my 21st century autistic son...

employing 21st century technology...

better late than never, & help desk

I think I mentioned in a Comment that Jimmy always had trouble "seeing." He didn't (seem to) see elephants at the zoo until they moved or pooped.

When we moved to Irvington, we had deer grazing in our back yard & Jimmy didn't see them. The rest of us would point and point, and exclaim, "Deer! Deer, Jimmy! Look!" and he would cooperatively jab his finger in the direction we were pointing and say, "Deer! Deer!"

But he obviously didn't see them.

Then one day, a few weeks later, we were driving down a neighboring road when all of a sudden Jimmy started craning around in his seat, staring at something out the window, a look of amazement on his face: deer!

He'd finally seen the deer, and he was thunderstruck.

I think the deer were moving, but I no longer remember. In any event, it was one of those fun moments with an autistic person where for a moment or two you feel you see the world through their eyes. Jimmy's attitude seemed to be: "Holy cow. I had no idea you were talking about actual deer standing around in people's yards in broad daylight."

The point is: for years I've had a scheme for years to teach Jimmy how to read - or at least how to recognize letters - by putting together a PowerPoint with moving letters.

Which I finally got around to tonight.

So here's a question.

I can get a letter or a word to enter from the right and move slowly across the screen to the left margin, where it stops.

I can also record the sound of the letter of word.

What I can't do are two things:

• I can't synch the sound to the letter. Instead, the letter moves across the screen, stops, and then, a few seconds later, the letter sound plays.
• I can't make a word spell itself. I can't get a slide to send first one letter clear across the screen, with synched-up sound, then a second letter, and finally a third. Instead, if I've written a word, then entire word crosses the screen as a whole. (Whole language in PowerPoint! It's everywhere.

Obviously I lack 21st century skills.

[pause]

I just asked C., who had 3 years of instruction in PowerPoint in the middle school, how to do these things.

He doesn't know.

"I was never very good at PowerPoint."

spaced repetition

Someone posted a link to Mnemosyne, an online experiment in efficient memorization, on the Direct Instruction listserv. Sounds exciting, but unfortunately I have don't have an Intel Mac.

Here's Mnemosyne on spaced repetition:

Spaced repetition

When you have memorised something, you need to review that material, otherwise you will forget it. However, as you probably know from experience, it is much more effective to space out these revisions over the course over several days, rather than cramming all the revisions in a single session. This is what is called the spacing effect.

During the past 120 years, there has been considerable research into these aspects of human memory (by e.g. Ebbinghaus, Mace, Leitner and Wozniak). Based on the work of these people, it was shown that in order to get the best results, the intervals between revisions of the same card should gradually increase. This allows you to focus on things you still haven't mastered, while not wasting time on cards you remember very well.

It is clear that a computer program can be very valuable in assisting you in this process, by keeping track of how difficult you find an card and by doing the scheduling of the revisions. Let's see how this works in practice in the Mnemosyne program.

I still haven't gotten around to trying Wozniak's SuperMemo -- which I need to do for math and for Spanish.

This year's self-improvement projects, fyi:

• Dolciani Algebra and Trigonetry Structure and Method Book 2 ISBN: 0-395-07725-8 (I'm tracking C's class at Hogwarts)
  
• Fluenz Spanish (love it! This educational telepresence idea may have promise -- )

Last school year I worked through all but the last 10 lessons of Saxon Math Algebra 2 3rd edition. Am now relearning the same material in Dolciani & it's great.

I'm thinking that if you're going to teach yourself math, two textbooks are better than one.

Am also limping along through GrammarTrainer with Andrew. I say "limping" because I'm not remotely keeping to a schedule. The program is fantastic. I strongly recommend it.