Teleteaching and Telehealth

I have lived in the Silicon Valley my entire life -- there are a wealth of resources for teaching, for special needs, and for health.

But that isn't true everywhere, even within a few hours' drive of Norman Mineta San José International Airport.  And it is one area where recent technological advantages can make a big impact.  I'm going to discuss three: one reading-remediation-related and two related to autism.

Lexercise is providing tele-practice in language remediation, to allow students more directed practice without the need for in-office or in-person visits.

Lexercise is a new, Web-based, tele-practice tool that allows clinicians to provide cost-effective blended language-literacy treatment for disorders such as dyslexia. Blended therapy involves integration of in-clinic and online techniques.

Daily practice is key to successful language therapy. Lexercise overcomes the barriers to learning and makes daily practice easier and entertaining. With their clinician’s support and encouragement, children “play” independently to build age-appropriate speaking, reading and comprehension skills.

The Lexercise program could be a tremendous boon for rural school districts that (1) have a shortage of speech-language pathologists and/or (2) a shortage of highly-trained special education teachers and/or (3) children whose travel to and fromu school takes more than 45 minutes (cutting into available time with the specialist).

The International Meeting for Autism Research will take place May 12-14, 2011 There's one whole session on Innovative Techologies http://imfar.confex.com/imfar/2011/webprogram/Session2149.html

Of particular interest to parents and clinicians in rural areas:

Oops.  I've just been informed that the abstracts were published in error, and the embargo on abstracts is still in place.  I'll leave up the titles but take down the extracts from the abstracts until further notice.

A research group from Iowa will be presenting a paper,  Increasing Accessibility to Behavioral Evaluation and Treatment Through Telehealth

 

Another from an Idaho-based group Treating Autism In Toddlers and Adolescents Remotely with Behavior Imaging-TM

Update: through the #slpeeps hashtag (for speech-language pathologists on twitter) found this: Telepractice for SLPs and Audiologists