Notes From The Digital Frontier

Using Rosetta Stone for Speech Therapy  

Imagine sitting in a classroom unable to understand the teacher. Imagine eating dinner with your family but unable to join the conversation. Imagine trying to tell a relative or a friend a story, but the words simply don’t come. That is the fate of autistics who are unable to master language skills. They are sentenced to a lifetime of loneliness, of alienation, of wallflower status.

In our increasingly global society, studies have been done, and advanced degrees achieved, on the best way to learn a new language. For years, language-learning software has been instrumental and available in helping English speakers of other languages (ESOL) and English language learners assimilate to English-speaking culture. It is a short leap to assume that language immersion software, such as Rosetta Stone, can also be used as speech therapy for autistics. 

Visit: Rosetta Stone

Why Rosetta Stone?

Rosetta Stone is unique in language software. It implements a proven instructional learning strategy espoused by ESOL instructors and somewhat similar to the popular Direct Method of Linguistics developed in the 19th century. It was a naturalist approach, which immersed students in the target language. The objectives were speaking and listening comprehension, not translation. Vocabulary was introduced through pictures, which is ideal for people with autism. Emphasis was centered on usage and pronunciation. Students learned to write by transcribing in the target language. Rosetta Stone incorporates these and additional language learning methods.

How it Works

Rosetta Stone software enables autistics to strengthen the physical and physiological connections between the brain and oral speech. Rosetta Stone is ideally suited for this exercise, containing an audio component, which enables autistics to orally identify and correctly pronounce the words, phrases and sentences they are learning. 

Although reading sentences is easier than constructing them, the repetition of language learning software offers the physical practice needed for autistics to correctly construct grammatical and complete conversational sentences.

Independent Speech is the Goal

If autistics have a tool they can use independently, to learn their target language, they may not have to live out their lives groping for words, gradually becoming painfully and ignobly isolated. We've been using it on our autistic son, and he enjoys the activities. As parents, we feel it is one of the most relevant programs available that directly helps his language deficiencies. 

Mozilla Foundation (aka Firefox) has a great webpage for testing all your browser plug-ins for up-to-dateness.

Visit: Plugin Check

Applications for Education

Modern sites should detect if your plug-in is outdated for you, but just in-case things are behaving a little wonky it never hurts to check once in a while.

I have been pondering where Apple is going with these iTouch / iPad / iPhone apps and their iTunes app store. Bear with me for a bit...

I think Apple's next step is to port iPad like apps to the OS X desktop.

With OS X 10.7 Apple could lock down desktop application sales to the iTunes store (already rumored, and largely impractical), or they could port iPad like apps to the desktop providing touch screen developer tools for OS X. Apple can then build a new line of laptops and desktops with touch screen technology, thus making OS X touch applications a more attractive option than traditional OS X desktop software. 

In one fell swoop Apple could receive 30% profits of all OS X touch apps sold through their iTunes store, have more control of their desktop environment, and calm the fears of standard OS X desktop developers.

I'm just saying.

Wolfram|Alpha is a free online computational knowledge engine that generates answers to questions in real time by doing computations on its own vast internal knowledge base. The long-term goal is to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable and accessible to everyone. This can be valuable to educators in many ways.

Visit Wolfram|Alpha:

• Education Overview
• Education Portal
• Math World for Educators
• Mathmatica for Educators
• Education Research
• Education Community

Applications in Education

I've talked about Wolfram|Alpha before, but what is new to this site this time around are lesson plans for teachers. Simple add a /educators after the URL and you can browse their video gallery to learn more about how to utilize Wolfram|Alpha in the classroom. There is all sorts of demonstations on how to use Wolfram|Alpha on an electronic whiteboard, in a lab, on iPods Touches, and what subjects it is useful for.

Lessons are available in:

If you have a students (or a child) that loves to write, create, imagine then TikaTok is site you need to visit. Kick-start their imagination with their online story writing software, use their fun collection of interactive story templates, and inspire their creativity.

Visit: TikaTok

Applications in Education

You can create an account, create classes, setup your students with a username/password, and turn them loose. Students can start typing their story, select a theme, use templates, import their own art work, or use provided clipart. You can export their masterpiece as Adobe PDF (free) or publish it as a book (not free).