NCLD: 10 Helpful Dyslexia Resources

NCLD offer a number of dyslexia resources at LD.org, but where else can you seek reliable assistance and information about dyslexia?

The following resources will help you learn more about dyslexia and find local help.

You can also use NCLD’s Resource Locator to find programs in your local area. Click on the image to be directed to the NCLD Website.

Online Learning: Regular demands on attention and memory needed

Somewhere between the traditional classroom and old fashion home schooling, online learning has emerged as the dominant educational resource.

Skyrocketing tuition fees, particularly at the college level, has sped the inevitable migration to online accreditation.

While the benefits are obvious, the loss of those seamless instances of micro-feedback between student and teacher makes attention the primary casualty of its rapid adoption.

Efforts to bridge this gap and reduce mind wandering among online students are underway at Harvard University, an institution well poised to be a leader in providing online content.

A new study in PNAS from their psychology department gives one possible solution to the problem. By making attentional demands in the form of brief quizzes on 5-minute intervals, student performance in online courses can be significantly improved.

Even the most highly motivated student still battles the constant urge to search or click on a link to learn more—or less as the case may be.

Undoubtedly striking the right balance between freedom and oversight is the central challenge to giving students mastery over a given body of knowledge.

Various models have emerged that have garnered massive worldwide enrollment.

Free courses at edX.org, coursera.org, 2u.com, Udacity.com have all been highly successful.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the call for help in maintaining selective attention in the absence of the normal controllers has come from the students themselves.

Noval Khan
Schacter Memory Lab

The approach taken by the new Harvard study is based on what they call interpolated memory.

It is based upon the idea of interpolating the coursework or task with short memory tasks.

Students were given a 21-minute statistics video lecture which was segmented into four periods, each followed up with a 2-minute testing period.

The testing period involved brief review, testing, and even unrelated arithmetic. The perhaps predictable results were that students given the additional retesting at each segment, did much better on cumulative testing done after the lecture.

This formalisation of the obvious was corroborated by the student self-assessment in which they invariably reported reduced periods of mind wandering.

The study adds rigor to the idea that replacing a human lecturer with a human on a screen can work, provided appropriate considerations for the learning process are taken.

A useful analogy might be to consider running on a field compared to running on a treadmill. On your own on the field, you can control your speed at every step, and go in a any direction you choose.

On a treadmill your pace is set for you. The best performance seems to be somewhere in between, as on a track.

Here the goal is set, the student has some freedoms in getting there at their own pace, but is guided at every turn.

More information: 
Interpolated memory tests reduce mind wandering and improve learning of online lectures, PNAS, Published online before print April 1, 2013, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1221764110

Dyslexia: Helpful Support Resources

The following resources will help you learn more about dyslexia and find local help. 

You can also use NCLD’s Resource Locator to find programs in your local area.

Bookshare: Bookshare is an accessible online library for people with dyslexia and other disabilities. Over 160,000 titles are available, and membership is free for students.

DyslexiaHelp at the University of Michigan: DyslexiaHelp is designed to help you understand and learn about dyslexia and language disability. 

Visit their site for a wealth of information for individuals with dyslexia, parents, and professionals. 

If you’ve ever wondered about celebrities who have dyslexia, be sure to check out their “Dyslexia Success Stories” section.

Dyslexia on KidsHealth and Dyslexia on TeensHealth: Are you a parent or educator looking for age-appropriate materials on dyslexia? 

These articles offer the basics of dyslexia, tailored for the reading and developmental level of kids and teens.

Eye to Eye: Eye to Eye is a “mentoring movement for different thinkers,” providing mentoring programs to students identified with learning disabilities such as dyslexia and AD/HD. 

Visit their site to learn more about their program and find out how to get involved. 

International Dyslexia Association: The International Dyslexia Association (IDA) is a national non-profit dedicated to helping individuals with dyslexia, their families, and the communities that support them. 

Visit their site to connect with a local branch near you, find IDA-member providers in your area, and learn more about dyslexia.

Learning Ally: Learning Ally, formerly known as Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic, offers more than 75,000 digitally recorded audiobooks (including both textbooks and literary titles).

Parent Center Network-Parent Center Listing: If you are the parent of a K-12 student with dyslexia, you’ll want to take a look at this site and find your nearest Parent Training and Information Center (PTI). 

PTIs are funded by the federal government and offer parents assistance in navigating special education and their child’s rights under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).

The Big Picture: Rethinking Dyslexia (film): The website of the new film “The Big Picture: Rethinking Dyslexia” (scheduled for a television premiere in October 2012), offers video clips from the film, ways to take action to support people with dyslexia, and offers uplifting advice for students with dyslexia and their parents.

The Yale Center for Dyslexia and Creativity: Yale University’s Center for Dyslexia and Creativity seeks to illuminate the strengths of those with dyslexia, disseminate information, practical advice, and the latest innovations from scientific research, and transform the lives of children and adults with dyslexia. 

Visit their site to learn more about their cutting edge research and get concrete tips for parents, educators, and individuals with dyslexia.

Dyslexia: Planning for Success

Click on the Picture to see the video!

This is a very interesting video but it is accompanied by extremely annoying and un-necessary music.

Gifted Children: Fighting for resources

Wrightslaw.com has built a page of resources and information about “twice exceptional” children - kids who are gifted but also have a disability.

Look at this page - you may find help: http://www.wrightslaw.com/info/2e.index.htm

In most cases, gifted children sit in classes, bored and frustrated, with no educational services to meet their needs. You need to locate and provide enrichment activities for these children.