I first came across Toni from an article that I read in Minority Nurse. Toni had been writing about the successes and challenges of dyslexia and the nursing profession. I was impressed by the tenacity Toni showed when on her circuitous path through an accelerated...
Creating An Environment That Works [Premium]
Sunlight, air, water, nutrients…we know these are the things that allow plants to grow and flourish, but what are the same essential factors for dyslexic students or employees? FLEXIBILITY AND SOME CREATIVITY Good environments for dyslexics tend to be those that have some flexibility. Flexibility might take the form of how you may choose to do something vs. the standard way. In college, it might mean a reduced course load when taking difficult subjects, or at work, it might be focusing on project quality and program execution more than hours logged. The classic “bad job” for a dyslexic is work that is assembly-line, repetitive, and lock-step. Sometimes the dilemma is how to get to the good flexible jobs when you’re just starting out […]
Dyslexic Talents: Team Building and Software Design [Premium]
“I was dyslexic – I couldn’t read. My father was an engineer, so I grew up thinking I was like him, but I was actually intellectually more like my mother. They were both smart people.” — Jim Keller, past VP Engineering at Apple and Tesla, Senior VP at Intel, and CTO and President of Tensetorrent When it comes to talking about dyslexic talent, strengths in problem solving and team building often get mentioned. If such things get mentioned in school age children or even college students, it doesn’t truly capture what these strengths might involve when at their full powers in people at the top of their professions. Jim Keller is not a household name like Steve Jobs or Elon Musk, but in […]
Careers Advice: From Fellow Dyslexics
As things are opening up again, many will consider what they really want from their careers. If you haven't taken our job survey before, please consider doing it HERE. It is for dyslexic adults only. Here is the sampling of jobs from...
Apps for Productivity and Organization [Premium]
How about apps for productivity and organization? Here are useful ones you can try. ToDoist is a popular to do list that is integrated with email, IFTTT, Dropbox, and Slack. It is free – premium and available on iOS and Android. For some people, free Google Calendar is sufficient. Just remember to set up your calendar notifications and Google Tasks (iOS and Android). Just Press Record $4.99 iOS I use this app all the time to record – just a big red button and store audio recordings to the cloud. With a recent update, this app has also added free transcriptions. It’s not perfect (probably Otter.ai is more accurate, but it’s great to be free and definitely helps searching through […]
Tech Executive Justin Johnson [Premium]
“One of the things I love about startups is I get to engage the strategic thinking part of my brain across a broad set of things…” John Edgar introduced me to Justin from Macrometa and he shared his career and dyslexia story with me: “What I do now is, I work in a very early stage startup. So I do a lot of different things. Part of it’s visual, I manage user experience. With UX UI, or Developer Console, our company is kind of like cloud computing, like Amazon Web Services. We just have a little different play on it, where we do a lot of similar things to what Amazon does, we just do it all distributed across multiple locations, and we manage […]
Inspiration: Dyslexia At Oxford
This is an extraordinary collection of 21 interviews of people at Oxford. We should never underestimate the potential of people with dyslexia. The talents,...
Dyslexics Better at Landscape Memory
In a recent issue of the journal, Dyslexia, there's an interesting little paper entitled The Effect of Landscape Photograph Type on Aesthetic Judgements, Attention, and Memory of Children with Dyslexia. Interestingly, "both groups recognized all photograph types at a...
Founder of Alaska Alchemy Orthotics & Prosthetics
"I wouldn't have made it through school if it wasn't for shop class." - Wil Sundberg, Owner Alchemy Orthotics & Prosthetics I first learned about Wil Sunderland in a news article about Alaska's struggles to identify dyslexic students. Wil is founder of Alchemy...
Women in STEM: Kim Mann
Kim Mann is a software architect, and she might not have found her career path if a 9th grade geometry teacher hadn't decided to allow Kim to solve problems her own way. Up until this point, Kim had always been penalized for using her own ways of solving a problem...
Breaking Research : Dyslexia in Adolescents and Adults [Premium]
An important paper was published this month from the University of Washington, entitled “Evidence-Based Reading and Writing Assessment for Dyslexia in Adolescents and Young Adults.” The paper is especially important guiding testing professionals who assess teens and adults for dyslexia or see gifted or twice-exceptional students. This paper also takes a more systematic look at the roles of individual factors like working memory and executive function on dyslexia and reading and spelling performance. The data will be helpful in targeting educational interventions and can also guide requests for testing accommodations. There are interesting observations too in that paper that will help with characterizing the strengths that occur among adolescent and adult dyslexics, with implications for twice-exceptional or gifted students with dyslexia. In several areas, adolescent / adult […]
The Visual Life of Photographer CLARK JAMES MISHLER
"I believe that not being able to read has offered me some fabulous opportunities to see the world differently. " Clark Mishler Clark Mishler is one of the most sought-after photographers in Alaska and one of the top assignment photographers in the country. Thanks to...