Tag Archives: Innovation

Creating an AAC Communication Game-plan

Posted on January 25, 2012 by Russ Ewell| Leave a comment

“What you want is a real talisman, a magic something you think I conjured up to coax Temple into joining life, as you hope your child will.  There was no magic; there was just doing the best I could.  That’s the point; that’s the talisman.”

Eustacia Cutler, A Thorn in My Pocket

I am grateful to special needs parents like Eustacia Cutler, the mother of Temple Grandin.  Ms. Cutler tells her story of raising Temple in the book titled “A Thorn in My Pocket”.   It is a story lived out in the 1950’s, long before the disability rights so many of us take for granted today.   Her story is similar to those of other courageous parents, who have made so many of today’s advances possible.

 Creating A Different Future

In our personal journey of building a special needs family, we have met countless parents like Ms. Cutler.  These are those who were told upon birth to institutionalize their children, but chose instead to create a different future for them.  They overcame extraordinary personal and societal pressures to build the best life possible for their children.

Overcoming Human Limits

All of these parents deserve our gratitude and admiration, because their pioneering efforts laid the foundation for the disability rights we enjoy today.  They are the one’s who made advocacy and inclusion possible.  The wonderful technologies, which help those with disabilities overcome their human limits, wouldn’t exist without them.

The Best Life Possible

I have been reflecting on the many lessons passed on to my wife and I from parents like these.   One thing seems clear; these parents met their differences and difficulties with resilience and creativity.  They viewed the future through the eyes of hope, and then worked with determination to make their dreams come true.

What were those dreams?

Giving their children the best life possible.

Raising a Verbally Challenged Child

As I ponder all of this, it is hard to imagine the difficulties faced by families whose children did not speak in the 1950’s.   We don’t hear as much about children with verbal challenges.

 For those of us with children who fall into this category inspiration can be elusive.  The future can be frightening.  Temple Grandin’s story might only take us for far, but then we must remember, it is the resilience, creativity, and determination that make her story an inspiration.

 Considering the immense challenge of raising a verbally challenged child with special needs in the 1950’s makes me grateful for today.  It makes me particularly grateful for Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC).  One can only imagined what the parent of yesterday could have done with today’s tools.

This imagining led me to apply the lessons learned from those who have gone before us to making today’s tools work.  What could the parents, doctors, therapist, and teachers who we have learned from over the last 20 years teach all of us about helping our kids use AAC?

I came up with 8 questions to answer based on the wisdom of those who have gone before us.

 

  1. What is AAC?
  2. When should we start?
  3. Where do we begin?
  4. Who does what?
  5. When will they talk?
  6. How do we make progress?
  7. What if it doesn’t work?
  8. How can we afford this?

 

My upcoming post’s will seek to answer these questions based on what I have learned and seen from others.    By applying these lessons, I am confident each one of us will be able to create an AAC communication game plan for our children.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Posted in Breakthrough Ideas, Disruptive Innovation In Education, Hacking Autism

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Could Apple Revolutionize Special Education?

Posted on January 17, 2012 by Russ Ewell| Leave a comment

Let’s take just one stakeholder example: students with disabilities, as well as their teachers and parents. Autism advocate and software developer Russ Ewell from the Hope Technology Group is excited. “Apple could unlock another door for autism with this breakthrough,” Ewell said. “Parents could create social story books.” So could special education teachers or therapists, tailored for each student.

Tim Carmody, What’s Wrong with Education…

Tim Carmody has written an extraordinary article about the future of education and publishing.  I will have additional comments about this subject in the future, especially after Apple’s announcement.  What thrilled me was the quote he used – a quote belonging to me.

I was dreaming about a publishing platform created by Apple, which might allow any parent to create social stories for their kids.  Imagine parents, teachers, and therapist being able to work together developing social story books for their kids.  Volumes helping them with every stressful event, difficult social situation, or simply helping them understand emotions.

If Apple does something like this…a garageband of ebooks – along with the iPad, they would be taking another disruptive step toward revolutionizing special education.

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Posted in Breakthrough Ideas, Disruptive Innovation In Education, Fast Reads

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The Tyranny of Routine

Posted on January 1, 2012 by Russ Ewell| Leave a comment

The lazy man works twice as hard.  My mother told that to me, and now I say it to my kids.  If you’re writing an essay, keep it in the lines and in the margins so you don’t have to do it over.

Gary Oldman, Esquire Magazine, What I’ve Learned, December 16, 2011

Technology is not magic.  We can place it in the classroom, but without seamless integration into the curriculum, and innovative application, we might as well be using number 2 pencils.

When it comes to innovation, educational institutions are not very different from other organizations.   Change is hard and routine can often  be the enemy of progress.  This is true of education, whether it is at home or in the classroom.

Whether you are a parent like me, or a teacher, it is important for us to understand the dangers of routine.   Routine can choke innovation.

How can this happen?  Those who parent or teach can use routine for themselves, but fail to understand its impact on those they are attempting to educate.  For instance, we often use routines to keep ourselves from feeling out of control.

  1. Routine can keep us from being overwhelmed
  2. It helps us feel in control
  3. It helps us feel secure
  4. It protects and shelters us from the uncertainty of change
  5. It keeps things moving even though we are uninspired
  6. It allows us to reuse the old, rather than develop the new
  7. It limits how much we have to prepare

Routines tyrannize our lives.  We become dependent on them to keep our lives sane, and when innovation requires that we set them aside, we are unable to do it.  When this happens routine becomes destructive.

  1. Routine makes no breakthroughs
  2. It has no vision
  3. It sees no need for innovation
  4. It stifles creativity

Here is some questions I am asking myself.

  1. What routines are keeping me from making breakthroughs?
  2. What routines are keeping me from utilizing technology to help my children make breakthroughs?
  3. What routines are preventing my children’s teacher’s from making classroom breakthroughs?

These are just a few musings on routine.  They have been helpful to me, and I hope they are helpful to you.

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Posted in Breakthrough Ideas, Disruptive Innovation In Education, Educational & Social Leadership, Educational Innovation, Fast Reads

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Education + Technology = Hope

Posted on October 3, 2011 by Russ Ewell| 1 Comment

A child miseducated is a child lost

John F. Kennedy

A significant number of social and economic maladies afflicting every country can be attributed to a lack of education.  Nearly every negative social and economic statistic would decline, if we were more effective in educating our populations.

Education is powerful, it changes lives.  The education I am describing is about more than information transfer.  It is more than teaching curriculum.  It takes place both in and outside school classrooms.  It reaches into the heart and mind of the individual, and changes things.  It changes the way we see the world, and the way we see ourselves.  It expands the imagination, orders our priorities, and develops our dreams.

Education remakes us.

Attention

My mom was a teacher.  She did her best teaching at home.  I learned early about the extraordinary journey one could take through a book…to distant lands…to amazing times in the past.  At my fingertips were books of all types, including comic books, and among the latter were those of the Shakespeare variety.

When my older sisters returned from school with homework, I verbally yearned for homework of my own.  My mom and dad made education interesting, compelling, and attractive.  By the time I entered the classroom, the teachers work had been made easy.  She already had my attention.

Attention is not nearly as easy to get as it was in my day, but it is no less essential to the learning process.  Education cannot remake, unless it can hold attention.  Technology can help.  In fact, it is essential.

Relics

The classroom is a relic, left over from the Industrial Revolution, which required a large workforce with very basic skills. Classroom-based education lags far behind when measured against its ability to deliver the creative and agile workforce that the 21st century demands. This is already evidenced by our nation’s shortage of high-tech and other skilled workers—a trend that is projected to grow in coming years.

Prakash Nair, The Classroom Is Obsolete,

Education Week, July 29, 2011

Without the seamless integration of technology into the classroom of the 21st century, it will remain a relic of times gone by, a place best suited for regurgitation.

Regurgitation Education

Many a child has left a classroom capable of regurgitating information, but they have not been educated.  They haven’t even been informed.  They certainly haven’t been taught to think.  These are those who have learned how to game the system, and when they enter the work force, this is exactly what they will do.

Instead, most of them endure what I call ‘regurgitation education’ and are stuck in institutions that expect them to memorize the periodic table, the names of 50 state capitals and the major rivers of the United States.

John Merrow, The Influence of Teachers

These system thinkers won’t build or create.  Their only focus will be, how can they get what they want out of the system.  In school they want grades, and work the system for academic profit.  In the workforce they want money, and work the system for financial profit.  They don’t create, build, or change anything.  All they do is take…and the world will be the worse for their success.

These are those, who to use the words of John F. Kennedy were “miseducated”. The education they received made their worlds smaller not larger, and as a consequence their dreams became more selfish.

If we leave the classroom untouched, we can expect more of the same.

Hope

We have to restore hope to education, which means understanding a test can measure a child’s retention, but it can never know their mind.  This is why teachers are so important, they can see what a test will never tell you.  It is also why technology is important, because it can help us overcome the human limits, which suppress our potential.

Teachers properly equipped and trained in the use of technology can interest the uninterested, captivate the gifted, and level the playing field for those with disabilities.  In short, this dynamic duo possesses the ability to make more people successful.  Despite this truth, we are slow to embrace it’s use in a significant way.

Why are we slow to embrace technology?

The proper embrace of technology in the classroom will prove to be disruptive, and create an environment where the system can no longer be gamed.  While this will be good for many, it will be unpredictable for some.

When the poor have access to the same tools as the rich…things change.  When the disadvantaged can travel to Paris without leaving their living room, and speak French with a citizen of France through Skype…having the money to travel loses its advantages.

If the verbally challenged person with autism can turn an iPad into a communication device, he or she can be included in society.  They can build relationships, make contributions, and add diversity to a world which is learning to accept everything except disability.

Technology has begun to change the world, but until it is allowed to disrupt the classroom we will only see a shadow of what is possible.

This is why I believe…

Technology + Education = Hope

 

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Posted in Disruptive Innovation In Education

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