I Speak of Dreams

The Cost of Untreated Dyslexia to the State

I have a new hero:

William H. Hilgers, Senior Counsel with the Austin office of Brown McCarroll, L.L.P., has led the effort to create the Dyslexia Research Foundation of Texas, an organization formed to direct a pioneering research effort that determines the economic impact of dyslexia on children, schools, and prisons in Texas and offers a continuing evaluation of enhancement options.

The Dyslexia Research Foundation is associated with the Scottish Rite Learning Center of Austin, Texas .  It has support from The RGK Foundation.

(It appears that the Dyslexia Research Foundation does not have a web presence. )

Now, if we can just repeat the Texas study in the rest of the 49 states, and get the money to train teachers to teach reading, maybe we'd be making some progress.

(More at Children of the Code:  teachers are not now prepared to teach reading effectively;  the politics of the reading wars;  the emotional effect of reading failure
)

 

Success in Hawai'i

A mother in Hawai'i was persistent in her efforts to get her son's learning difficulties identified and remediated.

The mother refused to  accept 'lack of motivation' as an explanation for her son's problems in school

Also, congratulations to the reporter for clearly understanding what dyslexia is.

How To Triage

Jim Macdonald, who knows a thing or two about emergency medicine and preparedness, has a "how to triage" post over at Making Light.

Triage for Fun and Profit
Posted by Jim Macdonald at 09:19 AM * 93 comments

 

The concept of “triage” has been much in the news.  Since emergency medicine is one of my hobbyhorses, I’ll ride it for a while.

Triage is a French word that means “sorting.”  It comes into play any time your resources are overwhelmed.

In any emergency involving casualties there will be some who will get better even if you do nothing, and some who will die even if you do everything. Between those two extremes there will be a number who will get better if you do the right things right now but will die if you don’t. The purpose of triage is to find those people so your limited resources can go to them.

Listen up, people,  each of us should be prepared to survive up to seven days without expecting the cavalry to ride to the rescue.   Taking care of your neighbors who aren't prepared should be on your list too.  Triage will be a reality.

Judge Thompson's Trial Starts

Judge Thompson's trial is starting.  This is so weird.  Bob Sherrill says the trial will be graphic.

The start of the story.  June 2004.   And then August 2004.  Then the felony indecency charges in January 2005.

Drugs for Dyslexia?

A woman who is an enthusiastic Scientologist makes the following claim:

Dyslexia is supposedly a psychological reading disorder that is incurable, but can be treated by drugs, and with enough of conditioning a person can retrain themselves to learn.  In other words, a person must change themselves to fit the environment be compliant to the laws of life rather than live for oneself and be the boss.

There is no drug treatment for dyslexia.  There is no "conditioning" for dyslexia, just alternate forms of instruction.

The Church of Scientology is wrong here, and most everywhere, in my view.

The power of the blogosphere at work: there is a website dedicated to  keeping creeping Scientology out of our school systems:

The purpose of this website is to help explain the conflicts inherent within Scientology's efforts to forge relationships with education communities. We also want to equip parents, educators, and media with the tools to not only spot these front groups when they creep into town, but to question politicians, school boards, and pricipals who might knowingly or unknowingly support such intellectual fraud.

Catalog Your Books

The aforementioned Dadblog pointed me to LibraryThing, where you can catalog your books.

What does it cost?

A free account allows you to catalog up to 200 books. A paid lifetime account allows you to catalog any number of books. At present and for the forseeable future lifetime accounts cost just $10. I conservatively predict the revenue will enable me to recline all day on an enormous pile of gold.

What else does LibraryThing do?

In addition to cataloging your own library, LibraryThing allows you to check out other people's libraries, tells you who has similar tastes, etc. With only a few users, this is pretty useless (nor is the functionality fully developed). As the number of users picks up, this will become increasingly interesting and powerful.

I have thousands of books, a rather impressive equestrian library, a good start on a home gardening library....this might be good.

 

Invention Request

Dadblog, who works for the Guardian,  wants an invention

But the problem is that even for a 12 year old it's hard to see what I do all day. From where he sits, I spend the day either looking at a screen and tapping a keyboard occasionally (which, he would argue, is what he does when he's playing Age of Empires), and chatting to the occasional person who drops by (oh, and swearing a lot, which I became very aware of with him sitting next to me). And this is what I do do all day. But he has a vision of work as being an exciting manufactory process, with people making stuff all day long.

So, fellow information workers, what we need is this - something that sits above our monitors and says "new achievement! web page design completed!" every time we complete something.

Lame Excuses

Profgrrrl on annoying students:

My take on people who are failing is that some may well have disabilities, but others are lazy, disenfranchised, unmotivated. I've experienced students (back when I taught undergrads most of the time; my grad students tend to not do this) who perform poorly on an assessment and then try to tell you they have a disability and need more time. BUT they don't have a documented disability. I want to be sympathetic, but I'm only required to accommodate those with letters from the Office of Disabilities. How can I, someone without expertise in this area, based on a post-assignment conversation with a student who isn't happy with his grade make a valid judgment about whether or not this student needs accommodations? If the student knows he has a disability, why isn't there documentation?

The Infinite Mind: Dyslexia

NPR's Infinite Mind program aired a very good segment on dyslexia, 

As many as one in seven American children are affected to some degree by dyslexia, which disables language skills but often bestows special abilities in the visual and spatial realm. This program explores what dyslexia is, and what it is not, with guests including author and producer Stephen J. Cannell, Thomas Viall of the International Dyslexia Association, Yale researcher Dr. Sally Shaywitz, Toronto entrepreneur Jay Mandarino, author Thomas G. West, virtual reality pioneer Daniel Sandin, children's author Jeanne Betancourt and her daughter, filmmaker Nicole Betancourt.
 

High Achieving Dyslexics: Chris Boese

Chris Boese has dyslexia, and is a writer and university professor.

I'm a writer at CNN Headline News and I also wrote columns called Buzz Factor and Hot Wired for the CNN.com web site from 2002 to 2004. I started working at Headline News one month before 9/11, and I can't believe the things I've seen in just this short time. Whew!

Right now I'm on leave from Headline News and I'm up at the University of Montana Journalism School, where I'm the T. Anthony Pollner Distinguished Professor for the fall semester of 2005, teaching a seminar on journalism and blogging and the citizen journalism movement, and helping to advise the student newspaper.

You can enjoy her doctoral dissertation here.

She has a review of the NPR broadcast on dyslexia and reflections on being a dyslexic in graduate school.