LD State of Mind

[Introduction] Welcome to the LD State of Mind, a podcast about learning together and making a difference for college students. Join us as we discuss tips and useful information with our peers and experts in the area of learning variability’s. [Patrick] Good morning and welcome to this episode of LD State of Mind. Our guest speaker today is Mrs. James, of the East Carolina University STEPP Program. Over the next few episodes we will be exploring a topic no one likes, but everyone needs help on, test taking. And the tips and tricks you might have been missing out on. In today’s episode we will be discussing multiple-choice tests. What to look for, and how to prepare yourself to do the best you can. So Morgan, if you could give a little bit of background/personal information of why you are our guest today. [Morgan] Sure, first, thanks for having me. I am the instructional specialist for the STEPP Program at East Carolina University and I work with students that have learning differences in either reading, writing, or math. I teach them learning strategies and academic routines to help them be successful in their college classes. [Patrick] Awesome, and I know from experience she is amazing at it. She was my teacher for two year and has helped me so much today in all my test taking skills. So, Morgan, today we’re talking about multiple-choice test and the good and bad about them. Do you think you could give us a little reflection back from when you were taking multiple-choice tests? What you liked and didn’t really like about the topic? [Morgan] Sure, well I’m still a grad student or I’m a grad student again since I’m working on my doctorate. So, I’m still taking tests. There’s a lot of anxiety, I think, going into a test. And I think it’s actually totally normal for myself, and actually any student to have test anxiety. But I even in the past, thinking back to undergrad. I remember I was always thinking in my mind, “Take your time, don’t rush”. As I was going through the test I would say that in my head. I never cared if I was the last one to finish a test. You know I guess I didn’t really have that competitive… [Patrick] Yea, I understand that… [Morgan] That competitive spirit maybe died with me when I was in there taking the test. And I know that some students do care about things like that. I tried to use positive self talk to amp my self up for the test, before hand. Ultimately when I’m actively taking the test, I go with my gut. I try to advice students to do that, too. And I know that doesn’t sound real scientific, but I learned early on that your first instinct is usually the right one. [Patrick] So, should I not go back and read over the test again? [Morgan] Well, of course you should go back and read over the test. But only change your answer if you are absolutely sure. You know, that you’ve either seen the answer somewhere else on the test or you’re absolutely sure that you got it wrong. [Patrick] Or you’re getting a gut feeling that it’s wrong, so you’ve got to change it. [Morgan] (Laughter) Sure, I guess, yea. [Patrick] Awesome. So, in multiple-choice testing by the sound of it, you’re not writing any essays. You have in front of you, the answers and the question; what are some advantages to this type of testing, compared to the other forms? [Morgan] Sure, well you kind of mentioned one. You have all the answers in front of you; you just have to pick the right one, ultimately. But, multiple-choice tests give you an opportunity to guess and/or eliminate answer choices that you know are wrong. Which gives you more of a chance to pick the right answer. Also, sometimes you’re able to sift through the test and find similar questions and answers somewhere else on the test. Whether it’s been rephrased or restated somewhere and in doing that you can narrow down your choices again to see you know if the questions been repeated somewhere to, you know, help you answer the questions.

[Introduction] Welcome to the LD State of Mind, a podcast about learning together and making a difference for college students. Join us as we discuss tips and useful information with our peers and experts in the area of learning variability’s. [Marcus] My name is Marcus Soutra. I’m the President of Eye to eye, I’ve been involved with Eye to Eye since 2006. I got involved with Eye to Eye for the same reason most students and most volunteers get involved. I myself was a student with a learning difference I was diagnosed with dyslexia and AD/HD around 3rd grade. Which is kind of the typical time for kids getting diagnosed. It’s the time period when school goes from trying to learn to read to using reading to apply it to learning. That was real struggle for me. I think I got involved in Eye to Eye because I wanted a community I wanted to meet others who had learning differences and connect w them and I also wanted to give back to younger students. Because I know if, when I was 12 yrs. old, I had met someone in college with ld who had challenges in school it would have made a difference to me. [Patrick] What exactly does Eye to Eye do? What do you guys try to accomplish? [Marcus] Sure, sure, At Eye to Eye we are trying to benefit students with ld in the country. We do that in three main ways. The first and most known to everybody is our mentoring program. We have 50 chapters around the country doing mentoring. Next year we’re expanding the program. We’re gonna have about 62-63 chapters around the country in 20 states. And these chapters all operate in pretty much the same way. These are high school and college students with learning differences mentoring middle school children with learning differences. And they’re teaching them using an art curriculum, teaching them self-advocacy skills, teach them about how they learn. We often use the word metacognition, we’re hopefully gonna get to that later. We teach kids the strategies that can help them do well in school…how they can use their accommodations and how to advocate for themselves. Those really important socio-emotional skills that students with learning disabilities need. So that’s the first set of our work we have about 1,000 mentors in our country that will do about 80,000 hours of community service. The second layer of our work is our diplomats work. They are basically a speaker’s bureau. Eye to Eye recruits the best of the best students from around the country to be trained speakers for Eye to Eye. They give presentations at middle schools, and they go to conferences (state and local conferences). They advocate for people with learning differences by meeting with the Secretary for Education or going onto Capitol Hill when there are bills be authorized around students with learning differences. Or most notably this past summer went and met with Michelle Obama as part of the Reach Higher Initiative. The third layer of our work is our cultural campaign work. These are things like partnering with the Indy 500 to create a public service announcement at the race about people with dyslexia. Or working with the WNBA and Wasserman media to develop a billboard that’s currently up in Times Square to bring awareness to learning disabilities. Or having David Fink, our founder, featured in GQ this past fall. So those are really the three pieces of our work. The way I succinctly explain it is we are sharing the stories of people with learning differences, sharing their success stories. In our mentoring group we do it one to one, in diplomat work we’re doing it one to hundred, and in our PSA work we’re doing it one to a million. [Patrick] Awesome, thank you Marcus. And if you’re looking for more information about Eye to Eye or how to get to involved look them up at www.eyetoeyenational.org. So Marcus earlier you mentioned something about metacognition, and for those who don’t know metacognition is basically understanding how your mind works and how you learn the best.

[Introduction] Welcome to the LD State of Mind, a podcast about learning together and making a difference for college students. Join us as we discuss tips and useful information with our peers and experts in the area of learning variability’s. [Patrick] Welcome to episode two. I’m your host Patrick Young and joining me today is my guest Dan Comden. Dan why don’t you tell me a little bit about yourself. [Dan] Hi Patrick I’d be happy to do so. I’ve been working in the field of information technology and accessibility going back to the 80’s. I’ve been in information technology here at the University of Washington Main Seattle campus going back to 1992. I am in the role of helping students, faculty, and staff with disabilities have access to the IT resources that they need in order to pursue their academic programs or do their jobs. I’ve been involved with providing services to students with disabilities since I was undergrad, in college back in the 80’s. I actually started as a student employee reading textbooks onto tape. That was our main assistive technology at that time, was human readers recording textbooks read out loud. That’s how I got into this field, as a student employee. So, I’ve been at it for a long time, seen a lot of changes, seen a lot of amazing technology, got to meet some amazing students over the years, which is probably the best part of my job. [Patrick] Wow it definitely sounds like we got the right man for the job. Having such a long history in this field, how can you tell me the changes that you have seen in assistive technology? How have they changed, how have they grown, and how do you think today’s technology has become more effective in helping students? [Dan] Well, wow that’s a pretty all-encompassing question there. You know, when I talk about what things were back in the 80’s, it was really an analog world. We couldn’t do what we are doing right now, being on opposite sides of the country having a conversation and easily recording it from the comfort of our own offices. So what we did back then was primarily putting books on tape with human readers. We provided in-class note-taking assistance; we did mobility assistance around the campus. At that time, when I started personal computers really were not at all common, they were very uncommon. When I was in that role, PC’s really started to be something that you would see in offices, but even then it was typical that there would be only one computer in the office. So, at that time, assistive technology was being developed, there was a little bit of a lag. But with the relatively simple interface on the computers, which was really text-based, it was relatively easy to do simple accommodations to allow people with different disabilities to use those computers. Students with learning disabilities were kind of left out. The process of making a computer speak was fairly advanced for a few years. You know, having those sound capabilities in the computer was relatively unusual. So over the course of the last 30+ years, what we’ve seen is computing becoming more ubiquitous, meaning it’s just everywhere. It’s on our desks; it’s in our faces, literally everyday with our smart phones and other mobile devices. And then, along with that is an amazing array of tools that allow people to do their jobs. Whether that job is working at an office, working in the field, or being a student in a classroom. [Patrick] Absolutely. I know I myself when I was in middle school I had one of those big yellow recorders. It was from the library that was used for the learning, dyslexic, and blind program they had. I just had a tape and I had to flip it over every thirty minutes to continue reading my book. And that helped me so much; that helped give me a love for literature. So, starting in the early days, before they had smart pens and stuff like that, that’s how I really learned and that’s what I got to use. So that’s awesome that you were directly recording thos...

Cast Patrick Emily Joy Jonathan   Show notes Transcript [Introduction] Welcome to LD State of Mind, a podcast about learning together and making a difference for college Students! Join us as we discuss tips and useful information with our peers and experts in the area of learner variability. [Patrick] Welcome to the LD State of Mind.  My name is Patrick Young and thank you for joining us for the first episode. Today we will be talking about learning disabilities and more specifically disclosing your learning disability. [Patrick] Everybody has a story. Everybody has some way they’ve used disclosing a learning disability to do better in school, or just may be more comfortable with friends.  So Emily, can you please give us a quick story about how you disclosed your learning disability when you were in school, and how you thought it helped you. [Emily] So for me, I was diagnosed with dyslexia in the second grade.  I have dyslexia and a learning disability in reading, writing, and math. And so being diagnosed really young, in my household like being dyslexic and everything was nothing to be ashamed of. It was something we talked about all the time and so, that was really great to have it be such a comfortable topic of conversation at home. Because then when I went into school, it was something I was really comfortable talking about.  I told kids in my elementary school class I had dyslexia.  I got plenty of funny looks, and what the heck is that, but that was okay.  I was happy to tell them what it was and I did get picked on a little bit for it, but it definitely was something that I was like hey, it’s okay, it’s whatever.  So that led me through elementary and middle school to then get to high school and really being able to advocate for myself and telling teachers, “hey by the way I’m in your class, I have dyslexia here’s my IEP, here’s all my documentation, this is what I need okay great let’s go.”  You know, and so for me, because it was so comfortable talking about it at home, it made it really comfortable to talk about it at school.  It did mean that people picked on me a couple of times, but in the long run, it was really beneficial that I advocated for myself so I could get all the help that I needed. [Patrick] Thank you Emily.  Now Joy, I heard you were homeschooled for a large portion of your schooling.  Can you please tell us about your experience? [Joy] Hey Patrick, thank you.  So, I started off learning that I had a disability when I was in fifth grade.  Growing up homeschooled, I really didn’t know that anything was different. I started comparing myself to my siblings and figured out that I had a harder time with reading and writing, when I saw that my younger siblings were catching up to me.  It wasn’t until it was time for me to be enrolled in our local public school that my mom decided that I would get tested for dyslexia.  Following that, I found out that I had dyslexia dysgraphia and ADHD. Going through the public school system, and making the transition to five different, sorry eight different schools, in five different years, was very challenging. But I was able to figure it out and become more confident with my learning disability over time. [Patrick] Sweet! That’s great you went to a lot of different schools, public, private, and homeschool.  What do you think it was like starting at a homeschool? Being compared to siblings more? And not having people you didn’t know, know that fact that you had a learning disability? [Joy] I would say that when I was homeschooled, I was definitely most comfortable with my learning disability.  Entering public school and not being very confident, not knowing socially where I stood within my peers; I really tried to hide and cover up the fact that I had a difference than everyone else.  When I would seek accommodations, or need to go out of the room, or go take my ADHD medicine, I would always lie to my peers,