Students with Asperger's Syndrome in General Education Classrooms

Thank you to Jeanne Sept, Dean of Faculties,and Dean Geraldo Gonzalez and Sarah Baumgart at the School of Education, Indiana University.Since the 1980's the number of students with Asperger's Syndrome (AS) have been seen in larger numbers in the general education classroom. Children with AS may resemble their counterparts without disabilities both physically and in IQ scores. However, students with AS have significant differences in social skills and their ability to function in the general classroom. Often unable to decipher social cues, verbal cues, and body language, these children are considered social outcasts. Regardless of the characteristics of children with AS, educators are required by law, specifically the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), to provide a free and appropriate public education. This article provides characteristics of AS and evidence-based interventiosn teachers can implement in their general classrooms to help educate students with AS.Dean of Faculties Office and the School of Education, Indiana Universit

A State Equalization Fund For Secondary Education

The problem of this study is: (1) to develop the present financial status of high schools in Kansas, (2) to present reasons for creating a state equalization fund for high schools in Kansas, (3) to briefly study plans for the equalization of public education now in operation in certain selected states, and (4) to propose a plan whereby the burden of support and the educational advantages of a minimum high school program will be equalized

Shattering the Crystal Goblet: Seeking a Pedagogy of Visuality in Post - Typographic Expository Texts

This article synthesizes diverse theoretical perspectives toward developing a pedagogy that addresses the visuality of digital texts. To frame those perspectives and their implications, I use a well - known analogy that Beatrice Warde introduced to typographers in the 1930s: drinking wine from a golden cup or a crystal goblet. I briefly review the theory and research related to visual aspects of texts, generating pedagogical perspectives from several prominent theories and perspectives. I then discuss, illustrated with a few examples, how these pedagogical perspectives might be instantiated in curriculum and instruction and the issues and challenges of doing so. I argue that researchers have done little to directly address those challenges and issues in ways that inform practitioners

Multimedia and Engaged Reading in a Digital World

Anyone who has spent more than a few minutes “surfing the ‘net” has an intuitive awareness of how different it feels to encounter textual information in a digital as opposed to a typographic environment. The inert features of the printed page that make reading essentially a solitary psycholinguistic process and only incidentally a visual one, as Goodman argued many years ago, are transformed on the computer screen to make reading more dynamic, more interactive, more essentially visual, and even auditory. In comparison, the experience of reading printed materials, especially books, as Richard Lanham (1993) has argued, is static, silent, introspective, and typically serious (see also Olson, 1994; Ong, 1982). These characteristics of conventional reading derived from printed materials have come to be culturally valued (see Birkerts, 1994, for a romantic expression of these values), and they have been reinforced, if not determined, by the material concreteness of conventional printed materials and the relative expense and difficulty in producing them

A Performance Improvement Nursing Fellowship to Enhance Timely Access to Care

This scholarly report describes a Doctorate of Nursing Practice (DNP) project that advanced the performance improvement (PI) knowledge of frontline nurses to improve timely access to acute care during a 6-month PI/Lean management nursing fellowship. Patient flow issues delay access to care and result in negative patient quality outcomes and safety failures. Patient experience, confidence, and satisfaction in healthcare organizations erode when timeliness and efficiency are deficient. The project site is a 443-bed, two-campus, not for profit community hospital in Northern California. This project included the implementation of a PI/Lean nursing fellowship program as an evidence-based intervention to address patient flow issues. During the project, the nurse fellows were expected to learn through didactic education in addition to engaging, integrating, and leading PI/Lean activities within the organization. Patient flow measurements occurred six months before and during the fellowship. PI/Lean knowledge and skills acquisition were measured using a pre- and post-knowledge assessment tool. A program effectiveness survey was administered to team members. A qualitative survey gauged the fellowship’s impact. The timeliness of access to care indicated a degradation of 5 minutes or 2% during the entire 6-month fellowship though a 3-minute improvement occurred in the final three months. The fellows’ pre- and post-assessment indicated a 60% improvement. The fellowship effectiveness survey indicated an 83% satisfaction rate. The qualitative survey revealed a positive tone. The nursing fellowship provided a methodology to advance the frontline nurses’ knowledge and skills in improvement science while assisting the organization in achieving a priority strategic initiative

The effect of aging on skeletal muscle regeneration

Muscle atrophy and decreased strength are an accepted part of aging. While physical inactivity may account for some of these losses, physically active individuals still experience age related reduction in muscle mass and strength. The purpose of this study is to examine the effects that aging has on skeletal muscle regeneration. It is hypothesized that the recovery of muscle mass and force following muscular injury will decrease with age. The anesthetic bupivacaine, a potent myotoxic agent, was injected into the left tibialis anterior (TA) of young, adult, and senescent rats (3, 18, 31 months). The right leg served as an internal control. Following a 2, 3, or 4 week recovery period, the mass and isometric force of each TA were measured. In the young animals, the mass of the bupivacaine injected leg was 60% of the control value at two weeks post injection. By three weeks, the mass was fully recovered. In the middle age and senescent animals, mass of the injected TA was approximately 50% of the control at two weeks and remained at 50% of control following 3 and 4 weeks recovery. Muscle force measurements demonstrated parallel trends. These results indicate that skeletal muscle regeneration is impaired in middle age and senescent rats. Recently, a family of four genes was identified that causes the expression of skeletal muscle specific proteins when activated in precursor cells. One member of this family is myogenin. It is known that myogenin is expressed only during skeletal muscle regeneration, making it an excellent marker for this process. Myogenin mRNA levels were measured in the control and experimental TA muscles of the young, middle age, and senescent animals used in this experiment. All three age groups have elevated levels of myogenin mRNA in the bupivacaine-injected TA when compared to the control. In addition, the 31 month animals have significantly higher levels of myogenin mRNA in their control legs at all time periods than those found in the other age groups. It is known that the expression of myogenin is down-regulated by electrical activity. The high levels found in the control leg indicate reinnervation problems during regeneration in the old animals