ILS - Integrated Listening System, or Incomprehensible Little Secrets...

Lately, oh, and by the by, I am back to my favourite field of Assistive Technology after about eight months of doing Special Education Advocacy, and my conclusion? Computers are way more compliant than school districts in the Inland Empire.

Anyway, the latest and hottest news for Autistic treatments seemed to be something called Integrated Listening System, from a strictly technical standpoint, the whole thing appears to be a glorified MP3 player. But some school districts seem to swear by it, and if it is good enough for the Californian school districts, it may be good enough for me. Convincing our executive director to spend $1750. 00 of AB 204 money on an mp3 player will be no small feat, and I don't think if "it's good enough for the school districts, it's good enough for me" argument is going to fly anywhere, so it's time to do some digging.

What's surprising about the system has been that other than the officially sanctioned testimonies and research articles, shockingly little is known. That does not go well with my stereotypical notion of American public, usually when something does not work, the allegation of fraud and scam fly off the roof, and god forbid, civil lawsuits. So, looking at it from this angle, no negative publicity equals good publicity. On the other hands, if something is working really well, the counterfeiters in other countries would jump on it. I don't see that either. There are tons (gigabytes) of therapeutic listening CDs on Amazon, no integrated listening system, not even a sample. So we are left with little more than informerciously (yay, I invented a new word) miraculous testimonies, and the fact that some school districts are using it.

So if you guys know something, anything, about the efficacy of the seemingly glorified mp3 player, I need to know if it helps you or your child, with what degree did it help, or better yet, if you live in Riverside, write a letter to our executive director and tell him that you want to use one in our lab, save me a lot of written justification.

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