"Facilitated Communications" and Autism - Thoughts and Reflections

My sister Sandy and I spent over a hour last night talking with each other on our iPhones about the concept of "facilitated communications" for autistic individuals. Sandy indicated that as a part of the Educational Psychology class that she is "facilitating" with a group of Master's students, that this term is one of the concepts she has on the list to cover.

I didn't really know what it was, but after having her explain it to me, had a wonderful dialogue with her. She sent me the video above so I could gain further information.

Amazing to me the many things that were so obvious to Sandy and me in the video weren't instantly obvious to many folks in the video. It is astounding to me that the folks didn't consider the possibility of the facilitator unconsciously directing the communication of the autistic individuals. That realization is kind of scary to me.

It is a long video but well worth the watch. Check it out and let me know what are you thoughts, reactions, conclusions.

I just enjoy learning things :)!

Linchpin by Seth Godin

Just sat in on an Elluminate session with Steve H. where Seth talked about the message in his book, "Linchpin:".  Here are my notes from that session.

We need to teach our kids how to solve interesting problems and how to lead.  If school aren't, can't, won't, don't realize, or don't want to – we need to "homeschool" our kids from 3 pm until school starts the next morning to stand out.  We need to teach kids to not “fit in”; we need to reward kids for standing out rather than fitting in unfortunately while at the same time maintaining NCLB test scores.  We need to remember that the real customers are the kids, not our superiors.

We have enough time and resources in the school day to let kids start speaking up.  We need to stop asking about test scores and start talking about how to make a difference. If you can persistently put ideas in front of people who trust you, sooner or later the "nickel  will drop".   It is that flip that should be our goal.  If kids realize that others want this change, they will start doing it as well.

We need to say to our kids, "You are a genius, the world needs your contribution!"  They need to know their gifts, talent and responsibilities.  One teacher said she tried it and her 5 and 7 year olds get it, and they know each others gifts!

We can change this culture and the system with these conversations with young kids.  Genius means – not Albert E., but solving a problem in a way that it has never been solved before.  Unfortunately we scare it out of kids today, by telling them they broke a rule, etc.  Yes, it is not easy to manage a class of 33 geniuses, but making it easy is not the point.

Seth mentioned a concept that I really wish someone would take the chance and do - "non-schooling" – providing resources and letting kids figure it out.

How do we break things into small enough groups with enough unique voices.  Let’s fail 10 percent of the time with experiments like Google does as a company.  Great employee characteristics is what we should be looking for in students.  Reward risk taking.

We need to seek out risk taking teachers and celebrate their failures. We need to praise those that fail when they tried something that didn’t work.

Do what is necessary to make an impact.  When enough is at stake, people chose to be a major maverick.  If we want real change, it is going to happen one person at a time even when what people say is wacky.

How to start? One example was to start a father - daughter book club.  Read something that would never be on the curriculum that will lead to "real" conversations. Again, the right books will lead to the right conversations.  It will work.  If we teach people that they can look into the words and then have provocative conversations where there is no right answer, we’ll build on their genius.

Make a difference and be unreasonable about it!

Learner's Bill of Rights*

The learner has the right to:

1. Question and be curious.
2. Have personal ideas.
3. Choose how to learn and share understanding.
4. Plan and participate in learning at a level that's appropriate.
5. Grapple with challenging ideas or concepts.
6. Access the information and resources needed.
7. Participate in and contribute to a learning network.
8. Think critically, solve problems and make decisions.
9. Make mistakes and learn from them.
10. Reflect on learning.

Today more than ever it is evident that we all need to always be learners - L4L (text message for learners for life). No longer should teachers be standing at the front of the room imparting knowledge and facts through lectures. Students, with teachers learning right along side of them, should be inquiring, thinking critically, and reflecting individually and as a group to find solutions to problems identified in the process of questioning and being curious. As a result everyone will contribute to the learning network, make mistakes and refine their abilities to plan for and solve whatever may come their way.

These learner rights listed above should be basic to education, but I think many times along the way we lose sight of them as we get caught up in life. Thank you to the Colorado subcommittee for bringing our attention back to what is truly important, engaging and exciting about learning!

What do you think about how simple these are, but how complicated we tend to make learning when we lose site of these basic rights of learners?


*The Learner's Bill of Rights committee, a sub committee of the 21st Century Learner Standards Vision Committee created the Learners Bill of Rights listed above. Jody Gehrig, member of the Vision sub-committee, chaired the "Learner's Bill of Rights" committee. The "Learner's Bill of Rights" was presented to Colorado Commissioner of Education Jones for approval and the State Library is waiting for feedback from the Commissioner's cabinet. The "Learner's Bill of Rights" has been endorsed by the Colorado School Library Leaders (CoSLL). They are for use with the students, teachers, administrators, parents, and other business and community leaders.

Okay, I want to go back to college

"What might a university look like with a fully deployed program of converged devices like the iPhone? Connected is one possible vision. This fictional day-in-the-life account highlights some of the potential benefits in a higher education setting when every student, faculty, and staff member is "connected." Though the applications and functions portrayed in the film are purely speculative, they're based on needs and ideas uncovered by our research - and we've already been making strides to transform this vision of mobile learning (mLearning) into reality."

What a great article.  What a great opportunity for students of Abilene Christian University.  What great efforts this university has gone to to do it right.  Check out their vision and their progress.  I think I'll send my kids there - as if I have that much control or would want to have that much control of where they go. . .

Check it out - Abilene is giving their incoming Freshmen an iPhone or iPod Touch to utilize during their college life for classes, university administrative stuff, etc.  While I'd love to see the video's on You Tube right now, I have to wait until I go home from work.  Blocked iTunes University and too slow of a band width to look at it here.  Well perhaps I'll post more once I get home :(

Learning 2.0: A Colorado Conversation

Below is information about this free conference that you will want to attend. Let others know about it also. Please pass the information on.

Learning 2.0: A Colorado Conversation
You are invited to attend the Learning 2.0: A Colorado Conversation Conference.

What is Learning 2.0: A Colorado Conversation?
Learning 2.0: A Colorado Conversation is a one day conference/meetup for teachers, administrators, students, school board members, parents and anyone who is interested in education. It will be held on Saturday, February 23rd, 2008, from 9:00 am until 3:00 pm at Arapahoe High School in Centennial, Colorado, USA. We assume most folks will be from Colorado, but everyone is welcome to attend, and we are working on some ideas for virtual participation.
Education is conversation.

Conversation creates change.
The future of education does not exist in the isolated world of theory and abstract conference sessions. Instead, it exists in conversations. It exists in creating a robust learning network that is ever-expanding and just-in-time. Learning 2.0 is not the beginning of this conversation. It is merely a stopping point, a time to talk about the visible difference that we all seek.


We read. We reflect. We write. We share. We learn. Come join us for a day of conversation about learning and technology.

You can learn much more about the conference on the wiki, including information about registering. Here are some highlights:

Tentative Schedule
We're still working on the details so this will be updated before the conference. Also, this may expand if we have more folks register than we are anticipating. (To quote Bud Hunt, "This conference stuff is hard!")

Registration
You must register so that we know how many folks to expect and so that we can have enough lunches available. (Who says there's no such thing as a free lunch?)

Cost
Free, baby. And lunch is included, thanks to the generous support of Littleton Public Schools, St. Vrain Valley Public Schools, and Arapahoe High School.

Wireless
BYOL (that would be Bring Your Own Laptop) - we'll have wireless access to the Internet (filtered) - we may test our capacity to handle density of machines, but hopefully things will go swimmingly. If not, we have wired machines in various places you can access.

Questions for Students
We're having a student panel discussion during lunch. Here's your chance to submit some questions for them to consider.

Invite Others
We strongly encourage you to invite other folks from your school, district, neighborhood, or learning network to attend as well. It would be great if everyone could bring at least one person with them that is perhaps new to this conversation.

Questions?
Feel free to leave a comment on this post or on the FAQ page on the wiki.

Oh, also feel free to download and print the flyer.