Article from Vanderbilt on Autism

Humanoid robot helps train children with autism.

This story explains that children with autism are able to follow the humanoid robot better than a person.  Drs. see this as a start or an additional support for children with autism spectrum disorder.

Today there are more children than ever diagnosed with ASD.  The resources to help them all is limited so this humanoid robot might be a break through to helping more children.

Vanderbilt engineers help design and make this robot.  Children wear a special hat which has sensors to see their head movements in response to commands from the robot.

Children spend more time viewing the robot that looking at a person's face.  So the designers of this robot hope that it can be a tool to speed up the process for ASD children to gain social skills.

Need my Web Page Finished

I have not worked hard on finding clients because my web page is still not complete.  I need to coordinate with Irene on a time that works for both of us to complete this web site.

Irene now has a full time job.  I have been doing a lot of traveling and having company.  But now is the time to complete this project.

I think emailing back and forth is hard.  Sometime what you say in an email is not how the other reads it or understands it.

I had the opportunity to have Stephanie Bettman and Luke Halpin stay for two nights. I love their music.

My daughter and family came out for eight days.  Both she and her husband were sick so I had fun with my grandson Connor. I also had fun holding Sebastian.  Andrew came down from San Fransico for Easter and we had a good time.  He had to sleep on the couch.  I was out of beds.  Sebastian had the library for his room.

The day Becca and Ben left, my friend Debbie Baker came with her boyfriend.  They were here to dance but we had great times together.

Dyslexia Workarounds

Yesterday there was  a great article written by Melinda Beck, "Dyslexia Workarounds: Creativity Without a Lot of Reading".  (April 2, New York Times.) Many people have dyslexia up to one in five.  Of course there are various degrees of dyslexia.  It seems the people with higher mental capacity have the option of working around this disability.  Dyslexia just means the person has trouble with reading.  It really has nothing to do with intelligence.  Some people listen to their books on audio.  Some students memorize everything.

Dyslexia runs in families.  My husband has it as well as my oldest son.  My son never understood phonics.  For a few grades he did quite well in spelling.  He just remembered the order of letters his teacher felt were important.  He did not understand the sound letters make or how the blends work.  He finally read in fourth grade.  His fifth grade teacher said his writing was not very good.  When I explained he learned to read last year, the teacher was shocked.  While in college, he never missed a class, attended every study session, and read as little as possible.  He became a very good writer but still would rather watch a show than read a book.

As Melinda states in her article, Dyslexia can't be cured, but programs that help children learn sequential sound-letter relationships can help.  I have a special program to help dyslexic students to read and would love to help students over the summer.  In fact Henry Winkler, the guy who played Fonzie on "Happy Days" has written a book about a fourth grader who has dyslexia.

Remember as an adult, there are no more timed reading tests.