New tool for autism education

 

This is Karl Smith, creator of the DT Trainer, and this is one of my few blasts per year informing the autism community on our continued progress. 

 

Thanks for your support of the DT Trainer as we are now in over 800 school districts, 220 private schools and service providers, and thousands of homes.  I will continue to expand the DT Trainer to cover more topics and a wider developmental range (currently the developmental range is 2-9 years old).

 

However, there is another area of learning that is critical for our kids.  There is 15 to 20 years of research showing how video modeling increases acquisition rates across a wide range of topics.  Video modeling materials have been available for 10 - 15 years, and yet I was amazed that this powerful teaching method is impacting few of our kids.

 

Looking into this disconnect, I discovered that video modeling media has been released to be played in standard media players starting with video types, and now computer based media players.  The problem is that video modeling is not just about playing videos, but is about the management of the process.  Regular media players lack the capabilities to organize the materials to facilitate quick access to a student's specific tasks in a teaching situation. Trying to find and use up a piece of video is clumsy, cumbersome and impractical in a fluid teaching situation.  Standard media players also lack the support for task analysis (breaking down tasks), sequences, transitions from video to images, transitions from images to text, data collection, visual schedules, and many other useful features to fully exploit the power of video modeling across a wide range of students and skills.

 

I set out to fix this situation and created the first designed player for video modeling the Activity Trainer.  There is a short 2 minute video that introduces the Activity Trainer at www.dttrainer.com/atpromovideo.  This tool is feature rich being driven by both research and feedback from experts in video modeling. The Activity Trainer allows users to create their own activities, and we are developing a Skills Library that includes skills in the categories of academic, daily living, communicating non-verbal initiation, recreation, social and speech.  We are reaching out to video modeling creators for third party libraries which customers could add to the Activity Trainer.  We will also reach out to Universities and others for a community library.

 

Our goal has been to offer a robust, easy to use tool that makes video modeling practical for school and home and that is affordable for schools and parents.  We had to go way out on the limb financially to create this tool, but I felt that it is important for our kids to get access to the power of video modeling.  I hope the community will download our free trial and either provide feedback or purchase to benefit your child or students and to help support this work.  The work has been endorsed by Dr. Peter Gerhardt of the Organization for Autism Research.  (See our web site)  We have thus far released about 167 activities in the developmental range of 2 to 9 years old.  We are currently working on over 60 more and will continue to expand our skills library.

 

There is a short 2 minute video that introduces the Activity Trainer at www.dttrainer.com/atpromovideo.  Visit our web site (www.dttrainer.com) for more information on the Activity Trainer and to download a free 30 day trial.