Dr. Chris’ Autism Journal

If you are a parent and are looking for a great opportunity to get involved in autism research, you should check out IAN, the Interactive Autism Network.  IAN was established in January 2006 at Kennedy Krieger Institute and is funded by a grant from Autism Speaks. IAN’s goal is to facilitate research that will lead to advancements in the prevention, treatment, and cure of autism spectrum disorders.  Joining IAN will help you better understand the research process, help you keep up with some of the latest and most cutting-edge research findings, better understand the value of research, and even influence the direction future research.

What is IAN Research?

IAN Research allows parents of children diagnosed with an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) to participate in research over the Internet. Parents provide information about their child’s diagnosis, behavior, family, environment, and services received. Parents may also report on their child’s progress over time.

Who can participate in IAN Research?

To register and answer research questions in IAN Research, you must live in the United States and be a biological or adoptive parent of a child under the age of 18 who is diagnosed professionally with one of the following disorders:

• Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)
• Autism
• Asperger Syndrome
• Autistic Disorder
• Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD)
• Pervasive Developmental Disorder-Not Otherwise Specified (PDD-NOS)
• Childhood Disintegrative Disorder (CDD)

The child should not have a diagnosis of Rett Syndrome.

What are the benefits of joining?

You will be able to participate in important research on ASDs. IAN will provide tools that help you monitor your child’s progress over time and explore how your child is similar to (or different than) other children affected by this disorder.

Timo is a friendly animated tutor who helps children with autism, hearing impairments, developmental delays and other language problems to learn communication, conversation and reading in fun computer programs.  Animated Speech’s software is designed to give speech pathologists, educators and parents who work with these children an important new tool to build comprehension and vocabulary skills.

The initial concept for Timo was developed by Dr. Dom Massaro and Dr. Michael Cohen with a grant from the National Science Foundation.  Originally, Timo was called Baldi, and the once university lab project soon became a commercially available product.  Dan Feschbach, the company’s CEO, has grown the company and they now have 3 products available for varying levels of language learning. 

Team Up With Timo: Vocabulary teaches identification, comprehension, and expression of more than 650 words including animals, human body, weather and much more.  The program offers pre and post tests for assessing progress and has 6 other levels of learning to teach the vocabulary.  The unique aspect of this program is Timo, who engages the child in conversation using the child’s own name!  The child’s voice can also be recorded so that the child’s parents and other team members can review it after the child’s session.  Rewards are given in response to correct answers and include a large variety of brief animations.  This program has many options for customization and is best for early language learners through about 4th grade vocabulary.

If you are looking for more customization, ASC also offers Team Up With Timo: Lesson Creator.  In this program, teachers and professionals and create custom vocabulary and language lessons for the child to do on the computer.  You can use any pictures you want including the ones in the Timo vault, or upload your own.  This is an excellent way to build individualized, personalized lessons for your child. 

For older children or for children who have more language skills, they have Team Up With Timo: Stories, designed by Dr. Lauren Franke and Pamela Connors, speech-language experts.  This program teaches listening skills, comprehension, vocabulary, retelling stories, and reading skills.  Research has shown that being able to retell a story at age 4 is predictive of later success in school.  Storytelling also helps children participate in daily life with friends, family and school.  This program is based on research in language development and uses the Narrative-based language intervention (NBLI) approach that combines storytelling with skill-based activities.   

Timo products are available online and a free trial is provided.

With the success of our first program, TeachTown: Basics, we were getting very antsy to start our next product to help school-age children with autism.  We are thrilled to announce that we have received a Department of Education Stepping Stones Technology grant to develop our next product and to do the initial research to help make this product effective, appropriate, and of the highest quality.  Stayed tuned for further updates about this upcoming product, we are anticipating using the new program with children starting in 2008!

To read more about our exciting news, check out the press release at: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=69034

Continue checking back to this site and the TeachTown website for announcements and opportunities to participate in our research and development process.

In a new study, researchers at the Celeste Foundation are looking at the efficacy of a remote service delivery for children with autism utilizing computers and video technology.  This innovative approach aims to provide increased access to treatment and decreased costs for home intervention programs.  If you live in Iowa, Florida, or New Jersey, you may be able to participate in this program.  If not, the study is still very exciting and has tremendous potential for helping families of children with autism.

Do you own an IPOD or other MP3 player or do you use ITUNES on your computer? There are now many PODCASTS (i.e. reports or stories that you can listen to on your computer or IPOD) about autism.

Check out our new podcast, from an interview I did with Scott Ryan from Autism Speaks in May.

AutismOneRadio is a very good podcast to try out, I like this one a lot because it brings in researchers, professionals, and parents and is done in a very professional yet interesting way. There are several different perspectives and the interviews are done by different people so there is a lot of good variety.

Autism Tales is a good one because it is actually real stories from people with autism and other special needs (or their families or people who worked with them) read by Jonathon Singer.

Bartholomew Cubbins is an interesting one that is kind of like a blog that you can listen to, he expresses his opinions about different things going on in the world of autism.

Michael Boll, a father of a child with autism and a former teacher, does Autism Podcast which is pretty interesting. In this one, Michael Boll interviews various people associated with autism such as authors of books, etc. You can check out his website too where you can get all of the podcasts and more information: http://autismpodcast.org/

There are courses that you can purchase by well-known people in the field of autism at Autism Education Online. Courses are up to two and a half hours in length and cost $49.97. If you would like to take multiple courses, the cost for a package of three is $99.97 and a package price for 12 courses is $299.

Autism Today also offers audio courses for $24.95 each.

Also, if you are interested in watching online videos about autism, I found this interesting site, Autism TV, which provides links.