Hi!

[ert]

My name is Mette, I'm from Denmark and I work in the Danish Dyscalculia Association - we have an English website at http://www.talblindhed.dk/eng.htm. If you know of any organization like us, please let us know

I also maintain an international dyscalculia forum at http://www.dyscalculiaforum.com

I wish I could understand Dutch, then I could learn more here, it seems to be active.

Renée, thanks for your post in the dyscalculia forum, I hope you will keep coming back from time to time and share what you know

[Renée]

Hei Mette, Hjertelig vilkommen pa forum!

Vi er glad at du fant us her Takk for a registrere.

We sure can share everything we know! It is rather active here, yes. Sometimes hard to keep up with the posts.
I could advice you to learn some Dutch....but maybe to much to ask

If ever you need an answer to a certain question we will try to give you the info in English.
Sébastien can translate his great report into English instead of going to a concert...:p (teasing)

Will start reading at your board as well. We have to make dyscalculia known!

[ert]

Hehe, trying out a little Danish? Cool, I can't say anything in Dutch... The closest thing is GERMAN... and I can only say "ein grosse coca cola"

I've been in The Netherlands though, but that was in... 1994, I think.

How did you manage to make this forum so active? Have you been in the media?

I keep on telling everyone about dyscalculiaforum.com (and the Danish dyscalculia association for that matter, but that's only on Danish sites) but I haven't been able to find a lot of people yet. Okay, the site only opened 2 months ago and there are 60 members, but still... it can only be active with more members.

I'm going to pieeeep some google advertising I think, so people find the site when they read about dyscalculia on other sites. But... my site comes up when you do the google search for dyscalculia on page 2, so google advertising is not enough - people have to know that it exists, they don't now, so they don't search for it...

Sure, get Sébastien to translate the report, I would love to read it

[Renée]

I speak a little Norwegian thats why I could welcome you.....not in Danish yet

This forum became so active because it is well found on the search engines but most of all thanks to all the contributions of the people looking for some info about dyscalculia and responding to it.

Many people need info in English about the subject so I bet your forum will grow fast. And we will send them to you .

I have been on the radio, speaking as a mother. Afterwards they put the url of the website an forum on their pages. I guess that also helped.

Because dyscalculia is a 'hot item' we start finding eachother on the internet. Thats how Sébastien found this forum and he has done great contributions to it. Especially in a scientific sense. He added some great info.

If there a items you are interested in or can read more or less (the titles), I can try to translate some.

The meta of your Forum looks ok to me, just give it time to get known. It can take a few months. You are on www.dyscalculie.org and www.dyscalculie.pagina.nl now.....Hope that helps as well.

Mannen min og jeg skal reise til Kobenhavn i September...kanskje vi kan mote. Du kan tenke pa det . Vi kan snakke om dyscalculie og tenke om hvordan vi kan ga sammen med det. Hvis du vil det......

I think its handy you can order a big coke in Germany

[Sébastien]

Haha, lol

Well, it took me about 9 month to write my report in Dutch, including searching for the right information.
Last year I showed it to my French family members, and they allready asked me to translate it.
But my French and my English just isn't at that level as my Dutch, so it will take 'ages' before the translation will be ready

So unfortunatly no translation, but feel free to ask everything about dyscalculia, and i'll try to answer all questions

[Renée]

We could give it a try.....just translate the main issues?
Will keep us from the streets.....lol

[ert]

Sébastien, I have read A LOT about dyscalculia, so it's just curiosity :)

Renee, well Norwegian is almost Danish :p

By the way, we have a lot of info on the Danish version, http://www.talblindhed.dk , so if you can understand Norwegian try it out. Also, check out a Norwegian site at http://www.dyskalkuli.net !

The dyscalculia association has been in the media a lot since 2001, but not enough yet. I was in the News May 6th actually, but we only had 2½ minutes of airtime. The dyscalculiaforum.com site has not been mentioned anywhere though.

Thanks for linking :)

I would love to meet you in September! I could bring Christa too; she’s the head of the association. We want to visit people all over the world but we don’t have the money… so Steve Chinn and Brian Butterworth are the only ones we have managed to visit so far. We have emailed with a lot of experts though, to let them know that we exists and that we are looking for organizations like us…

[ert]

Oh, I forgot; do you know any other forums or groups? It could be dyscalculia forums or learning disorder forums in general, any language. I'm always looking for them, it's hard to find though... When it comes to dyscalculia, I know these (they are all kind of dead);

http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/dyscalculia/

http://www.care2.com/c2c/group/dyscalculia

http://www.thereses.net/dyskalkuli/forum/

http://www.livejournal.com/community/dyscalculia/

[Renée]

I would love to meet you in September! I could bring Christa too; she’s the head of the association.

That would be just great. Will inform you as soon as I have the details of the trip. Will depend on hubby.

Thanks for the links. I will try to study them this weekend....I am hopeless behind in reading, let alone in dyscalculia reading. I need a vacation to read!

The Scandinavian countries seem to do very well in learning disabilities. Kids get tests or how are they looked after at school? There are special schools for kids with learing disabilities, or are they at normal schools with extra care? It would be nice if you could tell us a bit of how kids with dyslexia or dyscalculia are treated "up there" .

[ert]

We are planning a national event to bring awareness from September 1 to 3, so if it is one of those days you would have to meet us in the streets when we hand out flyers – or join us :p

I’m also behind in reading, always. I guess I just can’t learn everything at once.

It’s not possible to get proper diagnosing here. So no, the kids aren’t getting diagnosed. And the teachers don’t know or acknowledge that there’s a problem, that dyscalculia exists. Students everywhere get the “you can if you want to”, “you’re lazy”, etc. And new teachers aren’t being taught about dyscalculia in school, even though dyslexia gets lots of time at the teacher-schools.

Dyslexia is a normal problem here; there are even dyslexia schools. And in normal schools (including up to university) there are courses, classes, extra help and support for dyslexics.

It’s almost the same in Sweden and Norway, except that they actually have dyscalculia experts and they make studies and try to help students out. But it’s still extremely unknown. Finland I don’t know a lot about, I can’t understand their language so I can’t read about finish stuff. I know that they are very… obsessive about schools, getting an education, in Finland – and that there has been done studies. Also, we have been contacted by a lot of Finnish teachers who had questions about the association and wanted to visit us (hasn't happened yet). But that’s all.

[Renée]

On the barricades!
I will be there a little later...but we can re-flyer then (new word).

So you and we are in the same position, make it known, getting it accepted and get the same features as the dyslectic.
A long way to go, but we will get there.
Diagnosing kids just started here. But the tests aren't 100% yet.
There are tests available, maybe Sébastien knows some English tests.

I like your avatar

[ert]

Hehe, re-flyer, I like it

What tests are being used there? We only have WISC III, and the psychologist that does the screening don't tell people that it's a test for kids. And it's really expensive, 500 us dollars, and it's illegal to use it to get help in school or at work if you are an adult... so we can't really send people to that person... So sad. Especially since WISC III has an adult version, WAIS.

But, still, WISC III and WAIS are not extremely good screening methods FOR DYSCALCULIA. But then AGAIN, there's not a good method anywhere in the world, what I know of.

(WAIS; http://www.wilderdom.com/personality/in ... SWISC.html
WISC; http://alpha.fdu.edu/psychology/WISC-II ... ition_.htm )

[Sébastien]

In Belgium there came out an booklet with all the tests used in the Netherlands and Belgium. However there aren't plenty of tests, there are sufficient tests to do already a proper diagnose. Of course only a psychologist or a academic qualified educationist are able to make a good diagnose and may tell if we can speak of dyscalculia or not.
Most of the test are also suitable for Remedial Teachers and even (math)teachers, but for them it should only be used as a tool to help children with their (specific) problem in math.

In my 'report' I talked about these following tests. I just mentioned that they exist, with a little explanation. It was then not my purpose to discribe those tests at large.
- The Number Square Test
- The Number Triangle Test
- The Rey-Osterrieth' Complex Figure Test
- WISC III
- Kalkulia II, III
- Key Math Diagnostic Test
- Stanford Diagnostic Test
- Wide Range Achievement Test

And of course the last test of Prof. Butterworth "Dyscalculia screener" came out, in february 2003.

What tests are being used there? We only have WISC III, and the psychologist that does the screening don't tell people that it's a test for kids. And it's really expensive, 500 us dollars, and it's illegal to use it to get help in school or at work if you are an adult... so we can't really send people to that person... So sad. Especially since WISC III has an adult version, WAIS.

Well, here in the Netherlands it is allmost as expensive (but then we talk about Euro's ). I never heard over here that there was a problem diagnosing people with 'unappropriate' tests, but I am not a specialist of that.

[ert]

Thanks Sebastién, I'll look those up one of these days

Are any of them especially targeted at diagnosing dyscalculia?

[Sébastien]

The information of those tests I found at the great site: www.dyscalculia.org. Especialy http://www.dyscalculia.org/Edu502.html
The 'stupid' thing with that site is, that the information is great, but the site itself is far not attractive! No one will read such large texts on the internet.

Actually you should read those articles. I put them for myself in a Word document and printed them out! You can download my English files at: http://sebastien.brunekreef.com/dyscalc ... tanden.zip
and just read those with the title:
- Dyscalculie (van R. Newman)
- Dyscalculie (van R. Newman2)

Of course you can check the other files: some are interesting, other not.