What Works? Computers

"I just told you that yesterday", "Where did you put your pencil?" "We went over that last week." "How could you forget that? I told you that yesterday." On and on goes the comments. Farther and farther behind Johnny goes, with gaps in learning that seemingly were filled throughout the past lessons. He doesn't seem to remember, or is it he just isn't paying attention.

"Adults with FAS/E {and children too} have what is known as “flow- through phenomena” – information may be learned, stored, and retained for a while, only to disappear without warning, and reappear just as suddenly, all with no predictable pattern – hours, days or weeks later. What can be said with certainty, is that this unpredictable pattern happens just often enough to convince those who do not understand, this this is deliberate “behavior”, under the control of the person with FAS/E. The reality is very different, and no one is ever more frustrated than the person with FAS/E, who must constantly deal with the reactions of others to this behavior." NEUROBEHAVIOUR IN ADOLESCENTS AND ADULTSFAS/E Support Network
http://www.fetalalcohol.com/

So what works with students? Computers. Computer assisted instruction. Computers do not get angry with FASD students when the student has to do a problem over and over. The proper computer asisted instruction software will present skills to students and manage the student's responses, moving the student forward as they show mastery. The appropriate program will continue to review to assess mastery, remediating as necessary. Good software provides immediate feedback to responses, which is optimum for the FASD brain. Lesson lengths can be managed on an individual basis. Gaps in learning can be found easily with good software and software assessment tools. A students who can not move today's lesson into short term and long term memory on the first, second, third, tenth, or 100th attempt create a management nightmare for the classroom teacher. I have been told Albert Einstien said something to the effect of " Computers are fast, accurate, and stupid, humans are slow, inaccurate, and intelligent. So let's put them together to become fast, accurate, and intelligent." We need to use technology as much as possible to provide the best opportunity for FASD students to learn. One parent, in a youtube video, The Invisible Children and Families of FASD,Part 2, states her daughter had to have a skill presented 625 times before her daughter was successful with that skill.

I had the opportunity to listen to Dr. Ann Striesguth in Minneapolis, MN at an FAS workshop. She is the preeminent researcher of FASD, now retired. One of the animal research studies she presented supports the above statement of the mother. In the research, the researchers injected alcohol into eggs and incubated the eggs. As the eggs hatched, the chicks looked exactly like any other chick. The only thing different was the injected alcohol. These chicks were placed in a box that had a small enclosure in the corner with a plexiglass window and an open door. In an opposite corner of the box, a feeder bowl was placed. Stooge chicks were placed by the feeder bowl to intice the other chicks to the feed. The FAE (Fetal Alcohol Effected, FASD without any physical deformities) chicks were placed in the small corner enclosure, along with some normal chicks. All the chicks pecked on th plexiglass window, peck, peck, peck.....soon the normal chicks started exploring and found the open door and went to the feed. The FASD chicks continued to peck, peck, and peck on the window. The researchers, after some time, guided the FASD chicks to the door and the feed. The next day, same results. After five days, some of the FASD chicks learned. Some never learned.

How can this be extrapolated to the classroom? We need to have tools to give FASD students multiple presentations of the skills and concepts, with the understanding that FASD students may need many presentations without any shaming and blaming attitudes. Computers can to that. Adults working with FASD students need to understand FASD students may not be able to generalize information, such as learning by observation of other students. Students who look normal may have brain damage that prohibits their brain from gathering information and sorting it like a normal brain. We can't stop trying, because after the 5, 10th, or 100th time, the FASD brain may grasp the skill or concept.