 Dr. Barbara Hong, thank you so much for joining us in ICT and education. First, tell us about yourself and then we'll discuss what you discussed in the conference. I'm an associate professor in special education at Penn State, Altoona. And I've been teaching and working with children with special needs for actually over 20 years from all over the country. So I'm sure many of our audience would like to know whether there is a difference between learning disabilities and learning difficulties. And from your experience in the United States and other parts of the world, can you tell us if there is a difference or not? It's different by terms and definition. But generally, a kid could have a learning difficulty in many areas, and they can feel frustrated with how their learning process comes across, how they think, how they read. But what happens if it becomes severe enough that there is a discrepancy between what they can actually do and what they are performing, that becomes a disability. And again, that is by definition of what individuals in the United States define differently, and within the United States, different states define differently. But in generally, as teachers, knowing that students all learn differently and that they may experience difficulty in the way words come across to them, how numbers come across to them, it makes us more conscious in how we teach children. So is there one definition of learning disability, or is it different by the country? It's different only in the way they diagnose. But in general, basically, when students have difficulty in their processing skills, in what they think they see and what they think they hear, that's what forms a perception, and then, hence, they think they see this, but it's actually not this, it could be in form of a shape, spatial-wise, reading, writing, math, it could be exhibited in any form. Okay. So why do you think kids can struggle in writing or comprehension or reading? Why can this happen? There are many factors, and what happens is that a lot of time is an internal processing difficulty that they have. Some people have difficulty learning how to drive, and that is just a difficulty, it's not necessarily a disability. Some people have difficulty with sports. So all of us have difficulty somewhere as we learn something, and some struggle longer before we pick it up, and others, oh, it's difficult, but I pick it up right away. So one of the things you mentioned in your session yesterday was the red flags for early learning difficulties. So for parents and teachers who don't know about this area, can you elaborate on it? Well, there are three main factors when we look at reading difficulty. We look at what a fluent reader can do. A fluent reader, generally from the beginning, is the ability to rhyme. The ability to rhyme has got to do with the sensitivity to how they hear individual sounds being formed, in an alphabet, in a letter itself, and some letters forming two sounds, they can even hear that sound. So children has to have that sense of hearing individual sounds, and the second is the way they are able to manipulate the sound. So now that they understand the alphabets, they understand that if you do a B, E, D, it says it's bad, and they know that this B is different than the D, and when you turn it around, even though the B could look like a D, but they make a different sound and they put together. And the third thing has got to do with their memory. They're able to retrieve what they know. The words that they know, the concept, the vocabulary, their background, how fast they can retrieve something. And something is called a rapid naming. And we can do assessment for that. So somebody who is fluent in reading can quickly look at a word, look at a phrase, retrieve the background and understand. Somebody who cannot, those are the red flags. I have a hard time rhyming it, sounding it out, and what does this go with in the context? And so those are the red flags for kids. Okay. Also you mentioned something called the visual discrimination. What's that? Visual discrimination is one aspect of learning difficulty, which actually a lot of people experience that. For example, like in geometry. Some people have a very hard time looking at three-dimensional shape, you know, the form and what it looks like when it's a two-dimensional and then make it a three-dimensional. Not everybody can look at shape or draw shapes or see things in a three-dimensional. So how is 2D versus 3D relating to children's perceptions of things? A lot of time it's like those third-dimensional things. It's like saying time. It's like saying, okay, you know, to a bunch of kindergartens, you have two minutes left before recess. They don't really know what two minutes mean because it's somewhere up in the air. You know, they can't really see it unless you explain. So for example, working with children, how do you help them make a sense of what two minutes is? You could play a song and when you hear this song, you know that two minutes is up. Or you could, you know, like for example, working with my children when they are brushing their teeth and they're rinsing their mouth. I ask them to watch the clock when the red minute goes one round. That is one minute. This is how one minute feels like. You know, so they understand, oh, this is one minute. And children feel that. Children with learning disability or learning difficulty have a very hard time because time is a very abstract concept. You know, it's somewhere out there. How do you tell, you know, 10 to 3? I mean, what does that mean? All of these words that we use are very abstract. It's very complicated for children. So what we really want to do now is to understand how technology can help in the area of helping children with disabilities. So you mentioned 10 things we should look in for a website, in a website, to understand how can this help children with learning disabilities. So can you highlight on each of the items so that people who don't know what they should be looking for can understand and benefit from this? I think it's important that we understand what children with learning difficulty get frustrated with, they get frustrated with things that are cluttered all over the place, a lot of commercial, a lot of instruction, they get very confused. So it's very simple. When you look for a website, you look for what is clear instruction. Very simple, the letters are large enough, they are options for different level. You know, if they want to try something easy first, they're allowed to do that, or they want to challenge themselves, they can go to the next level. You want a website that has a way for them to immediately know their results. Oh, I do this and I get a point. Wow, it even has sound. And those who can read, they can read by themselves, but they also want a website whereby you can click on it. Oh, I can read this word because I forgot this word. It can even pop a picture. There is no one site that I know that has all of this feature. So as a teacher, you have to select them very carefully because you can combine different things and still help them learn so that they're not frustrated. Technology is a tool for them and it's a resource. So if you don't select it correctly, it can become very frustrated. Just like a car can be frustration, it can be an accident, it can be rather than bringing you to where you want to go. So it is a bridge for them to understand things, to reinforce, to teach themselves, to say, oh, I didn't really understood this like I thought, but I can try again. I'm not discouraged because nobody's watching me, I can keep on trying again. So all these are good elements for all teaching, not just children with learning disability. So is it more about the design of the site or is it about the content of the site or both? Well, the good thing is that there are so many things out there that teachers don't have to reinvent the world. If you look at a lesson plan, don't just download the entire lesson plan or download the entire worksheet. It's look at it and say, will a student with learning disability be able to understand this? Is it too much on it? Is the print too small? Is it going to be confusing? Maybe I can enlarge it, and that's the wonderful thing about technology is you can make so many modifications. Don't just download it because it's convenient because it may not work for the children. So final question based on your experience, how did you come to see that technology can motivate children and teachers to overcome learning disabilities for their students? Well, let's face it, all kids no matter whether they are advanced, gifted, or with disability love technology, because it's exciting. Our kids are wired in their mind. They can play games, they can be doing poorly in school, but they can be on the computer playing games. So what exactly entices them? Is it the excitement of the sound? Is it the instantaneous reward that they get? What is it that motivates them? And then they come to school, they have to hear a talk for 30 minutes hearing the teacher talk. It is very boring. So how do you engage them? You have to integrate. The teacher have to be smarter than the kid to know that this is what motivates you and I can captivate you. Is how do I captivate my students? And by selecting the site appropriately, you actually make them want to learn. I want to do my homework because it's so fun rather than, oh gosh, just another worksheet, you know. And likewise, a kid who is gifted goes, I don't want to finish my worksheet faster because then the teacher's gonna give me more worksheet. However, if I finish faster, I get a go on more challenging website. I would love to do that, yeah. Thank you so much for this insightful interview and we wish you best of luck in the conference. Thanks a lot.