We are currently looking for additional instructors for PHP, JavaScript, and our Database Driven Websites classes to help supplement the demand for these classes.  We are looking for instructors with some teaching experience, and hands on knowledge in these areas. 

If you are interested, please contact Inita Lyon at ilyon@aoce.utah.edu with your resume.  Please mention the specific class (or classes) you would like to teach, and your experience in these areas.  Be sure you also check out our main website at http://continue.utah.edu/edtech/ to learn more about our department and the classes we offer. 

Thanks everyone!

The news is all a buzz with the needs of families with Autism, the treatments that work or don’t work, the quacks and celebrities that offer their opinions based on anecdotal evidence and fudged research, and the tools that are available for autistic children.  All these articles do is outline the scope of the problem, blow it a little out of proportion, and even mislead us into thinking what solutions there are.  Ultimately, we come to the same conclusion:  we as families working with Autism don’t have the resources to be effective. 

What do I mean?  I mean that though there are sources for autistic treatment that has proven to work time and time again, those sources are expensive and/or unavailable.  Don’t get me wrong, the services that most public and private entities are generally top notch, and work well with our children when they have them.  But they can’t work with our autistic children 24/7, and as such they just can’t be as effective as they could become.

Also, most parents who have recently had their child diagnosed with autism immediately seem to want to find "the cure", the one thing that will make their child become "normal", and as such not need special attention.  They expect their child to learn from imitation as they did, instead of through direct instruction.  It’s frustrating for anyone to try to teach people in a method that is different than there own, which is why working with autistic children in a learning environment can be very taxing. 

So what is the solution?  We have the resources in raw form, but the supply and demand process is not working, because the resources are too expensive for many families and Autism is becoming more prevalent.  We need something that will provide both more resources and help parents and care-givers understand what needs to be done. 

The answer:  provide educational resources for parents and care-givers of autistic children.  These resources can be in the form of specific exercises to take their children trough, computer programs that can engage the child while still teach them useful tools, and a support center that can answer questions and make sure the family is continuing on the right track. 

The best way I can see to distribute this out would be to provide online courses for parents to participate in, engaging parents, caregivers, and children in such a way that they understand what they are doing, and why.  This method should be attainable, assuming the learning methods are soundly rooted in combined auditory and visual methods. 

It’s a lot to ask, but I think it can be done.  There are a lot of tools that are out there already, floating around and separate.  By focusing our efforts and combining these tools into a single course method, I think it’s possible to provide parents with the help they need. 

Unfortunately, I don’t think I’m qualified to provide the materials personally, as I don’t have the necessary qualifications for autism counseling (yet), but it would be nice if our government took this under their wing and helped parents to help themselves.  It would be a heck of a lot cheaper than the alternative that continuously gets thrown around.  

This morning while going through the morning routine, I came across several news articles talking about communication applications for the iPhone and iPod Touch.  Proloquo2go was the app being featured, but each article spoke vaguely regarding the quiet applications that provide a benefit to those with disabilities. 

I started to think about how the truth in that statement.  Sure, we have all heard of the applications that help students lives on a college campus, help people get around town, or the games that can be played.  And I’m sure the application sales will reflect that the real market for apps on the iPhone and iPod Touch are these areas, but there is such a wealth of other applications that fill real needs in peoples lives, rather than just wants. 

For instance, there are a ton of learning and education applications.  Each application does one thing, and does it well.  You can learn another language, have reference books at a click of a button, or have access to a graphing calculator without needing to buy another device for roughly the same price (at least mine was back in the day).  Here I have found several applications for preschoolers, toddlers, and children in school that help them learn and develop in fun and engaging ways.  Some are even well adapted for several learning styles, and can be used by autistic children.  For me, at least, it alone makes the purchase of an iPod Touch worth the price. 

So, while the news is only catching up with what I’ve already posted in the past, it’s refreshing to see the platform and those developers out there get recognition for the fine and important work that they do.  Sure, applications like iConverse or Proloquo2go will not have the downloads that Sound Grenade had, but I can guarantee that the applications will be used more often and longer than those little annoying apps that work once for a reaction and then are never used again. 

My thanks to all those out there who wish to use the iPhone and iPod Touch as a tool to help those with Autism show just how special and unique they are.  You are invaluable to our community, and the community of iPhone Developers.

A while ago I was contacted by an educator that was looking for good applications on the iPhone for their autistic child.  They noticed that their autistic child will play with the games their other children play, but wondered at other applications that they could find for their child that would keep their interest. 

Well, I have mentioned both iConverse and Proloquo2go before, and both are fantastic communication assistance tools, but that is just for communication.  There are a number of other tools that can be just as useful for autistic children in learning how to read and write.  Here are a few that I have found very useful:

Memory Pro (free):  Memory games are fantastic because they focus on recall and memory retention.  All children should work at memory games, and autistic children are no acception.  The one drawback of this game is the attention required to play can be a bit much for an autistic child, or at least for my 4 year old. 

First Words Sampler (free):  My son loves this game!  You are given some words and a picture, and need to match the letters to the letters in the word.  You don’t have to match them in the word order, because the word is spelled out and each letter is expanded while it is read, and then the word is read.  This is perfect for autistic children because of the combination of auditory and visual interaction reinforce learning.  My son sat literally still for an hour playing this game with the same 6 words over and over again.  This is a winner by far.

iWriteWords Lite (free):  iWriteWords app is a letter writing game.  Here children follow the numbers to write the letter, with visual and auditory interaction at the end of the process.  It’s great for practicing writing letters, which my son does very well (surprising even his preschool teachers).  He does get a little frustrated with the need to follow the numbers to create the word, instead of writing in his own way and direction.  Still, he will play with this app through at least 4 words.  It’s a great app as far as I’m concerned.

I Hear Ewe (free):  This app is great for picture and sound association, another skill important to learn for autistic children.  My son doesn’t spend a lot of time in this app, though my nephew, who is not autistic, loves it.

TT Shapes (free for now):  This app was free when I downloaded it as a special offer, but will most likely become a $0.99 app soon.  Basically, the child clicks on the shape they are asked to select.  The shape to click on is both written out, and spoken, so they can learn the word and the sound of the word.  But writing is auditory, as is the spoken word, so it may take a lot of hand-holding to play this game.  My son will play it, but is more likely to select shapes in a pattern than any one specific shape requested.  Still, it’s a pretty nice game if you want to play with your child. 

Hatch! (free):  My son hasn’t played this game yet, because I just found it today, but it looks really cool!  Developed by a parent wishing to find some way to get their child to stay occupied at the grocery store, the app was born.  Ideal for any toddler, they just tap the screen to get it to hatch, and a random friend is "born".  It’s a bit of fun that will keep them entertained, because the "friend" changes at each tap.  I played with it for a good 10 minutes, and didn’t see a repeat "friend". 

So, those are the apps that I currently have chosen for my son.  On top of this, I would like to mention that iConverse now has an option to set custom pictures and phrases which use an internal text to speech engine included with the app.  Where I didn’t think it was initially worth the $3.99 we paid for it (on special offer), I now think it’s worth a lot more than the $9.99 at which it is currently listed.  I would recommend iConverse for parents that want to set up a custom phrase list to augment speech learning, and use Proloquo2go if you need a fully fleshed-out communications suite. 

Recently I have been looking at various trainer and instructional design positions to get a good view of what the Industry is looking for, and how we as a Continuing Education department could help meet those needs.  One program that kept coming up is Captivate.

Captivate, for those of you who are not familiar with the program, is a process and training development tool from Adobe.  It will make Flash videos from processes and provide a number of plugins, such as SCORM, so that these processes can be in turn graded and developed in that manner.  I haven’t had any previous experience with Captivate in the past, and as such this new process is new to me.  Also, Captivate is not currently available for the Mac, which makes learning in a Virtual Machine all the more difficult. 

So why bother?  Well, for one, I can make a better looking test for my classes, and have the results plug directly into a WebCT or Moodle course.  I can also provide additional training that I don’t have time to cover in class.  All in all, it’s a great method for professional looking presentations that are self-paced.  Anyway, there is a chance that Captivate could be released for the Mac soon, and it will be interesting to see how it will be implemented. 

So how am I learning Captivate?  There is a Captivating video podcast that provides some great instruction on Captivate and using it in a classroom setting.  To date I know how to create a video demo and training process with Captivate, and I’m looking forward to the Editing episodes.

My son is currently trying to learn how to write his name.  He is excited about this, because I have been trying to help him write his name since he was 2, and now he has the chance to show his teachers what he can do.

There are two things to keep in mind when teaching an autistic children:  

1. Autistic children need to have the steps broken down for them.
2. Autistic children need to have both auditory and visual stimulation to keep their attention.

For the steps, this may seem easier than it really is.  For writing, you need to include “Touch the paper” as the first step, then down for a line, up for a line, over for a horizontal line, and so forth.  It can be pretty involved, but it’s the same steps that you should be using for any pre-schooler.  The result is a step by step instruction manual for writing the alphabet.  

For auditory and visual stimulation, just saying the letter as it’s written has worked for my son.  His preschool will say the steps as they write, but I would rather he identify the letter with the visual queue.  For me, it just makes more sense.  

Of course a really neat tool that could be used to teach children how to write with their fingers would be, say, an iPhone app that would give you a letter to write, tell you the steps as the letter is written in front of you, and let you trace your finger as it writes.  This would be a huge SCORM module for the iPhone (if the iPhone supported Flash of course), and could help teachers evaluate preschoolers in general.  Hm.  Something to work on, I suppose.  ^_^

For now, I find using a whiteboard easel (available at IKEA) works for my son, as he can write his name and then draw other things on it.  We have also used a Magna-Doodle, crayons and paper, and finally sidewalk chalk.  The medium doesn’t matter, it’s the motion and the sound that helps the autistic child learn.

So now while he’s able to write some letters, I want to help him understand that they are related and have specific sounds.  This is going to be really hard, because sounding out letters is primarily auditory.  Perhaps if I add some finger gestures with each sound…  I’ll post what I find.  

So for those of you with autistic preschoolers and were wondering how to reach them with writing, give the above a try.  A huge thanks to my son’s preschool teachers for their help and insight!

A lot of people are afraid and confused with autistic children.  Why?  Because their learning process is very different from the traditional methods. How so?  That’s outlined by this research done at the Yale Child Study Center.

Children traditionally learn through imitation.  They track adult movement, and try to duplicate it.  As such, children are able to learn without a lot of formal instruction or clear descriptions of how a process should proceed.  It’s actually very convenient for parents, because outside of trying to explain complex situations, children pretty much learn their social interactions on their own.  

But that isn’t true with autistic children.  Instead of tracking and imitating a process, they are more interested with audio-visual stimulation, such as a sound that accompanies a movement.  By circumventing the traditional or typical learning method for social interaction, they become less social and less verbal.  Think of it as looking at an animation.  Autistic children do not find excitement with a movement that is not accompanied by sound, and so they need both the sound and the action to have their attention captured. 

So what is a parent to do with an autistic child?  They need to teach the child how to interact in the world socially, and that means working at skills that most children learn through imitation.  

Communication is a big step, requiring the parent and care-giver to use alternative methods of communication, such as picture exchanges or sign language.  By adding a tactile action to a verbal communication, autistic children can better pick up the communication skill.  

Another is social interaction, like eye contact.  Here you need to add an action to a verbal request.  I’ve found that tickling my son helps by drawing his attention, and then I will put my face up close to his, touch his nose, and look him in the eye.  He then eventually started to keep eye contact with me, expecting the same action to happen again.  It worked well for my son, and something similar may help your child.  

And finally, writing.  While some children can just start to duplicate the writing method by watching a parent, in order to reach your autistic child you need to explain the process of writing to them, or say the letter while helping them write.  My son does well with the letter names, though his Preschool teacher suggested that we try using the same description method that they use, for continuity.  Both ways my son is learning to write his name, and is already starting to learn how to spell.  

The best part of the article I read regarding this study was the last phrase: 

“There is nothing in our research that in any way conveys a sense that children [with autism] are any less human, any less deserving of our love and respect, or any less of anything at all. It is that the way they seem to learn about this world is rather different than the strategies used by their peers. By better understanding how they do this, the better we will be able to reach them, and like in any personal relationship, the better they will be able to reach us. … Their different perspective might give us solutions that others, with the typical mind and brain, might never see.”

This is too true!  Autistic children are not stupid because they don’t learn the same way other children do.  They are not creatures, subhuman beings that should be approached with fear.  They are people, just like everyone else, but people that learn differently.  It’s more work to teach an autistic child, but it’s also a lot more fun!

Thus far on my blog I have spent a lot of time analyzing and debating the cause of Autism, the effects, and the research behind them.  This is all fascinating and fun to talk about (at least I hope so, it is for me), but parents out there that find out their child is Autistic are probably screaming:  So what!!  It doesn’t change the now, and my child is in need of help.  What can I do as a parent to help my autistic child?

I’ve often asked myself this while searching for something that would help my son.  The problem with searching for help for an autistic child is that the spectrum is so wide, it’s hard to find something effective for all.  For that reason, I’m going to qualify the steps that we have outlined in conjunction with my son’s Preschool:  My son is very high functioning, but not verbal (yet very vocal!).  So here is what I would recommend for any parent with an autistic child: 

1. Have Your Child Evaluated:  Chances are you have had your child evaluated, which is how you know that your child has autism.  Remember that while it’s possible to recognize one or two behaviors that are “autistic”, there are a number of different conditions and syndromes that are very similar to Autism.  It’s best if you have your child evaluated by a psychologist that works specifically with children with disabilities.  They are educated and trained to recognize the different spectrums and syndromes, and will be able to make a clinical diagnosis.  
2. Contact Your Public School District:  Chances are your school district will have at least information on autism services, if they do not offer them.  More often than not, they do offer services, both at the Preschool and K-12 levels.  And before you start going off about how public schools fail our children, most public schools have Special Education teachers that became special ed teachers for a reason:  a member of their family has special needs.  That generally means they are determined to make a difference for special education students.  No, you generally will not find the Football coach teaching Special Ed, so your child’s teacher will not be distracted by seasonal events.  
3. Have A Special Education Team Evaluate Your Child:  Most Special Education teams that I am aware of include the Special Education teacher, a Speech and Language specialist, an Occupational Therapist, and a General Education  specialist.  They work together to evaluate the progress of their students by setting developmental goals for the student and evaluating their progress.  Our son’s preschool has this team, each of whom want the best for our son.  They work with us to evaluate his goals, so that we not only know what the goals are, but what the process they will take him through is, and what progress we can expect.  
4. Participate In Your Child’s Education:  This is a general rule for all parents.  Our education system is broken, but not because of teachers.  For the most part, it is because of parents who would rather have someone else worry about their child’s education than take that responsibility.  
   Well, guess what:  As a parent of a special needs child, your responsibility just doubled.  Children with special needs, like Autism, are NOT A WASTE OF RESOURCES!  it angers me when I hear parents complain, and some educators or legislators complain about the money it takes to help an autistic child succeed.  Autism does not make a child dumb, stupid, or instantly resign them to a life of street sweeping.  Autism just means that the child learns differently.  You need to cater to the child’s learning process, so that they can succeed.  Get involved, learn what the teachers are doing, and how to continue that learning environment at home.  

Those are the things that I would recommend to any parent that has learned they have an autistic child and wants to know what to do next.  No, magic cures do not exist.  Don’t expect autism to just go away, and don’t just look from one day to the next even though it’s often the simplest thing to do after a long bout of meltdowns and tantrums.  It is your responsibility as a parent to look forward in regards to your child’s development.

For the past couple of weeks I have been working on and off on a project to deploy Final Cut Pro in a fresh install for our Macintosh lab.  Previous to this the process was to image the machines and then install Final Cut Pro through a script.  Then on each machine I would need to enter in a site license for the software.  This took a lot of time, usually two days for a sizable class of 8 or so.  And, it didn’t give me a huge margin of error either.  

At first I wanted to do something with NetBoot, because it makes it so easy.  Just set the NetInstall image as the default image on the server, and then deploy by booting the system off the NetInstall image.  it’s really easy to set up, really easy for anyone to deploy.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t handle large images very well.  And when I say large images, I mean large images over 38 GB.  I had often wondered why, until I took the Mac OS X Deployment class, and found out that NetBoot uses a unicast method of installing, which is very inefficient.  It actually surprised me that was the case.  

The only other option that was even remotely feasible would be to use a multicast ASR server.  Every Macintosh (either server or client install) supports the server aspect of this project, so it’s very easy to deploy.  The only drawback:  It requires understanding of the command line.  Here is the process I took in order to get Final Cut Pro installed. 

Problems:  

1. Fresh Install of Mac OS X 10.5 with all necessary updates
2. Fresh installation of Final Cut Pro, Motion, Color, and Compressor (these are the Pro classes we offer here in Edtech).  
3. Practice files for the class.
4. License key already included. 
5. An administrator and a student account setup and ready to go.

I began the project by going through the Modular system image creation process.  In this process, you use a sparse image to install your OS and software, place your necessary files, and manipulate any configuration needed for the final deployment.  This is ideal for initial OS setups and system images.  So I installed the OS from a disk image of the install DVD with the following command: 

sudo installer -pkg /Volumes/Mac\ OS\ X\ Install\ DVD/System/Installation/Packages/OSInstall.pkg -target /Volumes/MacintoshHD/ -verbose

Now, I could have added a reference to an XML file that would have removed all unnecessary installations (like printer drivers), but the default install was good enough for the project and hand.  In this case, the MacintoshHD drive is actually an external FireWire drive.  I could also have done this on a machine in Target Disk Mode, but I thought this would  be sufficient, and it saved a lot of time, actually.  

Once completed, I installed the updates.  To find out what I needed, I actually booted up a machine with this default install and ran Software Update, which gave me the names of the packages.  I then downloaded the disk images, moved them to my machine, mounted the images, and installed with a command like this: 

sudo installer -pkg /Volumes/Mac\ OS\ X\ Update\ Combined/MacOSXUpdCombo10.5.6.pkg -target /Volumes/MacintoshHD/ -verbose

I kept the verbose switch on just so that I could see when it was done and judge when I needed the next update.  When I got to the Quicktime update, I ran into a problem:  You can’t update Quicktime to 7.6 on an non-booted system disk.  That through a wrench into the whole “modular image” process.  Not to worry though, it didn’t set back my image creation.  

Once I finished with all the updates that I needed, I then booted off of the FireWire drive and created my users in the directory.  I began with the admin account, which I used to install the remaining updates and Final Cut Pro and Motion Content from their respective disk images.  The installation let me enter in my site license for Final Cut Studio, and saved me a lot of time on each machine.  I than ran updates for The Pro Apps, which took only a couple more updates to finish.  Once done, I created my Student account with the standard login, and rebooted back into my regular computer. 

Note:  Do not try Final Cut Pro at this stage!  It will create the scratch disk with your UUID, which will make it unusable for any other machine after imaged! I found this out the hard way.

So now I have a system that is completely imaged, has the users created and ready to go, and has not launched Final Cut Pro quite yet.  Now I need to create my disk image that I’m going to use for my restore.  This is really easily done in Disk Utility, particularly if you have the image on a FireWire drive.  

Open Disk Utility, and then select the disk volume you created.  Do NOT select the physical drive!  That would result in a larger image than you need, taking up your entire drive.  Want to learn why?  Take the Mac OS X Deployment class.  ^_^  

Once the disk is selected, click on the New Image button at the top.  It will then let you name it (this is just the name of the new image, not the name of the disk), and ask you which type of image you would like.  I named the file ClonedImage.dmg.  The image needs to be Read Only, and Not Encrypted.  If you choose, you can make the image compressed, though it does take a little away from the performance.  I kept it as uncompressed for simplicity’s sake.  Then settle in, this can take a while.  For a 38+ GB image, this can take almost up to an hour (time varies on the machine you use, RAM size, processor speed, etc.).

Once it’s done, click on Disk Utility’s Images menu, and then select Scan Image for Restore.  This can take some more time, though not as much as creating the disk image.  So settle in, have a good book to read or clean out your email.  

Once done, it’s ready for deployment.  Some may suggest that you fix your permissions on the disk before you get to this point.  I’ve not needed to so far, but it is a good practice to adopt.  This would be a case of do as I say, not as I do.  ^_^ 

Now copy your new image to the “Server”.  It can be Mac OS X Server, or a Mac OS X computer.  Either will support the ASR command.  I chose to use a Mac OS X Server that also had NetInstall images for the Macintosh 10.5 Leopard Install DVD.  You will know why in a minute.  I copied the file to the root directory ( / ) for convenience.

Once copied over, boot up the new machine and log in as an Administrator.  Open your Terminal, and create a config.plist file somewhere on the system.  The config.plist file should have at least the following parameters: 

defaults write /Volumes/Backup/Apple/Images/config “Data Rate” -int 6000000
defaults write /Volumes/Backup/Apple/Images/config “Multicast Address” 244.0.0.10 

I put it in the root directory as well for convenience, though you can place it anywhere you can remember it.  Then enter this command: 

sudo asr -server /config.plist -source /ClonedImage.dmg

Press enter, and you should get a notification that your ASR server is ready to begin multicasting.  Once done, you now just need to get to your computers you wish to restore and run the restore image there.  

In this case, I find it simpler to boot off of the Install DVD image.  By making a NetInstall image, it’s easy to do and doesn’t require multiple disks (and the disks don’t walk away unexpectedly).  It also guarantees that your restore system is on the same subnet as your Server, and will have an assigned DHCP address.  Once booted off of the Install DVD, select your language and then click the continue error.  It will ask you if you want to run the install, instead click on the Tools menu, and then select Terminal. 

Now you should only have the Terminal window open.  Here, type the following command to start the restore, assuming your ASR Server has an IP address of 10.1.0.1: 

asr restore -source asr://10.1.0.1 -target /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/ -erase

This command will search for an ASR server at that IP address, and then erase the target drive and restore from that image.  Then let it go!  For my image it took about 5 hours to complete, but just about all the machines completed the restore at almost the same time.  So I could have completed one install or 22 at the same time from the same server, and saw little difference in the time it takes to make the image.  

Now, this is the process I used.  It worked great, and our Compressor class (the guinea pig class for this image) ran just fine.  But what if you don’t have the time, or the confidence to run the command line tools?  You can do roughly the same thing with NetRestore, which is currently no longer in development, or Deploy Studio.  Both of these tools can do the same thing I do here, but have a nice GUI interface and management is simpler.  

So you may ask why I chose to do it the hard way?  Because I love the command line, and I want to be sure I have the process down pat.  After all, unless you understand the process behind the scenes of a GUI tool, what do you do when the GUI tool doesn’t work or has an error?  Where can you troubleshoot the problem?