“One of my little pet causes is to get a statue of Alfred the Great on Parliament Hill…”
Yes, the video is long – but well worth listening to:
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Do Science, Tanzania
February 6, 2011 — xanthippaSo much in our world is messed up, it sometimes leaves us feeling powerless to do something about it.
Well, don’t give up!
A singlr person CAN make a difference!
Which is why I’d like to tell you about ‘Do Science, Tanzania’.
This is the brainchild of an Ottawa Physics teacher, Diana Hall, and her efforts are supported by the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, Vernier Software and Technology, Valley Microscope, her current and former students with their families and other caring individual people.
The aim of the program?
Simple!
The best way to get kids interested in science is to make it possible for them to DO science.
Do Science, Tanzania, aims to do exactly that by building a lending library of science equipment and making it available to science teachers in Moshi, Tanzania. This will permit the equipment to reach, educate and inspire many more students than if it were sent to one single school…
Looking at their ‘Wishing Well’, one can see their requests are humble – yet have the potential to have a tremendous impact, a truly big bang for the buck. In addition to asking for donations of any science classroom equipment, they still need:
- 3- Microscopes – 3 x $250
- Glassware (beakers, cylinders, test tubes etc.) – $200
- Microscope Slides – $25
- Power Supply – $250
- Electronic Balance – 2 x $10
- Wave Generator – $250
- White Boards – $50
- White Board Markers – $50
- Calculators – 25 x $5 (used calculators also useful)
- Slinkies – 5 x $15
- Baggage Fees for Shipping Science Equipment – 3 x $200 per bag
Ms. Hall is heading to Tanzania soon, hopefully with her lending library of science equipment bursting at the seams. If you’d like to find out how to help, click here to find out more.
Or, come to their dinner/social on Friday 11th, 2011.
Aspeis need to know what their assignment actually is
October 1, 2010 — xanthippaLately, I have neglected posting on the topic of Aspergers. Still, judging by the relative traffic among my posts, there is a need for more information there: both Aspies and educators are still looking for help.
Last December, I received the following comment:
I have an Aspie student, and when asked to produce 2 sentences about a topic in class, will just sit and think the entire period producing nothing… (I do believe that he is thinking about the topic). The topic has been given to student prior to class. Is this an unreasonable task? This is an 7th grade gifted autistic student.
I understand the perfectionism issue and that they may be unsure that it is good enough to put on paper, but in an educational setting I would like some suggestions to assist the regular Language Arts teacher. This is a graded assignment to be done in class.
Thanks in advance for any ideas you may have.
Deb Herr
Special Education Teacher
While I gave a quick reply at that time, this is a very important point which deserves a lot of attention. So, I had attempted to write up a proper response.
It wasn’t right – so I edited t.
Then I fixed it up some.
Then t needed shortening down a bit. So, I cut a bunch of stuff out.
Too much of the key ‘stuff’ was gone. I started a re-write. From scratch…
…and so on, and so on.
It is now October. I have still not published the post – it is not ‘right’ yet!!!!
NO, I am NOT joking!
So, now, I will publish the draft I have, without re-reading it, with all the flaws, errors, sentence fragments and all – or I will NEVER publish this…
Here it goes:
Both my sons are in the gifted program. One has gone through grade 7 several years ago, one is going to get there in not too distant a future – so, I am familiar with the level of development of a gifted Aspie of that age group.
Just to be sure, I asked my older son if he remembered being in that situation himself. He did…and was in perfect agreement with me as to what thought-processes this student would be going through: trying to figure out what the assignment means!
Being in the gifted program means the student is smart. By the time they get to grade 7, smart Aspies understand perfectly well that when a teacher asks for ‘any two sentences on a topic’, the absolutely last thing this means is ‘any two sentences on a topic’!
Experience would have taught them that…by now. And not in a nice way.
But, it would not have taught them what it is that the teacher/assignment does mean – or how to guess it….
So, I think it most likely that the student spent the time trying to figure out what the assignment actually was! And, with so little information provided to the student, I really don’t see how anyone could figure it out!
Therefore, my answer is that yes, it is unreasonable an Aspie or an Autie gifted student, in grade 7, to complete an assignment of ‘writing 2 sentences on a given topic‘.
Reasons:
- The assignment is non-specific.
- The parameters are not defined.
- The goals of the assignment are not known.
- The expectations are unclear (or, in this case, clearly misrepresented).
BUT!!!
There IS a solution!
Aspies – and high-functioning Auties – are very good at meeting very specific goals. I know that teachers are not used to approaching teaching this way, but, they would get WAY better results from this class of students if they were absolutely clear with them what the point of the assignment is, what the goal is, and what the evaluation criteria will be.
This worked for me – and my sons, as well as a few other kids I worked with:
First, we establish that in order to produce marks, teachers have to produce metrics: marks which measure the student’s skill-set development in several areas. This may seem like a game, but, because teachers have to work within such a large system, metrics were required. And, these metrics are used to evaluate the student.
To an Aspie/Autie student, this can be an important revelation. It is not an intuitive leap, to conclude this, because we usually believe what we are told – and from the earliest age, we are told that the point of school is to learn. But, of course, it isn’t! The point of school is to PROVE what we have learned… There is no place in school for ‘learning’ without proving (through earning marks) that/what one has learned.
Explaining that the point of doing assignments is to ‘earn points/marks’ can be liberating for an Aspie student. After all, ‘getting on the high-score board’ is possible, even if one has not yet ‘defeated the boss’!
Once this groundwork has been laid, it is important to explain both the teacher’s goals for this assignment (what the teacher will be measuring for the needed metrics) and the student’s goals (what bits of what will earn points/marks). This bit can be hard on teachers, because they have to explain both the explicit goals and the implied ones – most teachers do not go through this step explicitly themselves.
Yes – most assignments at the grade 7 level come with a ‘marking rubric’. At least, in my area they do. But these are so filled with vague notions and ‘weasel-words’ that they are worse than useless! “The student demonstrated some understanding…. The student demonstrated good understanding…” What the hell does THAT mean?
What is the difference between ‘little’ and ‘some’ and ‘good’ and ‘excellent’ in this context – and HOW is it measured?
Obviously, I can tell that ‘excellent’ will get a higher grade than ‘poor’ – but how do I know what demonstrates ‘excellent’ and what demonstrates ‘poor’ – or any of the other non-specific terms used – in this particular instance, to the satisfaction of this particular teacher?
If the teacher cannot stand there and provide a specific, accurate answer on how the grading will be done – how can the student be expected to guess what expectations to perform to?
This is so much easier for maths and sciences. When a teacher assigns a problem, the student knows not just WHAT ‘the right answer is’ – she/he knows what form the answer is to take.
This is woefully not true of ‘soft’ subjects. Not only do different teachers consider completely different ‘things’ to be ‘the right’ answer (try writing up interpretation of renaissance poetry for a ‘born-again’ teacher), the format itself is undefined…. Yet you are judged how your performance measures up to something the teacher cannot quantitatively define: expectations!
It seems criminal that ‘educators’ are blind to this…
Aspergers and writing: ‘build’, not just ‘revise’
June 26, 2010 — xanthippa‘Everyone’ who is familiar with Aspies knows that most of us struggle with writing.
Not all of us – Aspergers affects each person a little differently and to a different degree. And, it affects males and females a little differently, too. Perhaps that is why my post ‘Aspergers and writing’ continues to get so many hits.
Today, I got a comment on it which raises something important. That is why I’m posting this comment – and my quick reply to it – as its own post here:
Your comments about perfectionism and the difficulty Aspies have in putting words to paper make me wonder if this is why it’s so difficult for Aspies to revise what they’ve written: that once they get something down on paper they have committed their ideas to writing and there is no other way to put it. As a writing teacher, I often run into a wall when I ask my Aspie students to revise and I wonder if you think this explanation is accurate.
My response was:
I think that you are on the right track. I would like to nuance it slightly, if I may.
There are several things going on.
It is not that the Aspie may not be able to think of different words to put things into: it may be true at some times, byt certainly not at others. For example, many Aspies are very verbal – and they can say things out loud in many, many different ways. As a matter of fact, you may have a hard time shutting them up – they’ll describe the same things in so many ways.
The problem comes whith ‘investing’ into writing the words down. They have been ‘selected’ and ‘sweated over’ – why do you want to change them?
This constant ‘revision’ most writing teachers insist is part of ‘proper writing’ reduces me to white-hot fury! It it’s worth writing down, it’s worth doing it RIGHT THE FIRST TIME!
Once an Aspie HAS written something down and you are asking them to ‘revise’ it – you are asking them to take something that is ‘right’ and change it….obviously, if you take something that is ‘right’ and change it, you make it ‘wrong’! Then, when they hand in the version you forced them to change from ‘right’ to ‘wrong’, you give them a bad mark…
No wonder we don’t want to ‘revise’!
OK – that was the ‘emotional’ response.
Now, for more ‘reasoning’….
There is a problem – an actual physical problem in the neural connections – in the brain which makes it difficult for MOST (not all – we are all individuals), especially male, Aspies to write. Physically write.
Forcing us to ‘write’ and endlessly re-write the same sentences over and over is mental torture to us. It rubs our noses in our failure. So, we avoid it like the plague. If it’s a computer file, we’ll be less freaked out by it. But asking us to hand-copy out the same bits over because other bits had changed is unreasonable.
I actually can tell – byt the style of writning – if something I ‘produced’ was first spoken and then trans-scribed/typed into the computer, or if I wrote it on a piece of paper in longhand and then typed it into the computer, or if I directly typed it into the computer. Honestly, my sentence structure and syntax are significantly different in each one of these styles of ‘writing’. Perhaps you could experiment with your students on this theme….
But!
This is the way I helped my kids ‘get over’ the whole ‘revision aversion’ (I could not very well undermine the teacher, right?).
I explain that the teacher is trying to teach them how to build a piece of writing ‘from the ground up’. It is a particular methodology to teach, and marks are awarded at each stage: sort of like when you learn to swim, they first teach you to put your face in the water and only later want to see you perform the full butterfly stroke…
So – first ‘version’ is NOT supposed to be ‘a written story’ or ‘a written essay’.
Instead, organize your thoughts and put 1-2 words for each paragraph: enough to ‘record’ the ‘main idea’ or ‘main thrust’ of what this will say. This will be handed in as ‘brainstorming’ – teacher needs to get it to keep a record of it, so they can prove what they gave you the marks for if someone audits their work.
On the next ‘version’, you go to each one of the paragraphs and put in 1-2 words for each sentence you will write in the finished piece. Check that each paragraph still has the same ‘focus’ as the ‘brainstorming’. This will be first draft – again, marks, teacher keeps for records…
In between each step, take the teacher’s feedback and incorporate it in – again, this needs to show up. It’s the teacher’s job to give you feedback, so it’s important for the records they keep to reflect it. If you don’t, they’ll think they are not teaching you right, be sad, not like your work….pick your sentiment.
On the next ‘version’, you write BARE sentences for the 1-2 word things. Make sure all ideas are there, but not really all the descriptions, and not nicely or fancily. You’re hitting the highlights. That is the next draft.
Finally, you take your draft and connect up things, dress up the sentences, and so on.
It’s a method of constructing something. Teachers must document they taught it to you.
This way, you’ll show how you built the written piece. It’s not so much ‘revision’ or ‘revising’ it – that is a very poor label for this. But, that is the label we are stuck with.
Does this help explain the thought process?
CanGames weekend is here!!!
May 21, 2010 — xanthippaYes!
THE event of the year is upon us: CanGames 2010 is ON!
I originally came across it in a somewhat unusual way…
When we first began to look for ways to help my older son (as Aspie as the rest of us) develop the tools to integrate into the greater society, we found Warhammer – the Fantasy version.
The game itself has been described as being ‘like chess, but with 100x more complex rules and no helpful grid on the play area’. Oh – and you have to select and build/paint your own playing pieces…
We got into it as our son was interested in strategy games, and the whole building/painting of his entire ‘army’ was excellent physical therapy for his co-ordination. He did it because he wanted the result…. I helped and got hooked on the ‘making/painting’ bit. Years later, I still make a 1-3 pieces a year (by request only) for some collectors…
Building that first army was really fun: I even bought a set of (much cheaper) plastic soldiers and ‘his own paints’ for my younger son: while my older one and I worked to build his ‘army’, I would put a garbage bag over the tray of the high chair, sit my younger one in it beside me (he was the right age for it and loved his high chair), and he would ‘paint’ his very own army, too! (Yes, I still have most of it…having been cautioned by several of the people at CanGames that once he grows up, he’ll treasure ‘his first army’!)
THE single biggest Warhammer tournament in our area was (and is) at CanGames.
That is how I first learned about it – and that is why I first went there.
My son – even though a kid (so I had to be along to supervise) – entered the all-day-long Warhammer Tournament. My goal was simple: to use this game to helpmy seriously Aspie son…. to use this rules-based environment to learn social skills necessary for him to integrate into society. Like, say, not having a ‘meltdown’ if he does not win (no shame for a ‘starter’ kid to loose to ‘expert adults’ – so, knowing this ahead of time, learning that ‘loosing to the best-of-the-best’ is ‘the expectation’ and no reason for tears).
And, I must admit, the whole event outdid our expectations!
Not only did various people ‘take him under their wing’, and not only was this the main place where he learned ‘good sportsmanship’ from the example of many excellent people who were not only ‘not threatened’ by having points scored against them by a ‘kid’, but by positively delighting in his successes, congratulating him on ‘excellent moves’ as they occurred, they successfully taught him ‘sportsmanship’: how to be both ‘a good looser’ and ‘a gracious winner’!
It worked. Now, my older son is much in demand to ‘run gaming events’ – bot for kids and for adults. He is regarded as having excellent sportsmanship, he appreciates – and praises – excellent moves, no matter who makes them, even against him, he is often called upon to referee disputes (he reads the rules once and know them for ever – and applies them fairly and in an unbiased way)…. Yes, I would like to take the credit for myself, but, I know a parent can only be an example so far… It was the example of many excellent ‘expert’ gamers whom he admired at CanGames which deserves the credit!
I must admit that my son has not been entering the Warhammer Fantasy tournaments at CanGames in the last few years. Still, this is not a criticism of the tournament itself! It is most excellent!
Rather, he has succumbed to curiosity… There are SO MANY other games offered that he cannot bring himself to spend a whole day in a single tournament, when he could be learning so many new games! After all, CanGames only runs Friday night, Saturday and Sunday…
Saturday morning, CanGames has a special program for kids. Having watched his older brother eagerly await CanGames much as Sheldon Cooper awaits the annual Comic-Con, he was eager to join in the Saturday morning games (especially the Nintendo64 Mario-brothers-themed ones).
One year, one of his opponents was an Autistic girl – much more Autistic than my son was Aspie, if you get my drift. The Autie’s therapist/supervisor explained to me that playing these types of games was ‘the only effective way’ her charge would socialize: and meeting her and playing against her in the game helped my young Aspie son realize that there were others, with much more to overcome than he had… and showing that deep down, we are all a lot more similar than our ‘external-expression’ might suggest!
Now that he is older, my younger one plans to participate as fully at CanGames as his older brother does!
And, yes – I will be along!
To supervise and help, of course. But also to have fun on my own! Seeing the same people, once a year, is really neat in a weird sort-of way. You can watch young people grow and develop, see familiar faces, talk to people who can out-strategize you any time they wish… Oh, yes – and you can match your mind against some really, really awesome strategists (yeah – the political strategists ought to sit-up and take note – they could certainly use the training!)
Like I said: fun!
Autism Registry: a pilot project by Ottawa Police
May 20, 2010 — xanthippaIf you read my blog, you are probably aware that I have a strong interest in Asperger’s Sydrome: I am an Aspie, I am married to an Aspie, both my children are Aspies, most of my friends are, if not full-Aspies, at least ‘almost-Aspies.
Hence the interest.
While I like to explain that Asperger’s is to Autism like ‘wearing glasses’ is to ‘being blind’, it is an Autism spectrum disorder, there is some overlap (OK – I’d have to go on a tangent to explain this ‘right’: let it suffice (for here) that both Autism and Asperger’s have the same ‘thing’ which affects how the brain is wired ‘differently’, but the difference is that each affects a different bit of the brain….some people have a bit of ‘re-wiring’ in both areas – thus, the overlap). So, I am always paying attention when I hear about both…
So, I was quite interested when I heard that the Ottawa Police were doing some sort of a pilot project to do with interacting with members of our community who are Autistic or have Asperger’s Syndrome. Thanks go to my favourite Ottawa City Councillor, Eli El-Chantiry, for getting me in touch with the people running the pilot project.
This – in a nutshell – is what it is about…
When a call comes in to the ‘911’ emergency service, the operator pulls up the info on the address where the call is coming from:
- the address
- map
- other relevant info (like the much reviled gun registry, and so on)
A person who looks after an Autie or an Aspie (or the Autie/Aspie themselves) can register in this program. When they do this, the ‘relevant information’ will include some information about the Autie/Aspie that lives there.
This can save lives!
The information can be, say, there is a small Autistic boy who fears loud noises. If there is a fire alarm, he is likely to hide under the bed or in the closet. Only answers to ‘Xxx’ nickname…. Touching him makes him panic.
Or, it can say something like ‘this is a group home for adult Auties. These are their names, this is how they react to being agitated,’ and so on.
Information is power.
When emergency responders are walking into a situation where they know they will encounter a person who is not fully functional – and, the stress of emergency situations does often push ‘partially functional’ people (especially kids) into a non-functional state – they will be able to do their job better.
This Autism Registry pilot program harnesses the power of information into better helping vulnerable people in emergency situations. Into saving live.
I liked what I learned about the program so much, I offered to help out as best I can. And, perhaps, there may be a tiny role I can play.
One way I – and you – can help is to ‘spread the word’!
If you know someone in the City of Ottawa who would benefit from registering – tell them.
If you live outside of Ottawa, tell your police department to check out this pilot project in Ottawa. The model is highly portable – perhaps your community would benefit from something similar!
‘Pre-Crime Thought’ is now detectable – really
April 15, 2010 — xanthippaOK – I don’t understand how ANYONE would think this is a ‘good idea’!
IBM has now created a machine which can detect ‘pre-crime’ – by measuring a person’s brain waves.
It sounds like a bad science fiction flick, or a particularly stupid April fool’s joke – and I wish it were! Alas, it appears to be ‘real’…
From GIZMODO:
IBM clearly wants this to go big. They have spent a whooping $12 billion beefing up its analytics division. Again, here’s the full quote from Deepak Advani [emphasis added]:
Predictive analytics gives government organizations worldwide a highly-sophisticated and intelligent source to create safer communities by identifying, predicting, responding to and preventing criminal activities. It gives the criminal justice system the ability to draw upon the wealth of data available to detect patterns, make reliable projections and then take the appropriate action in real time to combat crime and protect citizens.
IBM says that the Ministry of Justice in the United Kingdom—which has an impeccable record on not pre-judging its citizens—already uses this system to prevent criminal activities.
This turns our society upside down!
Our ‘Western’ society was built on the very principle all rights and freedoms are inherent in each individual: we broke free of the shackles of state and religion which claimed to ‘own’ its populations, where the only rights people had were those that State and Temple permitted them!
To make sure we were never enslaved again – to prevent the Government from choosing who has he right to exercise which freedoms and when….and who does not….we have built in mechanisms into our Constitutions, from Magna Carta on down, that limit the power of the government.
Yes – the whole point of our ‘Western’ constitutions is to protect us, the individual citizens, from the government.
From the government telling us what to do, what to believe, how to live and worship….
Yet here, the Florida government plans (and, apparently, the UK government already does – King John must be ROFL in his grave) have announced their plans to invade the thoughts of youth offenders, and set then jail based on their thought patterns!!!
And if you have any illusions that re-education camps are not prisons, ask Solzhenitsyn: he spent decades in a government-run re-education camp! Yes, in socialist Soviet Union, a person who was picked up for ‘being intoxicated in public’ was indeed sent – for his or her own good – into state-run re-education camps in Siberia… And the Soviet Union was not alone in their belief that government could ‘re-educate’ people in order to help them better fit into the society they had engineered…
I can’t believe this is actually happening!
And if you think that re-education camps in the US are being planned are being planned only for youth offenders – think again. Voices are speaking up about ‘re-education camps’ being planned for ALL they youth in the US, under the guise of ‘volunteerism’ (which, happens to pay a salary).
Yes. (When I was young, I had to join the young pioneers – prove I was ‘officially registered’ and was continuously ‘earning achievement stamps’ in my ‘pioneer passport….oh, the headaches I used to get!)
When things got too oppressive in Europe, people escaped to North America to win back their freedom. Which leaves me with the question: where do we run to now?
Listen – and weep…
January 26, 2010 — xanthippaHaiti was hit by a horrible earthquake. This created a tragedy the proportions of which most of us have a hard time wrapping our brains about.
The good part of this is that so many people, all over the world, have done their best to send help to the people of Haiti. Good on each and every one of you!
Still, when bad stuff like this happens, even when other people try to help, there will be snags. These are unfortunate, but – they WILL happen! After all, this place has had so much of its infrastructure destroyed that it is a credit to all those truly ‘trying’ that so much of what needs to be done has been done!
Which is just sad when one looks at what the Clintons are doing….
Hillary Clinton owns a bunch of land in Haiti. She has planned to put up some extremely fancy hotels there….
Bill Clinton is in charge of a charity through which much of the US aid to Haiti is being channeled…help, like creating tourist jobs in swanky hotels…. You know – like using the `reconstruction`money to put up them hotels your wife always wanted!
Like I said, listen and weep…. (you might want to skip the first few minutes) as John C. Dvorak & Co. `follow the money’.
AlpineKat: Black Hole Rap
January 21, 2010 — xanthippaHere is AlpineKat with her newest video, Black Hole Rap:
Some people wonder why should we do ‘research for the point of research’: can the cost be justified?
In my never-humble-opinion, yes!
My hubby phrased it well: if you only do research on how to improve candles, you will develop the best candles ever….but you’ll never invent the light-bulb!
P.S. to ‘Winning back our liberty: the ‘commercial’ threat’
December 17, 2009 — xanthippaIn this post, I quoted John Perry Barlow, who warned us that the greatest threat to our freedom of speech in the future will come from corporations ‘protecting’ their IP, and individual’s freedoms ‘be damned’. And, I do think he is correct.
Because we have seen ‘states/governments’ strip its citizens of rights and freedoms, we are ‘sensitive’ to the threats to our liberties which come from that direction. OK, not ‘sensitive enough’ as a society… What I mean is, those within our society who are looking out for our rights and freedoms in order to preserve our liberties are used to watching the state/government and firmly regard it as the biggest threat.
And, that threat is very, very real – and, we discuss it a lot, oppose the encroachment on our rights – as we should!
But, the very people who are vigilant of the state/government creeping oppression seem deaf and blind when it comes to corporations using ‘commercial laws’ to forward their interests at the cost our liberties….
There were two things I should have included, but did not.
The first is Michael Geist‘s movie, ‘Why Copyright? Canadian Voices on Copyright Law’, in which this law professor explains the real-life implications of the draconian ‘digital copyright’ laws these days…
The second is this little news story which Dvorak Uncensored highlighted while I was working on my original post:
…
“We were extremely disappointed to learn of the White House meeting to be held later today on the issue of intellectual property and ‘piracy,” said PK’s Gigi Sohn. “It is unclear why three cabinet officers, several subcabinet officers, the directors of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. Secret Service are needed to tend to the worries of the big media companies, particularly the motion picture industry which is completing a year in which it will set box-office records.
It is difficult to explain just how serious this situation is becoming without sounding like a ‘conspiracy nut’.
Now, don’t get me wrong – I LOVE conspiracy theories! They are truly FUN! I just don’t buy into them – not as ‘description of reality’…at least, not most of them.
But, we do need to educate ourselves about ALL the treats to our liberties.
…this is just the tip of the iceberg…
Xanthippa's Chamberpot 