« Previous Entries

Why Over-Parented Students Irritate Teachers

Wednesday, June 5th, 2013

Over-parenting, or the “misguided attempt to improve [a] child’s current and future personal and academic success”, is a risk for all parents, and not just parents of children with extra needs. Here’s a teacher’s view on the issue:
Read >> Why Parents Need To Let Their Children Fail
We all know parents who won’t let go of [...]

School Acoustics – By An Educational Audiologist

Wednesday, May 29th, 2013

With children under 13 years of age most challenged by ambient classroom noise, school acoustics are vital to childrens’ learning in their formative primary or elementary schooling years, says audiologist Jane Madell.
Read >> How Classroom Acoustics Impact Learning
Crucially, Madell notes a major change in deaf education:
Maybe only 15 years ago, many children with hearing loss were [...]

Early Implants Best For Baby’s Language Progress

Thursday, May 16th, 2013

In the US, two to three children in every 1000 births is born profoundly deaf, 90% to hearing families. The average age for a baby to receive a cochlear implant is falling, with research showing babies of 6 to 9 months to benefit more from the technology, than even at 12 months, and again at [...]

Florida Legislates For The Auditory-Verbal Option

Tuesday, May 7th, 2013

Parents of newly-identified children who’re profoundly deaf, have a lot going on. Not least, they must make communication choices on behalf of the children, and decide how the family is going to communicate in general.
Recently, the US state of Florida passed legislation for parents to be told of all the possible communication options for deaf children. [...]

NDCS Queries UK Councils On Education Supports

Wednesday, April 24th, 2013

Fresh concerns over cuts to education supports for deaf/hoh pupils in the UK have emerged, after one-third of councils cut supports in 2011. NDCS is also reporting that almost one-half of London’s local councils did not respond to a Freedom of Information request to disclose spending plans by April 2, 2013.
Read: Charity’s fears over cuts [...]

“I Am The Happiest Deaf Teenager On Facebook”

Thursday, April 11th, 2013

His profile reads “I am the happiest deaf teenager on Facebook”. UK-based Jamie Williams started writing a blog after a friend said how happy and content he is, even when he’s deaf. And his writing ability shows in the blog.
Read >> Deaf teenager’s blog takes Facebook by storm
Jamie’s blog is “A Deaf Boy in A [...]

Introduction To Auditory Verbal Therapy (Belfast)

Wednesday, April 10th, 2013

Auditory-Verbal Therapy (AVT) is a parent-centred approach to enabling children with deafness to learn to talk by listening with hearing-devices.
The UK has just 14 certified AVT therapists, and on April 27th a free 2-hour information session on AVT is being held in Belfast for parents of deaf children aged under 5. Registration is needed (details [...]

Lip-Reading Challenges In The Hearing World

Friday, April 5th, 2013

Having to verbally ”translate” for signing deaf friends who do not lip-read, confirmed this skill to Rachel Kolb, a masters student at Stanford University in California. She writes eloquently here, about the challenges of lip-reading.
Read>> Seeing At The Speed Of Sound
Lip-reading is a very under-rated skill. When hearing-devices are off, it can be the ideal back-up [...]

“He Is Not Me”: A Book On Mainstream Education

Monday, March 25th, 2013

A new book, “He Is Not Me”, by Stuart McNaughton, tells the story of being deaf from birth – and opting for a cochlear implant in his twenties. Notably, Stuart’s parents mainstream-educated him, to equip him with real-world skills from the very start – with the support of teachers and professionals.
Read >> He Is Not [...]

Crowd-Computing: New Solutions For Captions

Tuesday, March 19th, 2013

Speech-to-text automation has a huge role in creating classroom captions for students with hearing and other issues, who don’t always note-take in class. To address the multi-speaker shortcomings of automated caption solutions, a program, Scribe, was devised at the University of Rochester.
Scribe Tweaks Speech-To-Text Automation – With Humans
Scribe works by crowd-sourcing humans to caption speech [...]

« Previous Entries