From the Publishers of 2e: Twice-Exceptional Newsletter

iPADS TO ENGAGE. A Las Vegas charter school provides each of its students with an iPad to help foster the school''s project-based learning approach, according to the Las Vegas Sun. Teachers seem impressed by the kids' rapid pick-up on the technology, by the engagement the technology seems to bring, and by the opportunity for students to learn at their own pace. The article says, "Students use the iPads to access educational websites and applications as well as electronic textbooks. They use the iPad to take notes and the tablet’s camera to photograph whiteboards filled with teacher’s lessons and chemistry formulas. Some even record lectures using the iPad’s digital voice recorder or video camera, referring to them when they review for tests." Find the article. Separately, a 40-year study of the use of technology in the classroom found a small to moderate positive effect on learning and attitude, according to an article about the study. Read more.

REBUTTAL. The Child Mind Institute carried a rebuttal to a New York Times article extolling the distraction of AD/HD and conflating it with creativity. The rebuttal accused the Times' article's author, who has AD/HD, of romanticizing his childhood, and linked the article to two other recent Times pieces, one on Asperger's and one on dyslexia, which you might have read about in this blog. Read more. Separately, the Child Mind Institute also carried an excerpt from a new book called Pride and Joy; the excerpt takes issue with the "dangers of praise," focusing instead on the ill effects of criticism. Read the excerpt.

THE IEP PROCESS. Need an overview of the IEP process? An attorney provides one at SpecialNeeds.com.

DIY DUE PROCESS. Attorney Dorene Philpot, who has written for 2e: Twice-Exceptional Newsletter and who was involved in the case we described in our article "Fighting for FAPE," has written a book titled Do-It-Yourself Special Education Due Process, published this year by Learning Enabled Publications. According to the publisher, the book offers tips on representing yourself and your child at a due process hearing with a school district. Find out more.

GIFTED EDUCATION PRESS QUARTERLY. The Spring edition of this newsletter is out. In it, Maurice Fisher reviews a book by Joan Franklin Smutny and S.E. von Fremd, Teaching Advanced Learners in the General Education Classroom: Doing More with Less. Other articles in the newsletter focus on teaching the arts and humanities (to the gifted, of course). Find the newsletter.

SENG WEBINAR. Paul Beljan will present a webinar (SENG calls it a SENGinar) titled"Giftedness and  Learning Disabilities: Unearthing the Missed Diagnosis." The aim of the event is to empower parents, teachers, and counselors to spot and act on LDs in gifted children. The webinar is to be held during the evening of March 15. Find out more.

AND FINALLY, THIS. A new paper at the Dana Foundation site is called "Musical Creativity and the Brain" and examines what happens during improvisation, covering:

• Creativity and prefrontal cortex function
• Creative processes and underlying brain mechanisms
• Perception and communication of improvised material

The authors also speculate on the future of the neuroscience of artistic creativity. Find the article.

From the Publishers of 2e: Twice-Exceptional Newsletter

TWO ASPIES IN LOVE were featured in a lengthy article in The New York Times this week that examined the complexities -- and advantages -- of such a relationship. The writer obviously spent a lot of time with the young people, one of whom is the son of John Elder Robison, author of Look Me In the Eye: My Life with Asperger's. Read more.

ASPERGIRLS is the title of a book by woman who, in her 40s, discovered she was on the spectrum. She interviewed women formally diagnosed with Asperger's to fill "a gap in the literature on females on the spectrum." A Time "Healthland" interview reveals her findings from the interviews and gives a preview of the contents of the book. In the interview the author, Rudy Simone, addresses differences between girls with Asperger's and typical girls; challenges; advantages; possible connections to anorexia or sensory issues; socializing; and support. Find the interview. 

MIDDLE CHILDHOOD. Got a kid between 5 and perhaps 12? You might be interested in an article explaining the physical and mental changes that take place during those years, set in the context of other species and other cultures. An excerpt: "Middle childhood is when the parts of the brain most closely associated with being human finally come online: our ability to control our impulses, to reason, to focus, to plan for the future." Find the article. 

PARENT-CHILD RELATIONSHIPS are important in shaping the relationships that kids have with their peers. According to Time "Healthland, "New research shows that adolescents who quickly backed down during an argument with their mother had a harder time resisting peer pressure to use drugs and alcohol than teens who were able to calmly, persuasively, and persistently argue their point with Mom." Evidently, the right kinds of arguments are beneficial. Read more. 

PREMATURE BIRTH RISKS. A study of babies born three to seven weeks early showed sleep and attention problems in such children by age four. According to a write-up of the study, "Preterm boys suffered more sleep and attention troubles than their full-term peers, but the effect in girls was more dramatic. Preterm girls were significantly more emotionally reactive, depressed and withdrawn than full-term girls, and over all they had about 20 percent more sleep problems, attention problems and aggressive behaviors." Read more. 

WE WISH "HAPPY NEW YEAR" to our friends and subscribers all over the world!

From the Publishers of 2e: Twice-Exceptional Newsletter

A GRAMMY AND AD/HD. About.com, in its AD/HD section, provides an interview with a Grammy Award-winning singer/songwriter who was diagnosed with AD/HD in his early teens.Adam Levine, of Maroon 5, describes  his early difficulties, how AD/HD has affected his adult life, and his advice to kids or teens with AD/HD. Read more.

GIFTED RESOURCE. Thanks to Carolyn K for pointing us to Cogito.org, an online community for gifted kids interested in math and science. Sponsored by the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth, the site features interviews, news, forums, links to sites and tools, and extracurricular programs. Go to the site. 

DAVID RABINER pointed us to a free download from ADDitude, titled "40 School Accommodations for Your ADD/LD Child." If your gifted young person is of the AD/HD persuasion, check it out.

UNWRAPPING THE GIFTED. Tamara Fisher writes about using Symbaloo in gifted education. Symbaloo, she says, is "a place where you can collect a plethora of links on various topics and organize them however you want."  She has created one containing resources for her gifted students to use then they do projects. Find out more.

THE WEINFELD EDUCATION GROUP has created a blog on topics related to its areas of expertise. The first posting is by Russell Barkley and titled "Understanding AD/HD -- Part 1." Find it.

PREDICTOR OF MATH LD. Young children who cannot associate small quantities with the numerals that represent those quantities are more likely to develop math LDs, according to a new study. The study also identified other predictors of later math difficulty. Dyscalculia in your family? Check out the study.

THE DANA FOUNDATION has posted two new articles on its website. One provides evidence about how childhood trauma -- physical or sexual abuse -- leads to later psychopathology; read it. The other provides a tutorial on brain imaging technologies and  how they are used in neuroscience; it looks like a must-read for all neuroscience mavens. Find it. 

SHARP BRAINS has posted articles on the impact of stress, emotion, and self-regulation on the structure and performance of the brain. Find them. 

TESTING AD/HD DRUGS. Researchers used used brain scans on mice to determine whether treatment drugs increased dopamine levels in the brain, and thus would be effective. The study concerned a type of attention deficit caused by "neurofibromatosis type 1" -- NF1 -- which affects about 100,000 people in the U.S., according to Science Daily. Find out more.

NOT TO LATE TO GET IRATE. If you live in the U.S., you may -- once again and maybe for the last time ever -- attempt to block legislative attempts to scuttle the Javits Act, which is, according to CEC, "the sole Federal investment in gifted education." Seems that the Javits Act is one of 43 programs deemed "inefficient and unnecessary." CEC has more.

From the Publishers of 2e: Twice-Exceptional Newsletter

PORTLAND SCHOOL FOR BEHAVIORAL ISSUES. A school in Portland, Oregon, is often an interim stop for K-12 students who have behavioral problems that may include AD/HD or ODD. The school's goal is to reintegrate its clients with mainstream schools, but some students stay until graduation from high school. Some of the students at the school are at the AP and honors level academically. Read more. 

DYSLEXIA AND JAPANESE. Some students with dyslexia do much better writing in Japanese or Chinese than they do in their native English. In Japanese and Chinese, according to an article on the topic, "characters represent complete words or ideas," as opposed to languages like English, "which use separate letters and sounds to form words."  Evidently dyslexics use different parts of their brains when reading in Japanese than in English. Find out more.

WAS YOUR KID A LATE TALKER? No worries, according to a study published in Pediatrics. Even if issues were present at age 2, the children in the study appeared not to be at increased risk for AD/HD or other issues as they grew up. As many as 18 percent of children are apparently late talkers. Read more.

THE ENVIRONMENT AND AUTISM. A newly-published study indicates that some environmental factors might be at least as important as genetic factors in the development of autism. The twin-based study included kids with Asperger's as well as "classic" autism. Some of the environmental factors -- which were not specifically listed -- occur prenatally. Read about the study.

NEW GIFTED SCHOOL IN ARIZONA. Arizona State University will open an on-campus school for gifted students who have completed at least a sixth-grade curriculum. Herberger Academy will accept up to 40 students per year for "an accelerated, five-year program that is not for the faint of heart." Find out more.

From the Publishers of 2e: Twice-Exceptional Newsletter

ASSISTIVE TECHNOLOGY BLOG. A gifted young man who has dyslexia has established a blog to inform others about technology which may assist in reading and writing. Included are reviews of hardware and software. Begun last week, the blog already has 18 informative posts. Check it out. 

EXERCISE AND ADDERALL -- those are the two things that 674 people at CureTogether say are most popular and most effective as treatments. Apparently least effective for this group: Strattera and Wellbutrin. Find the report. CureTogether is a site where patients with any of 500 conditions may share with others information on their particular condition and treatment.

2e RESOURCES. The Lang School has posted on Facebook a list of resources for those in the 2e community. Check it out to see if they offer resources you might find useful.(Thanks, Micaela!)

SHOULD YOU SCREEN YOUR TODDLER FOR AUTISM? A new report suggests a couple downsides to early screening. The tests might not  be that accurate, for starters. And they apparently may lead to false positives up to 25 percent of the time, leading parents to believe their child has autism when that's not the case. Read more.

BOOKS AND BOYS. Reading is good for boys, in the sense that it can help develop reading skills, an area where boys may lag girls. But reading may not be perceived as "cool," according to an article in the Chicago Tribune, and may compete poorly with other activities more favored by boys, especially during the summer. The article offers ways to encourage summertime reading by boys. Find the article.

THE LEAD SAYS IT ALL: "Some 2 million Americans adolescents experienced a bout of major depression last year, but only about a third of them got any help in dealing with the sadness, irritability,  anxiety, guilt and loss of interest and energy that are the hallmarks of such episodes, a report says." If you have a teen at risk for depression, read the article.

SUMMERTIME BOREDOM can be an opportunity for creativity, says the author of a book on "dialed-down parenting" who recommends that a child's life be one-third busy time, one-third creative time, and one-third down-time. The author suggests that allowing a child to "dwell in the Land of What-to-Do" will soon result in self-generated, imaginative activity. Seems that this advice should surely apply to those gifted kids you know.  Read more.

EIDE BLOG POST REVISTED. A printout of an Eide Neurolearning Blog posting from January of 2009 somehow resurfaced on our desk, and it's titled in part "A Brain-based Framework for Understanding Twice Exceptional People." The post covers general characteristics of 2e students (intellectual strengths and deficits, along with social-emotional concerns), notes familial influences on the development of 2e traits, and points to research on asynchronous development (eg in prefrontal cortical thickness) in high-IQ youngsters. Read this blog post.

AND FINALLY, THIS. The U.S. government has released figures on the cost of raising a child from birth to age 18. A child born in 2010 to a middle-income family will cost $226,920 -- and that's without college. Expenses vary by geographic region, family type, and family income. And how might the child-rearing budget be different for families in the 2e community? Think "medications," "counseling," "private schools," and so forth; you know the affected household budget categories. Read more; if  you're interested in the details, find the government report.

From the Publishers of 2e: Twice-Exceptional Newsletter

ATTORNEY/ADVOCATE MATT COHEN recently posted a rather impassioned plea for -- well, lots of change in the way we educate our children and in the ways we treat learning challenges. Cohen, a special ed attorney who has written for 2e: Twice-Exceptional Newsletter, begins with five examples of how "different" kids could -- and should -- have been served better at school. The examples range from dealing with bullying to acknowledging that a bright kid with Asperger's might need some help; each example is drawn from a client served by Cohen. The attorney then begins a litany of "we must's" that represent his imperatives for improving the educational system for all involved. If you're concerned with educational reform -- or just with good education -- read Cohen's blog posting from May 14. (A bonus: His preceding post is titled "Myths, Legends and Realities -- Legal Rights of Kids with AD/HD at School.")

OPTOGENETICS is a technology that combines light and genetic engineering to allow the control of selected neurons. By changing cells in a particular neural circuit to be sensitive to light, and then implanting optical fibers to stimulate those cells, scientists were able to make anxious mice behave in a less anxious manner. One of the researchers discussed the specificity of the treatment, compared to flooding the brain with psychotropics: “Psychiatric disorders are probably not due only to chemical imbalances in the brain. It’s more than just a giant bag of serotonin or dopamine whose concentrations sometimes are too low or too high. Rather, they likely involve disorders of specific circuits within specific brain regions.” The technology is seen as a way to investigate -- and, eventually, to treat -- a variety of mental problems. Read more.

COMPETITIONS. The winners of the 2011 Siemens "We Can Change the World" competition have been announced. Go to the competition website to see what kind of environmental solutions competition entrants from high school, middle school, and elementary school came up with.

ARE YOU HAPPY? Is your child happy? Psychologist/author Martin Seligman's book "Flourish" defines five crucial elements of well-being: positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning, and accomplishment. Seligman has consistently urged his colleagues to focus on more than mental illness; this book is one result of his belief in "positive psychology." Find an interesting article about Seligman's ideas.

ARE YOU DEPRESSED, MOM? Successfully treating depression in mothers benefits her children as well. According to a Wall Street Journal article, about half of kids whose mothers are depressed will develop depression. The article quoted a Pediatrics study: "As early as two months of age, the infant looks at the depressed mother less often, shows less engagement with objects [and] has a lower activity level." Researchers are looking into the link between depression in fathers and kids as well. Read the article. 

GENETIC PATTERNS VERSUS DIAGNOSTIC SYSTEMS. Sometimes they don't coincide -- that's the suggestion in a Scientific American article on using  CNVs (copy number variations), deletions or repetitions of stretches of DNA on chromosomes. For example, it turns out that people with one particular CNV deletion may be diagnosed with schizophrenia, autism, or AD/HD. The author's contention: "...it may be that these diagnostic categories are just describing particular symptoms of certain genetic disorders." Read more.

AD/HD DRUGS may present no risk for heart problems in kids, according to a study reported in HealthDay. Find it.

AND FINALLY, THIS, today's story from Storypeople.com: "There are lives I can imagine without children but none of them have the same laughter & noise."

Lots of good items today...

STEPHEN HAWKING ON DISABILITY. Scientist/cosmologist Stephen Hawking was profiled and interviewed in Wednesday's New York Times. In the interview, Hawking, who has Lou Gehrig's disease and communicates using a computer-generated voice, covered his daily life, his condition, his works, and -- most interesting to us -- his advice on disability. He said, "My advice to other disabled people would be, concentrate on things your disability doesn’t prevent you doing well, and don’t regret the things it interferes with." Find the article.

2e-FRIENDLY SCHOOL IN CONNECTICUT? A member of the 2e community who is moving her family to Connecticut is looking for a 2e-friendly school there for her 6YO son. If you can help, please sign up at the 2e Newsletter Network on Ning.com (http://2enewsletter.ning.com/?xgi=5fRjVktrpoYhb5) and respond to her query in the Forum, or else contact us directly to relay your referral. Thanks!

MATT COHEN ONLINE. Special ed attorney Matt Cohen, who has contributed to 2e: Twice-Exceptional Newsletter, offers a column of legal advice at LDOnline.org. In May's column he covers a number of issues of interest to parents of 2e kids, among them: how schools are required to use peer-reviewed, scientifically-based programs, when possible, to help students; whether a school can deny an IEP because of academic success; the assumption that colleges are required to comply with 504 plans; whether a school counselor may suggest medication; and the extent to which a school must accept an evaluation from an independent professional. Find the column.

WRIGHTSLAW. On the  topic of education law, in the current issue of Special Ed Advocate, the Wrights comment on Compton v. Addison, where a school allegedly failed to evaluate a student for disabilities and is being sued for negligence. They also cover the Child Find Mandate, meant to identify children who might need special ed services. Find the issue.

MOMS WITH AD/HD was the topic of a recent NPR program. NPR interviewed the writer and the subject of a recent Washington Post article on the topic. Read about the mom's discovery of AD/HD and what it means to her and her family (which includes an AD/HD son).

NCLB AND GIFTED CHILDREN. Education Next discussed the issue of whether gifted kids in the U.S. have been shortchanged by NCLB. Members of the discussion noted, among other things, that top-performing 17-year-olds in the U.S. perform no better now than 20 years ago, and that the U.S. is 41st out of 56 participating countries in one measure of advanced mathematical achievement. Find the discussion.

BIOMARKER FOR MAJOR DEPRESSION. A study by scientists at Wayne State University has revealed a new way to distinguish children with major depressive disorder (MDD) from not only normal children, but also from children with obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD).The study found different patterns of cortical thickness for patients with MDD versus OCD. Researchers call the results "an exciting new way to identify more objective markers of psychiatric illness in children." Read an abstract of the journal article announcing the study. Read an article based on the press release by Wayne State. Separately, an Oxford University study of depression finds that "overgeneral memory" -- where past events are recalled in an overly broad manner -- is linked to depression. Studies are underway to determine whether overgeneral memory in teens foretells later depression. Read about it.

PAYING ATTENTION TO THE SCREEN. Parents of twice-exceptional children often notice that many kids are able to pay tremendous amounts of sustained attention to those glowing screens. A recent article on the topic explains a variety of views on why this might be so -- video games as self-medication; video as an ameliorative for poor social skills, etc. Read more.

THE BEST BOOKS MONEY CAN BUY. The American Coal Foundation got caught spreading its "clean" view of coal to school kids by paying Scholastic Corporation to write materials for 4th-graders called "United States of Energy." Three advocacy groups took note of how the materials seemed to fail to mention the negative effects of coal and are drawing attention to the collaboration between Scholastic and the foundation. The larger issue is, how many "educational" materials produced and distributed to students are similarly biased. Read more.

AND FINALLY, THIS. If your 16-year-old kid's only out-of-school activity is reading books, know that your child has a better than average chance of becoming a manager or professional later in life, according to an Oxford University study. No other studied activities had such a correlation. Reassuringly, however, the study also found that computer gaming did not decrease a child's chances for later managerial or professional status. Read about the study.