The Listening To Learn Guild’s Annual Luncheon was a great success with over 80 people in attendance.  The luncheon’s keynote speaker, Dr. Eric Tridas, FAAP,  of the Tridas Center for Child Development,  spoke at the Cherry Hills Country Club.  Dr. Tridas discussed a variety of learning differences with an emphasis on how information is received, processed, and outputted from the brain.  Dr. Tridas gave many analogies to explain what individuals with learning differences experience everyday.  His words are paraphrased below:

“Attention is like a guard on a road with a gate.  The guard must attend to when the gate needs to be moved up or down to let the traffic pass.  Sometimes the guard does not notice that traffic is backing up since the gate is down.  Once he realizes that traffic has backed up, he can raise the gate.”

“The brain is like a large multi-lane highway, with 10 to  12 lanes for traffic.  Processing speed is a like having a speed limit sign that prohibits one from going faster or using all the lanes of traffic.  Therefore, traffic gets backed up.”

Although he spoke about a challenging physiological topic, Dr. Tridas did so in a simplified manner, making it easy for parents and educators to understand.  Attendees got to hear from two students about what piece of assistive technology works for them and how they use it in the classroom and at home.    It was a very nice perspective to hear from these young gentlemen.  Their top choices were the mp3 player for Learning Ally/RFBD audio-books, the VictorStream by Humanware and the Livescribe pen by Echo.

The Guild is grateful to everyone who attended the event and supported the mission to raise funds for assistive technology in schools.  Stay connected with the Guild by signing up on our e-mail list.  Visit our webpage often to learn of events, new resources, and workshops  in the area.