Wednesday, April 30, 2008

PBS Misunderstood Minds page

Here's a good writing difficulties page from PBS Misunderstood Minds site:
Mel Levine describes what can inhibit writing development and offers some exercises where you can experience assignments from the pov of child with a grapho motor problem etc.

Well worth a read. He's a great authority on different learning styles.

Working Memory Study/Research

From today's Globe and Mail:

New research suggests our capacity to remember things is lower than previously thought.

Our working memories may max out at three or four items, according to a study published this month in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Earlier research had pegged that number at about seven. But the study by University of Missouri researchers suggests the true number is lower when people are not allowed to use memory aids, such as grouping items together or repeating them over and over.

Click here for entire article

Sunday, April 13, 2008

Useful and unusual tool

Here's a useful and unusual tool.

Ghotit offers unique writing and reading online services for people who suffer from dyslexia, dysgraphia or people who are not native-English speakers. Ghotit’s first service is an online context sensitive spell checker.



Plus an excellent list of dyslexia research links here by the same crowd
How cool is that?!



We need more technological initiatives in the areas of dysgraphia, written output and dyslexia. Come on you all you pioneering programmers and glory bound geeks ... reflect on any difficulties you may have had at school and apply your current genius to creating software or better still freeware that can help other children and adults who continue to have these struggles.