Welcome Advanced Elearn: I’m Finished For Summer! June 30, 2008
Posted by Daniel Dage in Uncategorized.Tags: elearn, moodle, teachertube, vacation, youtube
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I just finished my Advanced Moodle Course (which my county calls Elearn) and did manage to get a decent course laid out that might be useful for the teachers in our county. You can see most of the content on my TeacherTube or YouTube sites. If and when I add more content, that will appear on one of those sights.
I learned a lot by taking this course, since my course is also about teaching adult teachers. One of the problems with this course about interactive learning is that it is still taught in the traditional 20th century way. That means you have one teacher in front of 20-30 other people and that one person disseminates the content out to the students. However, there was a group of teachers that did get together and collaborated on their online course. However it was tough going for them as they hadn’t actually taken a Moodle course before. Many Moodle courses still look like they could have been produced years ago, as they involve a ton of reading and then an occasional quiz to measure understanding. what these courses really and truly need is to incorporate the production of actual content.
This course is being or has been taught by 3 different instructors, and I’m wondering why they didn’t pool their time and resources in developing content for this course. Each instructor could take a topic or a day (it’s a three day course) and really and truly demonstrate the power of this technology. For instance, this class had a few other nerds like me, but also had some people who have difficulty managing basic computer functions. By having recorded content online, it would allow those people who needed to see something multiple times to actually see those instructions multiple times while the faster people could keep progressing or enhancing our own courses/sites.
You can get the gist of what I’m saying by looking at this video.
So I’ll be off and traveling for the next 3 weeks, and we’ll be driving about 3,000 miles! Fortunately, both of my kids travel really well. Having an extra mp3 player and laptop/DVD player will make things a little easier. Stay Cool!
D.
Using Video: Information is Power June 9, 2008
Posted by Daniel Dage in Autism/Asperger's, Behavior Analysis, Educational Technology, Parent Support, Parents and parenting, Special Education.Tags: autism, autism cure, autism treatment, teachertube, video, youtube
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Since school is out, I’ve been having the time of my life, exploring new mediums and modes of expression and teaching. I took over an hour of footage before school let out and am taking some time to edit and post them to TeacherTube. But I’m also connecting within the YouTube community. I’m planning on doing more creative things on YouTube, which means not everything will be as “professional.”
The great thing is watching what other people are doing and how they are doing it. I was talking to an assistant principal awhile back and letting her know some of the things I was doing. “You mean they have educational videos on YouTube?”
Yes, yea they do. In fact, YouTube is a treasure trove of knowledge and information. Yeah, I subscribe to an X-men cartoon channel and Al Yankovic’s “White and Nerdy” video is among my favorites along with the Guacamole Ukulele song. Kind of a theme going on there.
But there is a world of knowledge out there waiting to be discovered. My one subscriber, so far, is Dr. Melvin Koplow aka drmdk. His YouTube channel is here. There’s some good information there, as he got the idea to videotape short interviews with doctors and experts from a variety of fields and disciplines, making medical information available to anyone. The information is fascinating and cutting edge and he is truly on to something. I will warn you that it helps to have a keen interest in the content, as the interviews and videos are a bit on the dry side, but they are also less than 10 minutes long each. And in these videos, especially in the autism section, you can see what the doctors and experts say.
While information and knowledge is power, it’s up to individuals to decide whether or not they want to be ignorant. Hat tip to Liz who found a good article about the costs of unproven and sometimes dangerous treatments for autism. Dr. MDK does cut through much of this with a number of his videos on the subject. In fact, one of the the reasons Dr. MDK started making these videos is linked to Liz’s latest blog entry here. You can see Dr. MDK talking about why he’s making these videos here. He talks about how there are ghostwriters done by people who didn’t even do the work or research. There is something about having a face and a voice attached to the information instead of just a written page.
And that’s part of what I’m doing. I’m putting myself out there, where you can see what I’m doing and who I am with real, actual students. You see who I am. This isn’t just some anonymous blogger anymore. It’s someone more real. Back when I posted my Fleecing article, I initially got a lot of comments from people who agreed with it, but as time wore on, more and more parents started commenting and many of them stated how these controversial therapies had helped or cured their kids.
Where’s the before and after YouTube videos?
I have some that I’m working on, and you can judge for yourself. Before and after videos are one reasonable measure of validity, according to Kazdin’s authoritative work on single-case research designs. But I haven’t seen any. Why isn’t this very simple method used to lend at least a minimum of validity to any of these treatments? Because there is none? That’s not to say that method alone would be sufficient to prove anything as much as support some of the ideas. Yes, YouTube could be a vehicle for helping promote legitimate treatments for autism. You can look and see several videos of kids getting behavioral therapy and track the progress yourself of some of the kids.
There’s good information out there, it’s just a matter of finding it. Or better still, creating it.
D.
Discrete Trial Training (DTT) June 4, 2008
Posted by Daniel Dage in Autism/Asperger's, Behavior Analysis, Educational Technology, Paraeducators, Parent Support, Therapy, teachertube.Tags: autism, discrete trial training, DTT, ABA, behavior therapy
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In making my course for teachers and paras for students with severe disabilities, I’ve been looking for content related to what we do in the classroom. Today I decided to work on Discrete Trial Teaching (DTT) sometimes also called Discrete Trial Instruction (DTI). Same thing, different name.
I prefer video over text alone, so I went first to TeacherTube, since the school system doesn’t block that site. However, the only video there on the subject is the one I posted. Oh well. YouTube is a better source for videos on anything and a search there was much more fruitful. Here’s one working with a very young child. No matter the age, the same rules always apply. Keep the instruction consistent, reinforce independent responses, and record the responses for data analysis. The YouTube video gives very comprehensive, yet concise instruction on the topic and I’d love to use it.
There is also a series of Lovaas training videos on YouTube which are much more advanced, behaviorally speaking, but the one listed above gives a better overview in a lot less time . Part 1 shows how not to do it in the beginning, which you can see from the comments elicited strong reactions from a few viewers. It’s a bit dated, but you get a good view of a purer form of DTT from the Lovaas people. There are many YouTube videos in a variety of languages worth looking at and these are mostly used for and by parents. Teachers and paras really need to tap into this information, too.
Typing in “ABA” reveals a lot of videos showing it in action, mostly with very young children with autism. DTT is not the same thing as Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA). ABA is more of a global description of a system. It’s sort of like referring to “rain” as “weather.” Yes, rain is weather, but it’s only one aspect of weather and even precipitation. Weather encompasses all manner of meteorological events including wind current, barometric pressure and the jet stream. ABA encompasses a whole lot more topography beyond just DTT, but a lot of people outside the field confuse the two.
I recently put a couple more videos up showing some of what I do with a type of DTT here and here. This is also serving as a sort of tutorial in modeling for para instruction at the same time instructing the student. I probably need to make a more explicit para training video since that is a big issue for most special ed teachers.
I like DTT because it is straightforward, and something that paras can learn and do pretty easily. It can yield some good data and works well with short-term IEP objectives. It is something that is not expensive to set up, and it is accessible to anyone who wants to learn how to do it.
Catherine Maurice’s Behavior Intervention for Young Children remains one of the best and most accessible resources on the subject even though she makes the common mistake of confusing ABA with DTT. Many of these interventions can be used with older students with severe autism and you’ll recognize what we do in the videos compared to what is done with the youngsters. It’s only been within the last 10 years that DTT really took off in the autism community, so students in high school were probably never exposed to this behavioral technology at a younger age.
D.
