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Lars Liden and Chris Whalen, Co-Founders of TeachTown
Tags:Innovators, Profiles |
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Inquiries: http://web.teachtown.com/ |
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Lars Liden |
Chris Whalen |
The Company, People, and Technology
Chris Whalen, a licensed psychologist and board certified behavior analyst, co-founded TeachTown with Lars Liden when she noted a dearth of software supports for children with autism. Lars has a background in cognitive and neural systems, develops artificial intelligence systems, and is a co-designer of TeachTown.
TeachTown is a system incorporating therapeutic curriculum aimed at this and other populations developmentally aged 2-7. TeachTown builds receptive language, cognitive and academic abilities. Additionally, it teaches social interaction skills such as comprehending facial expressions and eye gaze and developing friendship skills. TeachTown derives from scientific principles embedded in Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA), and is delivered with interactive computer-based activities as well as parallel off-computer materials designed to help generalize concepts into real-world contexts. The system is not designed to substitute for human-delivered clinical support in ABA, but is targeted at substantial gaps in clinical service delivery that result in long waiting periods and therapeutic regimes that dramatically lag the National Research Council’s recommendations of 25 hours per week, as Chris explains.
TeachTown also allows non-clinicians to successfully support clinical practices. Questionnaires and interactivity permit the system to estimate the learner’s abilities and adapt and deliver customized content over time.
Unique Aspects of the Technology
Lars indicates that the company is comprised of people with “vested interests” and has brought on an impressive community of science advisors. Lars continues, “I got interested because I have a sister who has a brain injury due to chicken pox when she was nine, so I grew up in the special needs community.” The VP for sales and the primary PR professional have children “on the spectrum,” while the graphic designer of reward games has two children with special needs. This designer tests products with his children, providing useful design feedback.
On Collaboration
TeachTown is unique in that it keeps collaboration at the heart of use and learning.
Science, Research, and Data
While many product developers are not yet feeling strong pressure to show evidence of effectiveness, Chris indicates that purchasers – large insurance companies, prestigious clinics, and school districts - are presenting “a very big demand for research” in this domain. TeachTown’s efficacy studies are an ongoing initiative to respond to the demand. She differentiates TeachTown from other methods and products: “Most of these children don’t respond well to traditional teaching techniques even though they have the potential to learn. ABA involves using principles of reward to ‘shape-up’ behaviors. We present the information visually and without social demands that are stressful to children with autism.” Approximations of the target behavior are rewarded, and the behavior becomes elaborated over time until correctness in socially important contexts is achieved.
Chris indicates that a study has shown that children with “Down’s Syndrome did just as well with the structured environment that moves them along in terms of what they learned.” She says that the program is often purchased for autistic kids, and “typically developing siblings like it and are helped by it.” There are suppositions that children with language delays, limited English proficiency, or who need support with early reading should learn language well from “the visual pairing which is a fast way for kids to make connections,” in TeachTown. Documentation of their research is posted online.
Knowing Users And User Requirements
Lars says, “One of the challenges we have as a technology company is that many school districts and parents are running older computers and many have dial-up connections. We decided not to be an internet-based only model, placing the software and images on the computer. We’re trying to provide the best technology possible while being as backwards compatible as possible – we provide ways people can shrink the screen, for instance, so that they use less memory. We connect to the Internet to share data, but you don’t need a high-speed connection.”
On Design
The system incorporates insightful and unique user interface features, including one that prevents children from obtaining reinforcement from operating features. Lars indicates, “Children with autism often tend to self-stimulate, or ‘stim.’ When the child rolls over an item and it highlights to show it’s ‘clickable,’ you can imagine the child might stim by rolling the mouse on and off to make it flash over and over. In TeachTown, the highlight gradually decreases until that button no longer highlights.” Similarly, the system is congruent with research in remaining silent when an incorrect response is provided, since children could potentially be stimulated by this: “The best thing to do is just be quiet, and show them the right answer.”
Changing Perspectives
TeachTown offers tools that allow persons without technical expertise to create tailored lessons that will operate on the platform. This feature is presently available only to internal personnel, but eventually should allow content sharing by subscribers, creating the opportunity for substantial expandability and creativity.
Funding and Capital
Lars describes how TeachTown got started, saying, “We entered a business plan competition at the University of Washington - we won best social venture for that. Then we got our initial kick-off with an SBIR grant from the Department of Education.” Chris adds that just recently the company has obtained another grant that will permit the development of curriculum for children who are developmentally older, “For grades 2 through 5 and for children with Asperger’s Syndrome and others. We’ll be teaching executive functioning skills.”
Reader Comments
stacy rush on June 15, 2007 at 3:20 pm EDTIt is so exciting to read about technology developed and “tested” by those personally involved in the special needs community. Is Teach Town appropriate only if the child is involved in an ABA program at his/her school, or are there stand alone components of the program that would be effective if the child were not involved in an ABA program, but in a less structured behavior management program? Is Teach Town designed in such a way that IEP goals could be developed around its delivery system?
Technology is such an attractive and successful tool for some students with autism, and I am delighted that care has been taken to avoid some of the pitfalls of this attraction. I am equally impressed to read that there has been an effort made to offer opportunities for generalization into social contexts of skills learned through this progarm.
RollTide Man on June 15, 2007 at 4:11 pm EDTI just stumbled into TeachTown and could not resist posting a comment. This format is a great integration of technology and ABA methodolody. My hope is that we will not forget that our learners have individual aspirations that may just show up if we let them have unbridled access to technology. I am currently looking at qualitative procedures to better represent learners with disabilities. From some interactions with caregivers, including parents, I have noted that the caregiver tends to have a distinct understanding of learner needs, sometimes so distinct, it does not match with the learner.
Is anyone out there that has a sense of what I am talking about? I need some affirmation that others have encountered disparity in wishes, desires, aspirations of special needs learners and the adults that deliver instruction and life to the learner.
Hit me!
TeachTownCSO on June 19, 2007 at 7:19 pm EDTI think that you raise an excellent point and that anyone starting a new intervention of any kind needs to closely examine the individual needs of the child. Also, I think it is very important for those developing new technologies to do the following:
1) Don’t re-invent the wheel, use proven scientific methods for teaching.
2) Provide room for individualization within the technology (e.g. TeachTown automatically adjusts to each child’s performance and individualizes the curriculum to meet the individual child’s needs. This addresses your point about how important it is to make sure that the intervention matches the child (AND the wishes of the caregivers!).
3) Continuously seek feedback from consumers - this addresses your point about professionals needing to listen to the needs and desires of the parents and also the children (i.e. the child should be learning and enjoying it and there should be data to support the child’s success). At TeachTown, our development decisions are literally made by our parents, teachers, clinicians, and researchers using the program.
4) Conduct experimental research to identify effective aspects of the technology
TeachTownCSO on June 19, 2007 at 7:23 pm EDTStacy:
Although TeachTown fits in nicely to an existing ABA program, many of our customers use the program without an additional ABA program. For instance, some of our biggest success stories are in school districts and speech-language clinics. This program can be very effective as a supplement to an ABA or developmental program (e.g. RDI, SCERTS, Floortime). The program also works well on its own when other options are not available. In these cases, I strongly advise that the parents and schools print out and do the naturalistic off-computer activities to help with generalization and mastery of the concepts taught in the software.
I hope this helps!
-Christina Whalen, PhD, BCBA
TeachTown Chief Science Officer
