Multiple Intelligences and Videogames: Intervention Proposal for Learning Disabilities

In recent years, there has been much research into the possibilities offered by digital tools for intervention in learning disabilities. The most recent studies have found that these tools can have positive effects on diverse aspects of learning, such as the acquisition of reading, writing, vocabulary and mathematics, as well as improvement of executive functioning and behavioural control skills. Despite the results showing the positive effects of using digital tools for students with learning disabilities, it remains necessary to widen their use in areas such as identification, assessment and intervention as early as possible. Within the current chapter, the application of the conceptual framework of multiple intelligences to the design of educational video games is proposed to facilitate diagnosis and improve intervention success in cases of learning disability. In this regard, a proposed novel tool is presented that may be used for the evaluation and intervention for students with learning disabilities

State of Play in Western New York: Analysis and Recommendations

This report offers an independent assessment of the state of play for kids and sports in the eight-county region comprising Western New York-Allegany, Cattaraugus, Chautauqua, Erie, Genesee, Niagara, Orleans, and Wyoming counties. It is anchored in the notion that all stakeholders will benefit if all children in the region, regardless of zip code or ability, are provided access to a quality sport experience. The Aspen Institute Sports & Society Program research team produced this State of Play report, analyzing sport programs and facilities in the region through the eight strategic filters ( plays ) highlighted in the Aspen Institute\u27s seminal 2015 report, Sport for All, Play for Life: A Playbook to Get Every Kid in the Game. Supporting Aspen were the Community Foundation for Greater Buffalo, the Ralph C. Wilson, Jr. Foundation, and a task force consisting of youth sport and other leaders from across the regio

Adolescence Program Revision to Include Special Education Dual Certification

Program revised to include special education dual certification

The Effects of Toys, Prompts, and Flotation Devices on the Learning of Water Orientation Skills for Preschoolers with or without Developmental Delays

The work of children is play; and in that work, toys can be used to educate, provide enjoyment and help build the foundation of social skills. One of the guidelines from the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) regarding developmentally appropriate practice is that children learn through interacting with their environment. The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of toys, prompts, and flotation devices on the learning of water orientation skills for preschoolers with or without developmental delays. The 42 participants (ages 3 - 5 yr., male/female) were volunteers from a community preschool aquatics program. They were pre- and posttested with the Water Orientation Skills Checklist - Advanced (WOC-A) developed by Killan, Arena-Ronde, and Bruno (1987). The children were recruited to either the control-19 or intervention- 23 groups. The children received swimming lessons for 4 weeks, 30 minutes twice a week. The control group lessons consisted of demonstration and practice and the intervention group lessons consisted of environmental arrangements enhanced with toys, prompts, and flotation devices. The data were analyzed with the Mann-Whitney U test for nonparametric statistics. The findings demonstrated that with the Mann-Whitney z score of .33 at the .05 level, the toys, prompts, and flotation devices did not significantly enhance the preschoolers\u27 learning of water orientation skills. An important finding, however, is that while the toys, prompts, and flotation devices did not enhance water skills, they also did not hinder the learning of swimming skills, as both groups\u27 mean score of improvement was 11 points

The therapeutic use of videogames within secure forensic settings: a review of the literature and application to practice

Engagement in leisure pursuits that involves the use of tools and objects and the exploration of a new environment can provide a success experience that leads to increased feelings of competence and mastery. Such experiences are considered important in the rehabilitation of forensic clients. The findings from videogame research within a general population are compared with those among mental health and forensic clients. Within the general population, videogames may provide opportunities for social interaction and the expression of creativity and humour as well as offering a graded approach to building computer skills. Within a forensic population, videogames have been found to be a normalising, age-appropriate and culturally appropriate activity, useful in engaging clients and improving self-concept and locus of control. The findings suggest that videogame play offers access to a safe virtual environment that encourages exploration and mastery and that it may be a useful therapeutic tool in secure settings where such opportunities are often limited. The use and potential contraindications of videogames within a forensic setting, the content of certain games and their possible influence on behaviour and the implications for future research are also discussed

Creating an Adaptive In-School Sports Program to Increase Occupational Engagement and Performance in Children with Physical Disabilities: A Resource Manual for Occupational Therapists

Participating in physical activity, including sports programs, has been found to have many positive health benefits both physically and mentally (Moss, Lim, K, Prunty, & Norris, 2020). The purpose of creating adaptive sports programs within schools is to promote engagement in physical activity and achieve the many benefits that sports programs have to offer. Children with and without physical disabilities should have equal access to these benefits for appropriate development. Enabling individuals with physical disabilities to participate in sports can assist in improving their overall quality of life and begin building skills that will benefit them in adulthood

Learning robot policies using a high-level abstraction persona-behaviour simulator

2019 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting /republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other worksCollecting data in Human-Robot Interaction for training learning agents might be a hard task to accomplish. This is especially true when the target users are older adults with dementia since this usually requires hours of interactions and puts quite a lot of workload on the user. This paper addresses the problem of importing the Personas technique from HRI to create fictional patients’ profiles. We propose a Persona-Behaviour Simulator tool that provides, with high-level abstraction, user’s actions during an HRI task, and we apply it to cognitive training exercises for older adults with dementia. It consists of a Persona Definition that characterizes a patient along four dimensions and a Task Engine that provides information regarding the task complexity. We build a simulated environment where the high-level user’s actions are provided by the simulator and the robot initial policy is learned using a Q-learning algorithm. The results show that the current simulator provides a reasonable initial policy for a defined Persona profile. Moreover, the learned robot assistance has proved to be robust to potential changes in the user’s behaviour. In this way, we can speed up the fine-tuning of the rough policy during the real interactions to tailor the assistance to the given user. We believe the presented approach can be easily extended to account for other types of HRI tasks; for example, when input data is required to train a learning algorithm, but data collection is very expensive or unfeasible. We advocate that simulation is a convenient tool in these cases.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Android Mobile Application for Slow Learner Children With Tactile Learning Style

This paper is on android mobile application for slow learner children with tactile learning style. The purpose of this report is to record all the data gathered throughout author’s study and research for this project. This project is a mobile application based project and the targeted users are slow learners in Year 2 that uses the official Malaysian Ministry of Education mathematics syllabus. The objective of this mobile application are to study how android mobile application can be used to enhance slow learner children with tactile learning style learning process and to implement and develop android mobile application that can be used by slow learner children with tactile learning style. Slow learners cannot focus for a long time and process information slower than average kids. Based on research and observation, each slow learner children have different learning style and knowing the correct children learning style can help them to excel better and absorb knowledge faster. Hence, this project will help children’s learning process for difficult subject to be easier, more effective and enjoyable. The scope of this study is to focus on the content of syllabus to mathematics syllabus for slow learners in Year 2. Students can use this application to know numbers and learn mathematical addition and subtraction operation and at the same time fulfil the needs of tactile learners by providing few methods in order to make it comprehensive for them to process information better. Project will be developed based on System Development Life Cycle (SDLC) of Rapid Application Development model. Each phases will be perform concurrently and on each cycle resulting in a system prototype that will be reviewed by the students and teachers of SK Seri Tronoh in order to measure the effectiveness of the prototype model. The experimental result of the android application is takes as the reference summaries of the evaluation. The evaluation of experimental results shows satisfactory result where out of 6 children tested, 5 children shown a good respond to the mobile application

Occupational Therapy\u27s Role in Adapting Residential Youth Camps for Increased Inclusion

Each year, summer camps serve more than 11 million youth in the United States (US) (Wilson, Sibthorp, & Brusseau, 2017). Summer camps provide children with new experiences and give them opportunities to build confidence, social skills, and peer relationships (Wilson et al., 2017). Occupational therapy (OT) is an emerging area of practice throughout summer camps in the US (Hanscom & Schoen, 2014). Hanscom and Schoen (2014) recommend strategically combining OT with traditional camp programming to create an emotionally, physically, and spiritually safe environment that promotes optimal attending and task follow through. Summer camp has been shown to enhance positive youth development, as it meets motivational needs and promotes intrinsic engagement (Halsall, Kendellen, Bean, & Forneris, 2016). However, not all youth have an equal opportunity to partake in the experience (Shefter, Uhrman, Tobin, & Kress, 2017). McCarthy (2015) states that two percent of American Camp Association camps exclusively serve youth with special medical needs. Further, only seven percent are inclusive (Hall, Dunlap, Causton-Theoharis, & Theohari, 2019). The purpose of this capstone project is to explore the populations served within a residential youth camp, identify barriers to participation, and recommend adaptations to the environment to promote a more inclusive setting

Inclusive learning environments to teach speaking skills to down syndrome students in 7th grade at Joya School

Propose a guide for inclusive learning environments to teach speaking skills to down syndrome students in 7th-grade at Joya school under a mixed approach.La presente investigación denominada Ambiente de aprendizaje inclusivo para enseñar habilidades orales a estudiantes con Síndrome de Down en el grado 7th en la escuela Joya” tuvo como objetivo proponer una guía de ambiente de aprendizaje inclusivo para enseñar habilidades orales a niños con Síndrome de Down. En cuanto a los aspectos metodológicos, fue un estudio mixto, ya que utilizó herramientas cuantitativas y cualitativas para la recolección de datos, a saber, un protocolo de observación, una prueba y una entrevista. Los hallazgos evidenciaron que la adquisición del vocabulario es más lenta y el vocabulario receptivo es más amplio que el expresivo, mientras que los infantes con síndrome de Down pueden aprender el vocabulario más lentamente lo que exige la implementación de muchas actividades de práctica controlada. Además, su aprendizaje se apoya en las perspectivas y técnicas utilizadas en el aula. El análisis de los datos permitió concluir que es importante realizar un análisis exhaustivo de las actividades implementadas y el efecto que tienen en el proceso de enseñanza-aprendizaje para la mejora y aumento del nivel de inglés de los estudiantes. La interpretación de los datos ayudó a diseñar una guía para la enseñanza del inglés a estudiantes con síndrome de Down con estrategias didácticas que facilitan el desarrollo de las habilidades de hablar y escuchar de este grupo de estudiantes. La guía también incluye adaptaciones digitales y recursos didácticos para el desarrollo de las habilidades comunicativas de los alumnos. Finalmente, es intención del investigador que esta guía se convierta en un material útil para los profesores de inglés que trabajan con alumnos con SD.Licenciatur