Children in Montana are more likely than their fellow American kids to engage in physical activity daily, spend less time watching television or playing video games and are less likely to have a television in their rooms. Thirty-two percent of U.S. children ages 10 to 17 are overweight or obese, compared with 26 percent of Montana children. This information comes from the 2007 National Survey of Children’s Health, which included telephone interviews with 1,800 Montana households.

But Speer doesn't read the books herself. She is legally blind and relies on a machine to read them to her. She has been receiving talking books from the Montana State Library for the past 10 years, but now they are making it a little bit easier for her to read her favorite mystery novel.

Thanks to the generosity of many, Heather Stone, a 33-year-old who is blind and has autism, may be able to see a dentist sooner than expected.

Since we first announced captions in Google Video and YouTube, we've introduced multiple caption tracks, improved search functionality and even automatic translation. Each of these features has had great personal significance to me, not only because I helped to design them, but also because I'm deaf. Today, I'm in Washington, D.C. to announce what I consider the most important and exciting milestone yet: machine-generated automatic captions.Since the original launch of captions in our products, we’ve been happy to see growth in the number of captioned videos on our services, which now number in the hundreds of thousands. This suggests that more and more people are becoming aware of how useful captions can be. As we’ve explained in the past, captions not only help the deaf and hearing impaired, but with machine translation, they also enable people around the world to access video content in any of 51 languages. Captions can also improve search and even enable users to jump to the exact parts of the videos they're looking for.

The following articles provide information on the inclusion of students with learning disabilities or ADHD in the general education classroom.

What does a parent do when she suspects her child has learning difficulties? How can she advocate for her child when everyone keeps telling her that her child will "just" grow out of it, that he'll learn to read when he's ready? In this article, a mother tells her story about her struggle for success-and how she found the resources to identify her son's reading difficulties, as well as the supports he needed to succeed.

ScienceDaily (Nov. 12, 2009) — The vast majority of school-aged children can focus on the voice of a teacher amid the cacophony of the typical classroom thanks to a brain that automatically focuses on relevant, predictable and repeating auditory information, according to new research from Northwestern University.

But for children with developmental dyslexia, the teacher's voice may get lost in the background noise of banging lockers, whispering children, playground screams and scraping chairs, the researchers say.

n high school cross country, there are names for people like Andrew Gerdts - gifted, dedicated and strong. But the memory of the high school junior from Le Sueur-Henderson is seared with another name: "I just dislike the word retarded, or retard," says Andrew softly. The boy with his name in lights on his school's electronic sign wishing him well on at state, has lived most of life defined by a word in a report: autism. "He was not actually diagnosed with autism until the summer after third grade," says Andrew's mother.

TRENTON -- Adults with autism would be specifically covered by anti-discrimination laws under one of two new measures designed to assist people who have the disorder, Assembly Speaker Joseph Roberts said today.

The IDEA Partnership reflects the collaborative work of more than 50 national organizations, technical assistance providers, and organizations and agencies at state and local level. Together with the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP), the Partner Organizations form a community with the potential to transform the way we work and improve outcomes for students and youth with disabilities.

You already know that the Internet is one of the most convenient, effective means of researching and finding information for your classes, but did you know that in some cases it can replace all of your hefty textbooks and reading assignments too? With ebooks, you can read, stream, and listen to lessons, classic literature, poetry and reference books on the Internet or your mobile device. Here are 100 useful links for ebook lovers.

At first glance, it appears that the number of children with autism is skyrocketing in Montana. In 1991, eight children were classified as autistic. In 2008, there were 495 autistic children. That’s a 6,000 percent increase in 18 years.

But the numbers are misleading, according to Doug Doty, coordinator of the Office of Public Instruction Montana Autism Education Project.

NCRR awarded 18 grants to help determine outcome measures and increase the likelihood of success of future trials of treatments for children. The grants were awarded to 17 Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) institutions to support 18 studies of pharmaceutical treatments for children. The CTSA consortium is a national network of 46 medical research institutions working together to improve the way biomedical research is conducted across the country. The $8.5 million in funding — administered by NCRR and provided by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development — will support studies which focus on three areas critical to health: pediatric cardiology, neonatology and pediatric neurology.

Access your free digital copy by clicking on the cover image

Read it page by page, click on links to advertisers, search by key words, download a PDF (note: 14 MB file). It's our way of saying "Thank You" for the support and encouragement we've received from members of the autism community over the last 10 years.

Palin appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show Monday to promote her book “Going Rogue.” She spoke about her run for the vice presidency, her daughter’s pregnancy and learning that her son would have Down syndrome.

Wade Kuntz, a Libby native, poses with his guide dog, Casey. Kuntz attributes the support he received growing up in Libby to helping him succeed in life despite visual and hearing impairments.

Using data from state reading and mathematics tests, this report takes an in-depth look at the performance of students with disabilities and highlights the problems with the testing data for these students.

Test scores on state assessments for students with disabilities have increased in recent years, according to a new study released today. The Washington-based Center on Education Policy examined state mathematics and reading test results from the 2005-06 school year to the 2007-08 school year. Those state tests are used to determine whether schools and school districts are making adequate yearly progress under the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

ANACONDA — As they do in words, apostrophes can become wedged in people’s lives. Can’t. Don’t. Shouldn’t. Couldn’t. A simple apostrophe marks the end of what can, should and could be done. The Anaconda Work and Residential Enterprises, or AWARE, recently launched a quarterly magazine dedicated to deleting these apostrophes, targeted especially to those with developmental disabilities.

Children whose parents are active in any of the branches of the military often have a rather non-traditional educational experience. These children transfer schools often and sometimes attend school overseas. Although military children may not be educated in the U.S., they are still entitled to a Free, Appropriate Public Education (FAPE). The information on the Military and Department of Defense page describe various aspects of a military special education education and the unique issues these children face, including frequent transfers in and out of schools with different levels of instructional programming, and the emotional issues that accompany the deployment of family members.