Bionic Eyes, Robotic Arms, and body suits…. Nope, this is not some futuristic sci-fi movie. This is modern science and in the near future these technologies will be able to help thousands of amputees, paraplegics, and individuals with visual impairments. Take a look at what science will be providing to individuals with disabilities, watch these videos and remind yourself that the future is now.

School readiness and school success for children who are dual language learners are tied directly to mastery of their home language. This series of handouts is designed to provide staff and families with basic information on topics related to children learning two or more languages. They emphasize the benefits of being bilingual, the importance of maintaining home language, and the value of becoming fully bilingual. These easy-to-read resources highlight important information that every adult living or working with young dual language learners should know.

My son Ian had a lack of oxygen to his brain at 9 weeks of age and spent 3 weeks in the hospital. Perhaps it was caused by a seizure, perhaps a near-SIDS incident, but we are not sure of the cause. He had a resulting brain injury, with “other developmental disabilities” of autism, blindness, communication impairment, severe cognitive impairment, seizure disorder, and other issues. The brain injury was in 1989, so he is now 23 years old. As you can imagine, this incident devastated our family, at first mostly because we had no clue what to do, what it meant for any of us, how to help him grow, and how much it would change our lives.

Due to high interest in summer camps I have compiled 19 more great summer camps for individuals with special needs.  Many of these are hometown favorites suggested by readers of this blog, and some are specialized for individuals who would not otherwise be able to participate in summer camp. Whatever your special needs are, there is a summer camp for you!

This past weekend in San Diego, I had the opportunity to participate in the 4th Annual National Educator Conference focused on creating safe, supportive, and inclusive schools for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) youth. A goal of the conference, presented by the Center for Excellence in School Counseling and Leadership (CESCaL), was to bring together education leaders and LGBT experts to empower and provide educators and school personnel with the knowledge and skills necessary to create safe, welcoming and inclusive school environments for all youth, regardless of their sexual orientation.

The OPI Montana Autism Education Project is providing a limited number of FREE parent subscriptions for the Autism Training Solutions online autism/behaviorism training program. The subscriptions will begin in late March and will last for 90 days. For each individual subscription, the parent watches short online videos and then answers quizzes. Parents will have 24/7 access to 13 hours of online video lessons teaching: Antecedent Interventions Consequence Interventions Teaching New Behavior Principles of Behavior: Behavior Reduction Principles of Behavior: Reinforcement Introduction to Austim Spectrum Disorders Teaching to Request/Mand Instructional Control Participants will be asked to complete a training survey at the conclusion of the pilot project. At the end of the pilot project each participant receives a certificate of completion. More information and a free trial of the program can be found by searching the web for, "Autism Training Solutions." If you are interested in participating in this FREE training please send an email with the subject line of "ATS Parent Account" to DDOTY@MT.GOV Please include the following information in your email: Your name Your child's gender and age The town in which you live Thank you, Doug Doug Doty, Coordinator Montana Autism Education Project Montana Office of Public Instruction

A school in New York City is expanding the definition of diversity, and putting kids of varying developmental ability side-by-side in the classroom. The IDEAL School of Manhattan is breaking new ground on inclusion education, creating an environment where students with developmental disabilities are never pulled out of class, and are taught the same lessons as students without special needs.

The rise of the infographic is living proof that many of us are visual learners. For better or worse many products that are trying to feed information to us (think Facebook, Instagram,YouTube) are moving away from text and more towards videos and images. The infographic has become a popular way to educate people on a specific topic by using a series of charts, images and graphs to present information.

Many autistic adults have a hard time finding their place in the world. Less than half enroll in higher education or find work. (According to the Social Security Administration, only about 6 percent of adults with autism work full-time.) Many lack the skills to live alone. Those who cannot work generally qualify for monthly Social Security disability payments, which are too low to cover vocational coaches, therapeutic day programs, or other interventions that may help an autistic person reach a modicum of self-sufficiency. Meanwhile, the federal government does not require school systems to provide special education for students older than 18 (most states, including Illinois, have extended the requirement through age 21). “If you have a developmental disability like Frank, when you turn 22, you disappear,” says Craven’s mother, Jane Gallery, a 61-year-old Winnetka resident. “You fall off a cliff.”

MYRTLE BEACH -- Jayden Nogueras won’t win the Friday night 5-kilometer race at Broadway at the Beach that is part of the 16th annual Bi-Lo Myrtle Beach Marathon weekend.In all likelihood, he’ll finish last.But his performance will undoubtedly be the most impressive among the more than 1,000 runners.

Jayden is 6 ... and he’s legally blind ... and he was born with cerebral palsy, a chromosome disorder of 1p36 duplication, polymicrogyria, and septo-optic dysplasia.

West Seneca, N.Y. — In an elementary school hallway, a teacher takes her second-graders to the library, leading a single-file line of giggling boys and girls that's perfectly ordinary until you get to a sleek white robot with a video screen showing the face of a smiling, chubby-cheeked boy.Devon Carrow's life-threatening allergies don't allow him to go to school. But the 4-foot-tall robot with a wireless video hookup gives him the school experience remotely, allowing him to participate in class, stroll through the hallways, hang out at recess and even take to the auditorium stage when there's a show.

The statistics weren’t comforting: In March 2012 the Centers for Disease Control estimated that one in 88 American children is somewhere on the autistic spectrum. We’re still not sure exactly what causes autism, and we’re not sure why the number of children with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) has increased since the early 1990s. According to the National Academy of Sciences, it could be because people are more aware of autism spectrum disorders today; because pediatricians are doing more screening; and because there have been changes in how autism disorders have been defined and diagnosed. In other words, more children with milder symptoms are being identified as somewhere “on the spectrum,” where they wouldn’t have been in years before. But as the Dimicks discovered—like many other parents before them—plenty of doctors claimed to have all the answers. The road parents must navigate is made more perilous by medical professionals willing to prescribe all sorts of treatments, from hyperbaric oxygen chambers and chelation therapy (which removes heavy metals with chemicals) to shelves full of dietary supplements and other alternative remedies they say can treat, even cure, autism. At best these treatments remain unapproved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration; at worst they are downright dangerous. To compound the problem, a host of celebrities act as unpaid marketing reps for these unproven treatments, touting a pervasive (but incorrect) belief that autism is caused by childhood vaccines. This misinformation campaign has led, in the last few years, to a decline in the number of children receiving lifesaving inoculations. And Texas has become a center for alternative autism treatment and the anti-vaccine crusade.

For many children with special needs social stories are very helpful for staying on task and ensuring that the child is prepared for future events and activities. Social Stories can: Improve a child’s  behavior when there are changes in routines. Encourage a child to complete less-preferred tasks. Reinforce or teach abstract concepts, such as time (e.g., next, later), actions, and prepositions (e.g., open, put in,) Break down multi-step tasks into smaller, more manageable parts. Increase your child’s independence by improving his ability to complete parts of his routine with less help or prompting. Making Social Stories for your child with special needs can be a time consuming task. Here are 12 sites that will help you make effective social stories.

“I was banging my head against the wall,” the mother said. “What do I do next?” She frantically called support groups, therapy programs, suicide prevention lines, anybody, running down a list of names in a directory of mental health resources. “Finally,” she said, “somebody told me, ‘The person you need to talk to is Carolyn Wolf.’ ” That call, she said, changed her life and her daughter’s. “Carolyn has given me hope,” she said. “I didn’t know there were people like her out there.”

When Judy Sorrell was a child, she knew she would devote her life to working with children with disabilities. As a 5th grader, well before the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act existed, requiring public schools to educate students with disabilities in the "least restrictive" environment possible, Sorrell was already indignant over the way a younger cousin with Down syndrome was being treated in school. Though her cousin attended school on the same campus, Sorrell wasn't allowed to talk to her or see her all day. Now 59, Sorrell has drawn on that sense of indignation when necessary to bring the most up-to-date services and professionals to her students in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley, where she coordinates special education services for students with low-incidence disabilities for six school districts.

The success rate among the graduates of  America’s Special Education Programs has been studied and criticized for decades. In 2005, Dr. Frank Rusch of Pennsylvania State University and this writer addressed the issue related to the inability of young special education high school graduates to achieve success in employment, post-secondary education, adequate housing and community acquiescence. According to the study, Rusch and Pizzuro wrote: “Young adults with disabilities typically leave publicly funded educational institutions without a job, without being enrolled in postsecondary education, and without the security of knowing their roles in society. Fewer than 30 percent of high school leavers obtain jobs after departing mandated education and fewer than 10 percent enroll in postsecondary education. The past 25 years has witnessed continued poverty among young adults with disabilities, despite legislative reauthorizations aimed at improving educational opportunities (The Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act of 2004) and employment access (The Americans with Disabilities Act).”

“When I was a kid, I didn't realize that you were different.”

Bonnie Brown came to StoryCorps with her teenage daughter, Myra. Bonnie is intellectually disabled with a low IQ. For the past 18 years she’s worked at the same Wendy’s. Here, her daughter asks her about being a mom.

Myra is enrolled in gifted and talented classes at her high school. She hopes to attend Cambridge University when she graduates. Recorded in Lansdowne, PA.

USTA Serves awards program grants twice a year to programs that support at-risk youth and people with disabilities through tennis and education programs designed to improve health, build character and strive for academic excellence.   To date USTA Serves has granted more than $11 million to fund 226 programs in 173 cities in 43 states, including more than $600,000 to adaptive tennis programs for people with special needs. For additional information about submitting a grant proposal, please email us at foundation@usta.com.

Anna Biegel knew since she was in kindergarten that something was wrong.“I remember crying as a little child because I couldn’t read some of what the other kids could, and I would get so frustrated with the sounds,” the Billings native said.Biegel went on to graduate with honors in piano performance from Montana State University Billings. While she was in college she finally was able to put a name to her problem: dyslexia.

Forty years ago, while preparing to become a special education teacher, I happily immersed myself in the study of thought leaders who viewed education as a process of developing the full potential of all children. I read Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers, John Dewey, Jean Piaget, Maria Montessori, Rudolf Steiner, John Holt, and many others who filled me with excitement and the hope that I could really make a difference in the lives of students with special needs. Then, in 1976, I became a special education teacher, and all that changed.