when they must type longer words. 
• Kids too young to type even a little can still dictate their own summaries of family events to be typed by an adult. Distant family members are bound to enjoy reading about the first day of kindergarten, as told by the kindergartner himself!
• Blogs are about more than just words. Kids interested in digital art can upload photos and experiment with editing tools to be sure the shots are just right. Creative kids might doctor photos to show what they wish had happened; just be sure to show them how to add photo captions, or confused family members may think Taylor Swift really did show up at your daughter's birthday party!
• Got a budding Top Chef on your hands? Help your child document the making of a recipe through notes and photos during cooking. Then your child can create a post to tell the story of the dish and share the recipe. Hundreds of food blogs around the web can serve as inspiration.

Finally, a note for well-meaning parents: While learning to edit is valuable, try not to be too heavy-handed with suggestions and corrections. Help your young writer to re-read what he has written and show him how to resolve the red squiggly lines that mean he's made a mistake of spelling or grammar, but otherwise let his words be his own. Blogs are wonderful records, and he will probably enjoy returning to old posts as he develops as a writer for concrete proof of how far he has come.

photo credit: Christian Schnettelker via flickr cc

Exciting Resources for Teaching Current Events

National News Engagement Day was October 7th, but just because we missed it this year doesn't mean it's too late to get young people thinking about current events. Devoting just one day to something as important as global news is silly, anyway; in our opinion, engagement with news should be ongoing. The New York Times has compiled a thoughtful list of fifty excellent ideas for teaching with current events. Many can be tweaked to suit students of different ages, and parents can use many of the ideas at home to help kids discuss and understand the news they see, hear, and read.

The list is divided into the following categories: Reading and Writing; Speaking and Listening; Games and Quizzes; Photographs, Illustrations, Videos, and Infographics; Design and Creativity; Making Connections; and Building Skills. Some ideas, like an assignment to write an editorial about a newsworthy issue, would be excellent to implement as a regular classroom routine. Others, like creating a news-inspired theatrical performance, would be fun one-time projects.

Of course, the ideas on this list can be used to support kids in exploring any news source, not only The New York Times. One of our favorite resources for non-fiction texts is NewsELA. The site allows teachers to adjust the readability of news articles to fit their students' reading levels; this means that students in the class can read differently leveled articles about the same topic and discuss it together, even if they have widely differing reading skills.

A recent Times experiment may also be of interest to educators. A new feature allows young people to pick the Times articles that interest them most and either tweet about them using the hashtag #NYTLNreads or post about them in the articles' comment sections. In a sentence or two, readers should explain why they think their peers would enjoy reading the article, too. Check out the page where, once a week, The Times features a compilation of articles selected by students in individual classrooms around the country.This feature is in its beta stage, but educators should investigate it and encourage their students to participate. Young people can also submit their choices independently.

500 Posts and Still Going Strong!

Today marks our 500th Yellin Center blog post and we thought you might like to know something about the folks who write our blogs and who have helped us to reach out to you with news, information, and the latest research findings and educational tools since we first began blogging in August 2009.

Most of our posts in the past year or two about reading, books, and teaching strategies have been the work of Beth Guadagni, a Yellin Center Learning Specialist. Beth earned her bachelor's degree at Vanderbilt University, double majoring in English and secondary education, and her master’s degree in literacy from Columbia University's Teachers College.She is a New York State certified reading specialist who taught English at both the high school and middle school levels before joining the Yellin Center staff.

Our blogs about special education laws, schools, and the latest research findings have generally been the work of Susan Yellin, Esq., our Director of Advocacy and Transition Services. Susan has been an attorney for over 25 years and brings to the blog the perspective of a parent of three sons, one of whom has learning difficulties. She is also the author of an award winning book, Life After High School: A Guide for Students with Disabilities and Their Families (Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2010). Here at The Yellin Center she works with families seeking help to  understand the world of special education and to guide them as they make school decisions. She also works with college bound students with learning and attention difficulties as they move on from high school to post-secondary education.

Jeremy Koren, the Director of Communications at the Yellin Center gives our blog its "bells and whistles" and every so often will write a post on technology. Jeremy has been with the Yellin Center since its inception and, in addition to handling all of the technological aspects of our blog, especially the illustrations and video, is also the Yellin Center webmaster, responsible for our newly revamped website, our newsletter, and our Twitter feed. In addition to his many roles here at the Yellin Center, Jeremy will be adding a new one some time in the next few weeks as he and his wife Meghan, a former Yellin Center Learning Specialist, become parents for the first time.

Last, but certainly not least, is Dr. Paul Yellin, who contributes blogs on conferences and meetings he has attended, research that he has read, and issues of medical importance whenever his hectic schedule permits. 

We welcome guest bloggers and comments on our blog posts, and encourage you to sign up for our Twitter or RSS feeds to stay up to date. When you visit our offices, take a look at the bound volumes of past years' blogs in our reception area. It has been a privilege writing for you and we look forward to keeping at it for many years to come.

Photo: CC by minivan1411

Book Ideas for Kids: Second Childhood Reviews

Parents sometimes ask us how to find age appropriate books for their children. It’s a tougher question to answer than it should be. After all, terms like “children’s book,” “chapter book,” or “young adult book” are pretty nebulous. Does a fifth grader fall into the “children” category? How young is too young for “young adult”? Reading a brief summary on Amazon often does little to inform parents of the reading level and content of the book in question. Fortunately, there are resources out there, and one of our current favorites is the wonderful blog Second Childhood Reviews.

Heather, the blog’s primary contributor, has a master’s degree in literacy and works as a literacy coach at an elementary school. Her reviews are supplemented by contributions from Rachel, another literacy coach in the  same school district. Both bloggers spent many years delivering classroom instruction as well, and their knack for understanding what kids like to read is part of what makes this blog such a wonderful resource.

Second Childhood reviews books for readers from third grade through high school. Titles are accompanied by thorough descriptions of the books, as well as the bloggers’ opinions about them. Visitors to the site will quickly realize that most of the reviews are positive; the selection of titles is so excellent, however, that Heather and Rachel would be hard pressed to respond with anything less than glowing praise. The range of titles is diverse, and the analyses provide thoughtful commentary on good discussions the themes in the books may raise at school or at home, and which content may be objectionable to some readers.

Readers may enjoy simply scrolling through the posts by date; they’re great reads by themselves. Alternately, reviews are organized by labels like “science fiction,” “civil rights,” and “friendship,” making it easy for readers to browse by theme. Somewhat hidden farther down the right sidebar is a list of reviewed titles organized alphabetically. Alas, the site does not feature a list of reviewed titles arranged by grade. Nevertheless, this is a wonderful resource parents and educators should certainly bookmark.

Friday Favorites

SchoolBook
The School Book pages of the New York Times are an excellent "go to" resource for what is going on in the world of New York City education. They include links to helpful guides and websites, a school search feature, and articles, blogs, and conversation threads about current issues.


Education Week
We liked the article in the May 23rd issue of Education Week about how introverted children may be overlooked by their teachers -- and how their more thoughtful nature can be an asset in other situations, such as taking standardized tests.


Inside Schools
We have recommended the InsideSchools website before (a project of the Center for New York City Affairs at The New School), but haven't mentioned their presence on YouTube, where they have posted excellent instructional videos on how to choose a school and special education services. In the complex New York City public school maze, these video guides help provide clarity. For a sampling, check out the video below about specialized high schools in New York City.

Photo: Josh Pesavento/Flickr Creative Commons

Still Blogging After All These Posts...

This entry marks our 400th post to The Yellin Center Blog. We thought it would be a good time to remind our readers how to search for specific information or topics of interest that have appeared in past postings. There are several different ways to do this.

First, you can use the "search this blog" feature on the right-hand side of the page and enter the subject you are seeking.

You can also search by the date on which a posting appeared; recent postings are listed on the right hand side of the page under the heading "Blog Archive" and older ones are available by clicking on a particular month or year.

Finally, towards the bottom of the page is a list of tags. Each time we post a blog entry, we label it with descriptive tags to help our readers find it when they are seeking information about a specific topic.

So why after all this time do we still continue to blog? Haven't we said all there is to say? Honestly, we haven't. New information, research, news, and legal issues come at us from all sorts of sources and we learn an enormous amount as we digest this information and pass it along to our readers. It really is our privilege to have you take a moment several times each week to see what we are up to and to know that you are reading what we have written. We look forward to continuing to do just that.

Celebrating 300 Posts

We are taking a break today from our usual subjects of learning, research, and education law to celebrate our 300th posting. We began this blog in August, 2009 with the hope we could manage to write something of interest several times a week without running out of topics. It turns out that we had nothing to worry about -- there is so much news and information about how students learn, how our brains work, and about constantly emerging technological innovations that we have a rich selection of topics and are in no danger of running out of ideas.

What we hadn't considered when we began this blog was that it was a two-way process. Sure, we try to provide our readers with information, but we have also benefited by our writing. Each of us at The Yellin Center brings a particular perspective to the blog: our learning specialists, administrators, attorney advocate, and, of course, Dr. Yellin, have all written posts about subjects that are of particular interest to them. We all pay closer attention to the myriad of information that floods our inboxes and appears in the publications we read, constantly on the lookout for news or information that will make an interesting post. By sharing our findings around the office and thinking about how the students, families, and educators we serve will use our information, we have enriched our own body of knowledge and gained enormous satisfaction from sharing what we know with our readers.

So, as we move on to our next 100 posts, we hope you will enjoy our blog as much as we enjoy writing it for you! And the next time you visit our Manhattan offices, take a look at the hard-cover books we have created with selected posts from 2009 and 2010.

Dr. Yellin Answers Questions

"What would you do if...?"

From the blog of Brooklyn's Abundant Learning, Dr. Yellin tackles some tough questions on a range of education issues, from Pre-K placement to high-school students who struggle with reading challenges.

Read the full story here.

Helpful Tips for Students from Google Student Blog

Google Student Blog is a nice resource for mature, tech-savvy students in grades 8-12, college, grad school, and beyond. The blog, along with its corresponding Twitter feed, @googlestudents, is rich with interesting tips and content geared directly toward students.

Often, tips focus on how to leverage Google's array of products for educational purposes -- most of them completely free of charge for personal use; this week, however, @googlestudents has been sharing some of the best and most popular study tips they have collected from student readers of the feed and the blog for upcoming end-of-year exams and finals.

While some of these may seem obvious, we often forget that identifying and consistently utilizing simple strategies for studying can make a big difference in many instances. Here are a few of our recent favorites:

A Milestone

On the occasion of our 200th blog post, we thought it would be a good time to take a look back at some of the topics that we have written about most frequently since we began this blog in August of 2009. 

Since then, we've spent much time explaining how services are provided for students in grades K through 12 under the IDEA and Section 504. We've looked at how these laws require students to be "labeled" or to fall within a defined category of "disability" and lamented the fact that these labels are often both too broad and insufficient to describe the challenges -- and strengths -- of particular students.

We've written extensively about college issues for students with learning challenges, ranging from transition issues in high schools to the college selection process and accommodations for college classes. We've discussed schools we have visited, and explained what they can offer students who learn differently. We've celebrated the publication of Susan Yellin's new book about Life After High School and informed our readers about conferences featuring college representatives.

We've spent a good deal of time on issues specific to New York City, ranging from new initiatives for public high schools to resources and programs designed specifically for families dealing with the New York City Department of Education. Although we see students and families from all over the globe (and have written about this fact, too) we need only to look out of our office windows to be reminded that we are in the middle of the amazing City of New York -- with all of its benefits and challenges -- and we are very much observers of the local educational scene.

We've shared educational research and trends from the numerous journals, newsblasts, and other resources that cross our desk and flow into our inbox, and from conferences and programs we attend. In fact, we are heading up to Cambridge, Massachusetts this very afternoon to visit the Learning Disabilities Program at Northeastern University and to attend the Learning and the Brain Conference and will write about these visits in future blogs.

We've particularly enjoyed when our blogs elicit reader comments. One of our purposes is to engage our readers, to bring them information they may find helpful, and to get them thinking about learning and education in a new way. We haven't run out of things to write about over these 200 blog entries -- but if we've not yet covered a subject you would like to read about, we'd love to hear from you. You can add your comment below or email us directly at info@yellincenter.com.

Introducing Our Blogroll

From time to time we come across blogs that we believe would be of interest to our readers. Each of these deals with a different aspect of the world of education and their writers have a number of different perspectives. We hope you enjoy them.

Special Education Law Blog is written by Charles P. Fox, a Chicago, Illinois attorney who is also a parent of child with special needs. Fox, and his occasional guest writers, focus on legal and legislative news and deal with the broad spectrum of disabilities, not just learning issues.

The Wrightslaw Way blog from the team at the Wrightslaw website continues the mission of providing information on legal and practical issues dealing with K-12 special education laws. This blog is particularly helpful because of its question and answer format; it allows parents to raise specific questions regarding practices and procedures and get answers that help them navigate the system.

The Inside Schools Bloggers include parents, educators, and students. Each blogger has his or her blogs listed on the home page of the blog and readers can follow the day's post or the work of a particular writer. All of the blogs relate to the work of Inside Schools, which is to inform New York City parents about city schools and how they operate.

The New York Times Choice Blog, written by Jacques Steinberg, New York Times education writer and author of  The Gatekeepers: Inside the Admissions Process of a Premier College, looks at all aspects of the college admissions process and financing a college education.

We'll keep updating our list of blogs and hope you will let us know of blogs you recommend. We'll be pleased to check them out and share them with our readers.