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How does your teen learn?

Joan Azarva — Sat, 11 Sep 2010 02:14:59 +0000

Want to compare colleges?

Joan Azarva — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 00:33:50 +0000

Campus Compare is a handy site to use when you draw up your preliminary list of colleges. This is a great starting point for your college search where you can find information and compare 4,000 colleges and universities. It even tells you what your chances are for a particular school based on your standardized test scores.

Another site, Unigo, uses the slogan “College students tell you what colleges won’t.” All the information on this site is from the “horse’s mouth”. Included are great articles, videos, and forums.

The only important thing lacking in both these sites is information about disability services. Unfortunately, you will have to research that separately. Exploration of these sites, however, exposes you to the vast differences among colleges, including tuition–not an insignificant concern!

What do parents owe their kids?

Joan Azarva — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 17:38:41 +0000

As parents, we are told to love our kids “unconditionally”.

Does that mean that we are also supposed to give to our kids unconditionally?

That’s where I have trouble.

What exactly do we owe our kids?

The way I see it, we owe them food, shelter, clothing, and of course, love and affection. Beyond that, what else?

* Do we owe them the latest video game system?
* Do we owe them $75 jeans?
* Do we owe them moral values?
* Do we owe them a college education?

While many would argue against #1 and #2 above, few would disagree with #3 and #4.

I have no trouble with #3. It’s #4 I want to discuss with you.

I believe we can assume that “good enough” parents want the best for their kids. For many parents, a college education falls under the same “basic needs” category as food, shelter, clothing, etc. However, it doesn’t for me. Why not?

That’s easy. I’ve seen too many parents throw thousands of dollars down the drain, with the best of intentions, assuming college is a basic need. They feel guilty if they don’t provide it. They spend their hard-earned savings or take out mega loans because they feel they “owe” it to their kids. They fail to see that this hefty financial outlay, second only to their homes in many cases, requires something in return– cooperation.

College is not a right, it’s a privilege. It’s a privilege that comes with strings attached. Think about this scenario for a second: If your teen is awarded a scholarship, will the donor continue to pay if your teen doesn’t maintain a certain grade point average? Of course not. Scholarship money is awarded to candidates who, according to their academic history, appear to be safe risks. It’s also awarded with the expectation that the student deliver. It’s similar to a contract.

That’s the way parents need to see college–as a contract between them and their teens. They should only sign on the dotted line if the odds are in their favor that they’re making a sound investment.

How can parents tell if their investment will pay dividends? After working as a learning specialist on the college level since 1993, I know which kids make it. You are making a sound investment if your teen–

* wants to go to college and is not being coerced
* is able to articulate his disability and learning style
* knows her strengths and weaknesses
* agrees to disclose her disability to a college in order to obtain accommodations and/or services
* realizes that seeking help is empowering and knows where to find it
* is open to the idea of using technology to compensate for weaknesses
* understands the value of delayed gratification and can say “no”
* has some ideas, even vague ones, of a career direction
* knows how much it costs to sit in on one session of a college class
* agrees to attend every class (unless very ill)
* has a system for time management
* can get out of bed on his own
* knows how a checking account or debit card works
* signs a FERPA waiver
* agrees if she doesn’t give college her best efforts, the “free ride” ends

You’d be amazed at how many times I’ve heard students who’ve failed classes say, “Oh, I’ll just take it again, my parents are paying for it.” I think to myself….if only their parents could hear them. These are the same students who retake the class, do things the same way, and fail it again.

College, particularly for students with learning disabilities, is not a natural extension of high school. There are too many new variables and too many potholes waiting to suck them in.

Those who proceed through college successfully are able to check off most of the items on my list. If that’s not the case in your house, it’s not too late to begin preparing…. no matter your child’s age.

Once your child can reassure you regarding the checklist above, then, and only then would I get out my checkbook—not one minute sooner.

What are your thoughts?

FREE technology right under your nose!

Joan Azarva — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 21:25:39 +0000

If your teen finds reading laborious, don’t sweat it! Thank goodness, reading ability is not a sign of intelligence. Students with print disabilities, however, who rely solely on the written word to obtain information are destined to see their fount of knowledge suffer.

That’s why we’re so lucky to live in the 21st century. There are so many opportunities to level the playing field with technology, yet most high school students remain unaware of them.

Did you know there are scads of free books online (many of them assigned in school) that can be downloaded in different formats? In a perfect world, your teen would follow along with the book to increase sight word vocabulary. However, if that’s not practical, these books can be listened to while driving, exercising, or just relaxing.

Parents – be careful NOT to put your teen down for reading poorly. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter HOW we acquire information–just that we do. It’s time students with learning disabilities stopped feeling inferior and developed an enthusiasm for books. In this age of technology, books can be listened to or watched instead of read; in the end, the outcome is the same.

Downloadable books open a whole new world that may have previously been closed off to your child. How exciting is that??

Here are some great sites where you can download books in a variety of formats, even some customizable!

Books Should Be Free http://www.booksshouldbefree.com Your source for free audio books in mp3, iPod, or iTunes format

Thought Audio http://www.thoughtaudio.com Their journey has always been one of making classic literature available to anyone willing to listen, and now in their next phase, they will expand their scope to include more thinkers, writers, and essayists.

LibriVox http://librivox.org LibriVox volunteers record chapters of books in the public domain and release the audio files back onto the net. Our goal is to make all public domain books available as free audio books.

Open Culture http://www.openculture.com Open Culture scours the web for the best educational medial. They find free courses and audio books, language lessons and movies, and all sorts of enlightenment for the listener.

Learn Outloud- http://www.learnoutloud.com/ Learn Out loud is your one-stop destination for audio and video learning. Browse over 20,000 educational audio books, MP3 downloads, podcasts, and videos.

Planet Ebook http://www.planetebook.com Classic literature available for download as free ebooks

Librophile http://librophile.com 4,300 free audio books, 33,037 free ebooks, 108,532 books in total.

Well, people, what are you waiting for? Start your…………… DOWNLOADS!

LOSING THINGS…is this your teen’s life?

Joan Azarva — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 19:06:04 +0000

When I work with private clients, I customize the sessions to meet their needs. One particular student, a rising senior in high school, complained of constantly losing things due to disorganization. My job is to come up with a solution that the student will “buy into”. In this case, technology saved the day. I found a product that filled the need perfectly.

I found 2-Way RF FOFA® Find One Find All® 2 Key Finders and 2 Wallet Locators (4 Piece Set) billed as a “key finder”, and decided to give it a try. It turned out to be just what the doctor ordered.

If your teen is typical of those with ADHD or executive function issues, she’s left a jacket here, a pair of gloves there, perhaps a cell phone somewhere else. While it’s exasperating as a parent, according to Dr. Kathleen Nadeau, a nationally-recognized ADD expert and author whom I interviewed last year, the pre-frontal lobes of our brain–the sections responsible for planning, organizing, and thinking about consequences–continue to develop until we’re about thirty years old. Wow! That means our kids aren’t losing things purposely to aggravate us! It also means it can go on happening for a l-o-o-o-n-g time!

So, if forgetting is rooted in physiology, what can we do to prevent it?

You’ve probably tried rewards, consequences, Post-It notes, etc. to no avail, right? I am happy to report I have finally found something that does the trick. It not only prevents loss, but it salvages self-esteem, just when your child starts to convince himself he really is a bumbling fool!

Find One Find All consists of six transmitters that all act as base units. You can use as many as 6 sets, or 36 transmitters. So, when you find one, you now have a way to locate any of the others!

I never recommend anything I don’t have personal experience with, so when I endorse a product it’s because I have seen results first-hand. To my client’s credit, he was well aware of his tendency to lose things, and he was fed up wasting countless hours searching, when he could be putting that time to better use. In his case, he purchased 6 sets, or 36 transmitters, in all! At the time we met, he was preparing to travel to a 4-week academic program and was bringing ALL his gadgets. He wanted to be certain not to lose anything.

He attached sensors to everything from his Ipod, to his keys, to his wallet, to his computer, to his countless adaptor cords, and to his notebooks. He even managed, through a feat of engineering, to attach a sensor to his Livescribe pen! The results were amazing. Now he was able to locate misplaced items (within 30 feet). This made all the difference in the world to him.

As one woman said in an online review, it’s like buying an add-on hard drive or RAM for your brain!

NEW! Livescribe Echo Pen Product Review – levels the playing field for special needs students

Joan Azarva — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 17:13:48 +0000

I happen to love the Livescribe 4 GB Echo Smartpen, after having seen it demonstrated by students with learning disabilities at the Delaware Valley Friends School in Paoli, PA. Every single student said that since using Livescribe to take notes, they couldn’t fathom living without it. THIS PEN ROCKS!

Now, this is a technology I can endorse!

Below, see an article that discusses Livescribe’s uses for our students.

By Christopher Dawson | August 20, 2010 (from ZD Net)

Since I posted my review of Livescribe 4 GB Echo Smartpen“on Wednesday (in ZDNet, Education), I’ve received several emails, talkbacks, Facebook postings, and tweets about possible use cases of the device for students with special needs. I was so excited about the device itself that I overlooked one of the most important markets for the pen.

No smartpen will be the magic bullet that lets a child who is struggling because of a disability suddenly succeed. Success is based on a lot of hard work for the student and parents and complete commitment for the teacher. The right resources and supports have to tie all of these elements together. That being said, there are several classroom models where students with disabilities can easily benefit from the echo smartpen.

The first case is actually being used in both regular education and inclusion settings right now. Some progressive teachers (in fact, whole schools have started doing this) have been willing to let students turn in their assignments as a Livescribe pencast (via the web) in which they speak out loud as they work through assignments. Thus, if a student did a math problem with the pen and described his steps out loud, the teacher could hear what he was doing and provide feedback or partial credit even if he couldn’t read the assignment or the student could organize speech better than written work. Even for regular education students, math teachers constantly struggle to get students to show their work; with a pencast, students must show and explain their work on the fly.

Taking reasonable notes can also be a serious struggle for students with disabilities. The average kid with attention deficit (speaking from my own experience here) won’t be able to concentrate on both the writing and the speaking. If the student can be taught to focus their writing on a few big ideas, then the spoken lecture is always available to students and their parents.

The parental component is worth highlighting as well. Whether parents simply need a refresher on trigonometry or need to reteach and reinforce for students who struggle to comprehend in class, a recording of the lecture tied even to a few headings or key words on a page can make a parent’s life much easier.

Finally, for all the talk about multimodal learning, it’s a difficult thing to implement in class. Teachers using the echo immediate tap auditory and visual learners who can review with the sensory input of their choice at night if the instructor uploads pencasts to the web. Students using the echo, on the other hand, can receive the kinesthetic feedback they might need, again related back to auditory and visual cues later on.

The echo has the potential to level the playing field in many ways, not only for kids with specific disabilities, but for kids with learning styles that don’t match an instructional style or who simply need to access and recall information in a non-traditional way. (By the way, a high school student reviewed the new Livescribe pen for the 8/19/10 issue of the New York Times and gave it a “thumbs up”!

Joan’s note: Notebook paper for the Livescribe pen is available here: Livescribe Single Subject Spiral Notebook, 4-Pack, Nos. 1-4

Join Bookshare – FREE for 3 months with a print disability

Joan Azarva — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 03:59:57 +0000

Celebrating ADA – FREE 3-Month Trial Bookshare Membership

In recognition of the 20th anniversary of the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), Bookshare is offering a free 3-month trial membership good for 20 book downloads per month to all Americans with qualifying print disabilities. Please tell everyone you know who could benefit from this promotion. From now until August 31, 2010, any individual with a qualifying disability can sign up! At the end of the 3-months,new members will receive suggestions about how to sign up for individual memberships.

Here are 4 easy steps to follow to get the free trial:

1. Sign up before August 31, 2010. Select the 18 and over Individual membership option.
2. Complete the online contact forms. Enter ADA20 in the promotion code field.
3. Agree to the terms of use online.
4. Fax proof of disability to 650.475.1066

Use this PREZI to solve a problem

Joan Azarva — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 19:02:27 +0000

Sweet recipe to solving problems on Prezi

For-profit colleges – should you consider them?

Joan Azarva — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 03:23:46 +0000

August 5, 2010
Article from “Inside Higher Education”

WASHINGTON — Senate Democrats made it clear Wednesday that their examination of for-profit higher education has only just begun, and that they plan to pursue legislation aimed at reining what they see as the sector’s dishonest — if not fraudulent — practices.

At a hearing on the “student recruitment experience” at for-profit colleges that began Wednesday morning and carried on through the mid-afternoon, Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, outlined plans to hold more hearings on the sector, to collect broad sets of information from for-profit colleges, and to begin drafting legislation aimed at cleaning up the sector.

“Education is too important for the future of this country,” he said. “Facing the budget problems we have in the next 10 years, we just can’t permit more and more of the taxpayers’ dollars that are supposed to go for education and quality education … to be going to pay shareholders or private investors.”

Much of Harkin’s motivation came from the findings of a Government Accountability Office “secret shopper” investigation of recruiting practices at 15 for-profit campuses, the results of which — including a powerful videotape visible below — were officially released at the start of the hearing. The probe identified “fraudulent, deceptive or otherwise questionable marketing practices” at all 15 institutions, and inducements to commit fraud on the Free Application for Federal Student Aid at four institutions. Coupled with a former recruiter’s account of his experience on the job, the evidence presented at the hearing depicted an industry aggressively and universally going after “leads” and “starts” with the institutional objective of securing federal financial aid dollars.

“GAO’s findings make it disturbingly clear that abuses in for-profit recruiting are not limited to a few rogue recruiters or even a few schools with lax oversight,” Harkin said. The evidence was collected from some of the nation’s largest for-profit colleges, including the University of Phoenix and Kaplan College.

Though the U.S. Department of Education is expected to publish regulations intended to guard against abuse of the Title IV financial aid program by Nov. 1, Harkin said he was “not certain regulations will suffice.” Rather, he said, “I believe and I think where we’re headed is very clearcut legislation that can’t be overturned by another administration, that can’t put in ‘safe harbors’ and say it complies, but really tightly designed legislation to correct these practices.”

Harkin promised more hearings on for-profit colleges in September, November and possibly December — including one on accreditors’ oversight of for-profits — and also announced plans to collect data on sector outcomes and practices. His office will today send requests to 30 for-profit colleges — all of the publicly traded companies, plus a mix of privately held institutions — asking them to provide information about their graduation and loan default rates, plus internal recruiting documents and details about their use of third-party companies, like lead generators that help with recruiting. “We’ve got to get to the bottom of this,” he said.

Sen. Mike Enzi, of Wyoming, the senior Republican on the panel, acknowledged “aggressive and inappropriate recruiting practices” at the colleges visited by GAO investigators, but said he wanted to see the Senate’s scrutiny of higher education reach to nonprofit institutions as well. “In focusing only on for-profits, we are not being objective and we are ignoring the bigger picture of what is happening across all of higher education.” (That approach seems unlikely so long as Democrats have the majority and nonprofit colleges wield the clout they enjoy among many lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.)

Also on Wednesday, Sens. Jim Webb (D-Va.) and Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) sent letters to Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki asking for detailed data on how tuition assistance money for members of the military and for veterans is being spent.

“[W]e have heard reports that some for-profit institutions may be aggressively targeting service members and veterans, signing them up for educational programs that may bring little benefit to future employment opportunities, low graduation rates and high default rates,” they said. With the passage of the Post-9/11 GI Bill, they added, “we have heard concerns about excessive tuition being charged at some of these institutions.”

Democrats Tom Carper (Del.), Kay Hagan (N.C.), Claire McCaskill (Mo.), Russ Feingold (Wisc.) and Harkin also signed on to the letter.

‘Deceptive or Completely Questionable’ Practices

Presenting the findings of the GAO investigation was Gregory D. Kutz, the office’s managing director of forensic audits and special investigations at the Government Accountability Office. In testimony made more powerful by the brief undercover video clips that punctuated it, Kutz detailed “deceptive or completely questionable” practices at all 15 institutions.

The colleges the GAO visited were not a totally random sample, Kutz said, but they were not institutions where his office or the Education Department were already aware of fraud. “It gives you an indication that this is much more widespread than a few bad actors.”

Colleges Visited by GAO Location

University of Phoenix Arizona
Everest College Arizona
Westech College California
Kaplan College California
Potomac College District of Columbia
Bennett College District of Columbia
Medvance Institute Florida
Kaplan College Florida
College of Office Tech Illinois
Argosy University Illinois
University of Phoenix Pennsylvania
Anthem Institute Pennsylvania
Westwood College Texas
Everest College Texas
ATI Career Training Texas

Though Kutz’s written testimony didn’t identify the campuses the GAO examined, he did, at Harkin’s request, release a list of the institutions. They included campuses of the University of Phoenix in Arizona and Pennsylvania, Kaplan College in California and Florida, Everest College in Arizona and Texas, as well as privately held institutions including ATI Career Training and Medvance Institute.

Manny Rivera, a spokesman for Apollo Group, which owns the University of Phoenix, said the company has “strict policies in place to protect students during the enrollment process and throughout their tenure with the university, and when we discover any violation of this policy, we take immediate and decisive disciplinary action up to, and including, termination of the employees involved.”

Jacquelyn P. Muller, vice president of public relations at Education Management Corporation, which owns Argosy University in Chicago — one of the institutions visited — said that “every employee within our organization is held accountable for upholding the highest moral, ethical, and legal standards at all times.”

Kutz said that though corporate leaders may try to dismiss his investigation’s findings as problems with individual employees, “I expect anybody who would have walked in… and that was trained a certain way in marketing was going to the same script.” Institutions may say “‘that was a rogue employee,’ but I suspect in some of these cases that is absolutely not true.”

Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.), reinforcing what has become Republicans’ standard way of addressing problems uncovered at for-profit colleges, said: “I know we’ve got people doing bad things, but I know we’ve got a lot of people doing it right and they’re going to be under a cloud unless we begin to separate the wheat from the chaff.”

Joshua Pruyn, a former recruiter for a Westwood College, who testified at the hearing, said he didn’t think the kind of dishonest behavior that he saw and was encouraged to emulate while working at a Colorado campus resulted from a few “rogue” employees violating his institution’s code of ethics, but rather a pattern of behavior encouraged by corporate leaders.

Harkin, too, said he believed the encouragement to aggressively and dishonestly pursue students came from higher up. Showing a recruitment training PowerPoint slide from the University of Phoenix with the header “Creating Urgency: Getting Them to Apply NOW.”

Harkin said he thought inducements to recruit aggressively were coming from company executives. “That doesn’t come from some employee,” he said. “That comes from the top.”

During the HELP committee’s June hearing on for-profits, Harkin voiced concern that formerly good actors in the sector had been “lured into the vortex of bad practices” that might, only a few years ago, have been the domain of only some. The findings of the GAO investigation, he said, were “evidence [that] points to a problem that is systemic … to the for-profit industry,” with a “recruitment process specifically designed to do whatever it takes to drive up enrollment numbers, more often than not to the disadvantage of students.”

The fallout from the hearing isn’t likely to be positive for the for-profits.

Terry W. Hartle, senior vice president of government and public affairs at the American Council on Education, said he couldn’t “say for sure that it’s the most devastating Congressional hearing I’ve ever seen, but it’s in that league.” Harkin’s statements at the hearing, Hartle said, indicated that he “is fully engaged and is emotionally committed to this issue.” The findings of the GAO investigation, in particular, “seemed to really get Sen. Harkin’s attention.”

The stocks of most publicly traded for-profits, including those visited by GAO investigators, closed down for the day on Wednesday afternoon.

— Jennifer Epstein

(View video of deceptive practices is here: YouTube

Does your teen remember long division?

Joan Azarva — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 15:00:23 +0000

Try this experiment: Ask your teen to sit down with a pencil and paper and solve this problem:
560,479 divided by 34. What happens?

Long division is a skill that seems to atrophy by the time many students with learning disabilities enter high school. Reviewing the process, as well as learning the simple divisibility tricks below, can go a long way in taking the frustration out of long division. (See conclusion for why this is important.)

Numbers Divisible by 2

Numbers are divisible by 2 if the ones digit is evenly divisible by 2.

This means that even numbers are divisible by 2.

Numbers Divisible by 3

Numbers are divisible by 3 if the sum of all the individual digits is evenly divisible by 3.

For example, the sum of the digits for the number 3627 is 18, which is evenly divisible by 3. Therefore, the number 3627 is evenly divisible by 3.

Numbers Divisible by 4

Whole numbers are divisible by 4 if the number formed by the last two individual digits is evenly divisible by 4.

For example, the number formed by the last two digits of the number 3628 is 28, which is evenly divisible by 4.

Therefore, 3628 is evenly divisible by 4.

Numbers Divisible by 5

Numbers are evenly divisible by 5 if the last digit of the number is 0 or 5.

Numbers Divisible by 6

Numbers are evenly divisible by 6 if they are evenly divisible by both 2 AND 3 (see rules above).

Numbers Divisible by 7

To determine if a number is divisible by 7, take the last digit off the number, double it, and subtract the doubled number from the remaining number.

If the result is evenly divisible by 7 (e.g. 14, 21, 28, etc), then the number is divisible by seven. This may need to be repeated several times.

Example: Is 3101 evenly divisible by 7?

Take off the last digit of the number, which is 1.

Double the removed digit, so the 1 becomes 2.

Then, subtract 2 from 310.

The difference is 308.

Repeat the process by taking off the 8 so 308 becomes 30.

Then, double the 8 so it becomes 16.

Subtract 16 from 30.

The difference in 14, which is a multiple of 7.

BINGO – 3103 is divisible by 7!

Numbers Divisible by 8

Numbers are divisible by 8 if the number formed by the last three individual digits is evenly divisible by 8.

Example, Is 305,624 divisible by 8?

The last 3 numbers are 624, which is evenly divisible by 8, therefore 305,624 is evenly divisible by 8.

Numbers Divisible by 9

Numbers are divisible by 9 if the sum of all the individual digits is evenly divisible by 9.

Example, is 3627 divisible by 9?

The sum of the digits (3 + 6 + 2 + 7) is 18, which is evenly divisible by 9.

BINGO – 3627 is divisible by 9!

Numbers Divisible by 10

A number is divisible by 10 only if the last digit is

zero

___________________________________________________________________

In our hight-tech age, when solving math problems is as easy as pressing the buttons on a calculator, many students haven’t had enough experience working with numbers on their own; thus, they never develop a feel for numbers or a “math sense”.

This becomes an issue as students cross the threshold from high school to college. Many colleges prohibit the use of calculators on their placement exams. A student accustomed to relying on a calculator since the primary grades often forgets the process of long division. In college, this deficit often results in having to take developmental math where they must re-learn all the basic skills by hand in just a 15-week semester – YIKES!

Have your teen review the 4 basic math operations without a calculator, and make sure he/she knows his/her basic math facts cold. This will maximize the chances of placing into a higher math section in college.