"Back to School" Links

I have been enjoying a few weeks off before things pick up again! Though out of the traditional school schedule, my work still revolves around the academic year, with therapy groups starting in September as well as school consults, programming, and evals (and most of my presentations and trainings as well).

Over the summer, I had a great time blogging about research for Mindwing Concepts' blog and their "Summer Study Series." I have been making a lot of efforts over the past few years to connect with research that informs technology use, or per my usual message, intervention approaches that can be aligned with particular applications.

In July, we discussed an interesting study that compared structured narrative intervention in one classroom with more traditional (e.g. wh-questions, among other approaches) programming in another. The study was also the first to look at the efficacy of in-classroom discourse intervention by speech-language pathologists (Gillam, Olszewski, Fargo & Gillam, 2014). The link to the actual study was accidentally left out of that post, so you can find it here in full-text for ASHA members.

Just recently, we also looked at interesting research into typical expository language performance for the upper-elementary to high-school population. The study used a protocol similar to one I have used in the past, with some interesting tweaks such as setting clear expectations and providing schematic scaffolding and planning time prior to the students producing a language sample. Data has thus far been lacking to compare students' performance in terms of key factors such as linguistic complexity, so these are welcome findings. The link to the full-text, again free to ASHA members, is in the post describing the research of Heilmann & Malone (2014).

Additionally, I published a column for ASHA Leader about prepping for travel to the 2014 Orlando Convention (but helpful for all travelers). I am excited to be presenting at the convention a sequel to previous sessions- Pairing EVEN MORE Picture Books & Apps to Contextually Address Language Objectives (Session 1718, Saturday, November 22, 1-2pm)- on Saturday afternoon. Hopefully I will see some of you to talk with you about one of my favorite topics-- before you leave or head to Disney World!

As a tech tie-in, I'd like to mention the tool that I am finding the best resource for reading and annotating journal articles. Sente 6 for Mac and iPad allows you to build "libraries" of research articles and annotate and sync them across your account accessed on Mac or iPad (Free for up to 100 references per library and with 250MB of syncing). The advantages for me are that I tend to do this reading on my laptop, and tools such as Preview or Adobe Reader do not have the same features. Also, when highlighting, you can create notes that can be cut/pasted into another application or exported. Check it out if you like to read journal articles; there is a bit of a learning curve but nice support videos available.

Disclosure: Author is a contractor with Mindwing Concepts, Inc. for provision of blog content and professional development.