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What is Rapid Automatic Naming? Rapid automatic naming (RAN) or rapid naming is the ability to quickly verbalize a series of familiar items including letters, numbers, colors or things. Research purports that RAN tests are highly correlated to one’s reading abilities because the faster and more efficiently one can access information from the memory banks, the easier it is to read and comprehend text. How Does Rapid Automatic Naming Happen in the Brain? Although we know RAN impacts reading, there are three competing viewpoints in the literature. One view indicates that RAN involves how well one can retrieve phonological information and then verbalize a response. The difficulties lie in the brain’s ability to process sounds into language. Another theory indicates that RAN is a “complex set of cognitive processing” areas that work together in concert thus defining one’s reading fluency capabilities. This perspective further suggests that individuals with RAN and phonemic awareness diffi

Like a complex braid, great writers weave and multitask with sentence rules, spelling, idea formation, content organization and more. And when learners struggle with one or more of these processes, writing can become a frustrating tangle of ideas, an apparent, impossible knot to unsnarl. Research papers can be particularly tricky, because students also have the added obstacles to collect relevant articles, organize the information into a structured layout, paraphrase and manage citations. This week, I am so excited to share with you an assistive technology video blog with Victor Karkar, the CEO of Scrible. Scrible is an amazing online tool that students can use to annotate and color-code online text and simplify the process of writing research papers. This extraordinary technology, that is recognized by the National Science Foundation, can help students to read and write more efficiently. What's more, it offers a step by step process that can be monitored and supported by teachers

Would you please take two minutes to fill out our very brief but important questionnaire about how to choose an online academic support service!              Click here to take the survey now! After years of tinkering with various ways to offer online remedial sessions and academic support services, we’ve finally reached a point where we don’t have to sacrifice quality for access. With all the new platforms and tools to communicate online (e.g., Skype, Zoom, Google Chat), assistive technologies, browser add-ons, and the faster Internet connections, learning specialists can finally provide high-quality sessions to their students (and parents and trainees!). This development has become especially important to those of us in rural areas where there are little to no resources. Yet, it still begs the question: What is the best way to choose an online service? What technology tools do I need to provide my child? How is an online session different from a live session? These and other questi

It is not uncommon to hear about all the high achievers and entrepreneurs with dyslexia, but did you know that there is also a disproportional number of juvenile offenders and criminals with this learning disability? Although it is true that some individuals with dyslexia are able to succeed in life despite their learning disability, unfortunately, many more have tragic stories to tell.  In fact, the United States Department of Education reported that 60 percent of American inmates are illiterate and 85 percent of all juvenile offenders have reading problems.  In New Zealand, an estimated 10% of the population is dyslexic, yet percentages climb as high as 90% in their prisons. _____________________________ This week, I’m going to tell you the story of Ash Cousins.  Ash has dyslexia, and when he was an adolescent, he followed a path of crime.  It was a choice that had a tragic outcome, and Ash asked me to share his story, because he wants to do all that he can to assure that others don