The good, and the bad: technology

Parents, teachers, ministers, coaches, teens, and etc, etc... Read this New York Times article! In the past year I have seen 3 incidents similar to the one in the article, with "good kids" who simply made really poor choices.

Don't assume your good kid could't be involved.

Discuss with them the potential ramifications.

Technology, as you know has both  good, and bad aspects. And like most things, knowledge = power.

From the article: "Lacey students were convicted of dissemination of child pornography, they could be sentenced to up to 36 weeks in a juvenile detention center. They would be registered as sex offenders."

Click here:
A Girl’s Nude Photo, and Altered Lives

A version of this article appeared in print on March 27, 2011, on page A1 of the New York edition.

Why All Schools Need iPads: Ending Texas’s Bizarre Control Over National History Textbooks

America’s history education is still held captive to the notoriously anti-establishment Texas Board of Education, which buys enough high school textbooks that it can dictate the content of history curriculum nationwide. A recent decision to recall a popular history book for its abject religious bias, written by one of the Texas Board’s most controversial experts, is a strong reminder of why every classroom needs an iPad...

....read more from Gregory Ferenstein at TechCrunch:

Weekend Report:

by Kara VanHooser, Speech Language Pathologist and Leigh Stratton, Classroom Teacher

“What did you do this weekend?”

Do you ever ask this question on a Monday morning? Do you enjoy telling others at work or school about your own weekend? Of course you do!

The students in Ms. Stratton’s elementary class in Chapel Hill have fun talking about their weekends, too.

How is it that they do this, given that most of them are not verbal and communicate just a single message at a time?

The answer is relatively low-tech and not exactly new: BIGmack Communicators by AbleNet.

Each Friday, a BIGmack is sent home in the backpacks of students in Ms. Stratton’s class. Sometime over the weekend, families record a message about their activities and then send the BIGmack back to school on Monday morning. Those recordings that come back to us in Spanish or Burmese are translated by enthusiastic student volunteers.

Now all the kids are ready to tell about their weekends! They tell each other and their teachers about their weekends during Morning Meeting. They tell their therapists during therapy time. They tell their circle of friends during peer visits to the classroom and during inclusion in general education classrooms. It goes such a long way to have something for our students to contribute to the conversation, particularly when a peer replies with something along the lines of "Hey, I do that too!"

Do all of the kids understand the full interaction? Probably not. Do they all benefit from the interaction? Certainly.

Some of our students are able to participate in meaningful turn-taking using the BIGmack. Others may not understand the language but enjoy hearing the familiar voice of a parent or sibling. Still others love the reactions they get to their responses. And they all benefit from sharing incidental information with their teachers and peers - because knowing more about a student’s family life helps us to make our interactions more meaningful and individualized. When a student consistently tells us that they listened to jazz over the weekend, we find ways to incorporate jazz into classroom activities and therapies.

When a student talks about visiting extended family, we make connections to the literature we are reading. When a student’s message celebrates some accomplishment (like becoming more affectionate at home), we celebrate with them.

The success of this program seems to lie in the way it makes families feel connected to school. Very rarely does a family forget to record a message. Never (yet - fingers crossed!) has a family lost or broken a BIGmack. If ever a week goes by without the BIGmack being sent home (which rarely happens but hey, we’re not perfect!), you can bet we hear about it from families. When sending the BIGmack home each week, we typically record a response like “Wow! Sounds like you had lots of fun at the pool last weekend! What will you do this weekend? We can’t wait to hear about it!” - to let families know we really did listen to their Weekend Report. The recordings have been coming back to us week after week for about 10 years, so we figure something is going right. (One of those things is that we are very careful to let families know that the Weekend Report is NOT meant to pressure them into doing something extra-exciting each weekend. Kids are very happy to report simple things like snuggling on the couch or splashing in the bath.)

We must give credit to the Chapel Hill - Carrboro Public School Foundation for funding a grant that got this program up and running. Since those first BIGmack Communicators were purchased, our class size has grown and digital technology has improved the sound quality of recording devices. We’ve had help from our school PTA, our principal, our program director, and the district Assistive Technology team as we’ve increased the number and improved the quality of our devices.

Our biggest challenge has come as our class has grown to include more children from families who not only speak a language other than English but who are also struggling mightily to feed, clothe, and shelter their children. For these families, retrieving the device from the backpack, recording a message, and sending the device safely back to school each weekend can be a burden rather than a joy. So, we are working on ways to better include the couple of students who are not really participating in this aspect of our classroom community.

Do you have any ideas for us? We’ll eagerly check the comment section of Jim’s blog in hope of inspiration!

More Birds Out of the Box...

Remember Ruth Morgan of Chapel Hill Snippets? Remember how she finds therapy in the Angry Birds app for her and her fellow Speech Pathologists?

Well recently my Physical Therapist (Chelsea) showed me a pizza she made for a friend... It's an Angry Bird!

Imagine the therapeutic possibilities! Individual pizzas for all the group members. Step-by-step picture instructions. Fine motor, visual processing, motor planning, measuring, and the list of therapeutic goals go on!  And of course, while the pizzas are cooking, let's play Angry Birds!

What you need:

Individual Pizza Crusts
Sauce,
Mozzarella Cheese
American Cheese (for the beak)
Pepperoni
Mushrooms
Olives
Oven
iPads or iTouches to play Angry Birds

I'm seeing great collaboration possibilities between the the Speech Therapist and Occupational Therapist, integrating both Ruth's book and the pizza creation in a small group.

Happy Therapy!

Down Town Psych... A little something for you Tech-Ninjas!

Hey Tech-Ninjas! I realize I'm not writing much these days, but summer is full, and


I'm spending much needed time with my lovely wife and two sons. I'll get back to writing soon.


In the meantime, here is a great blog which focuses on technology and folks with ADHD. Really great practical solutions.


Check it out: Down Town Psychology.

Working "in the box" with apps that are "out of the box"

Dooby is "on" the island. Nooby is "in" the water.

One of my last posts concerned some of my favorite apps which were designed to nurture occupational performance.  I mostly considered apps that were designed with input from therapists, or educators.  They are theoretically "therapeutic" right out of the box.  They are some terrific products, and it seems that more are coming everyday.

Ooga is on the "Left" of Nooby.

Sometimes though, the skills you want to work on aren't supported in the "therapy apps".  In this case, you have to get out of the box and get creative.

I love to see an app that wasn't designed for therapy or education, and a therapist (or educator/parent) is able to apply their clinical (critical) reasoning and utilize the app in a way that elicits a therapeutic response.  This can occur in just the same way a therapist might take a game like Don't Break the Ice, and capitalize on the inherent therapeutic value, even though, the game is just designed to be fun!  This is high level NINJUTSU people!

Nooby is "below" the bad-guys. 

One such example is Pocket God. The opportunity for play is endless! First there is the obvious fine motor/finger isolation required to manipulate the characters. This is true for most apps. I have found therapy using Pocket God with students to act out a scenario. We can then discuss concepts of spatial and temporal concepts such as first-than, top-bottom, left-right, and in front-behind.  I have also used Pocket God, taking screen-shots of specific activities, and then imported those pictures into Comic Life, where students can practice writing out a story line.  Check out this post about using Comic Life in this capacity.

Social Skills practice!

Another mainstream app we've been using is Facetime. Like Skype, but tailored for the iDevices, Facetime makes video communication simple.  This has been a great tool to have our students with Autism, or Traumatic Brain Injury work on social skills with a "pen-pal" from a neighboring school. We have the student write out a script of topics they wish to discuss, questions they wish to ask, and also practice listening and asking "follow-up" questions to be good conversationalists.

So, these are just two ways we've stepped out of the box. But like all good therapy, we addressed pre-established needs. We made certain we were targeting the student's goals, and than we thought about interventions to target those goals.

I'd love to hear from other folks who are finding the therapy in "non-therapuetic" apps!

Scribble Press: Mad Libs with super powers!

Remember Mad Libs from when you were a kid? They are still around, and they can be fun, and even therapeutic with applied clinical reasoning.  A modern take on Mad Libs is an app called Scribble Press. My colleague Ashley wrote a grant recently which was approved, to supply each of our elementary and middle schools with an iPad and the app.  We are very excited to implement this program. In the meantime, other staff have been using Scribble Press with good results.  Scribble Press received the Parent's Choice Award, Apple Staff Favorite, top 20 Educational App for iPad, Winner, Readers Choice Award 2011 Apps for Homeschooling. 


It should also be pointed out that Scribble Press sells for the remarkable price of "FREE"!  We like that!  It is only for the iPad.

Scribble Press allows the writer to pick from 50 story templates . The more adventurous can work without a template using the "Blank Book".  Once your choose your category, you than can choose a specific topic.  For example: "My _______ is a Ninja". Obviously a favorite of mine!



Much like Mad Libs, with Scribble Press, the writer is presented with pre-written sentences, with blanks every few words to be filled in at the author's discretion.  The original Mad Libs would ask you to provide an adjective, noun, preposition, etc and then randomly insert them into the text. With Scribble Press the author is not prompted with a grammatical cue, however, they are privy to what the sentences are about.






Armed with this knowledge, author can be as concrete, or as loose as they wish, humorous, or silly. Text input is via the built in iPad keyboard.  However, this is where I like to make a departure and build in some Occupational Therapy. If we are working on printing skills, I want the student to handwrite their text first on loose leaf paper with the appropriate lined paper.  In this way, we can work on sizing, letter formation, spacing between and within words, and letter orientation.  I also like to use a real keyboard synced with the iPad via bluetooth. This allows the student to get a better keyboard experience, and practice their keyboarding skills if appropriate.

With Scribble Press, there is also an option to draw.  Granted the drawing aspect of the app is not it's strong point, being unable to do much fine work. None-the-less, for basic representational drawing, it works.  Built into the app, the author can draw with a very wide variety of colors, pen sizes, as well as stamps.  So, while not a precision drawing app (which it never claimed to be) there is a bit of versatility.  The author can also use photos from the iPad photo library.



Once a story is written, the author has a multitude of ways in which he/she can share the work. At the bottom of the book collection, one can choose to edit, the work, share to iBooks on the iPad, share a variety of other ways - discussed down the page, order a hard copy to be mailed to you, and discard if appropriate (though I can't imagine doing so).

If the author clicks on Share, they will be presented with a more choices: Publish in Gallery, Share on Facebook, Share on Twitter, Email a link, and again, open in iBooks.  The Gallery is a web-based storage offered by Scribble Press at no cost. It is shared with other Scribble Press users and may be read all over the world.  Kind'a cool, but be aware that this is what this means!  The others should be self-explanetory.



Before the sharing actually occurs, Scribble Press asks the user to verify their age, and that there is no identifying information in the story to be shared.

This is a great app to support story telling, sequencing, typing, keyboarding, etc...

Some of our staff use it with students with Autism to create Social Stories.

And, remember how the stories can be share in the Scribble Press Gallery? Well, you can access those for your readers here.  Scribble Press has divided their vast library into the "Most Downloaded", and then age specific groupings. They also have a "Featured" section that changes out periodically.

Happy Therapy!