Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, Gelsenkirchen Local Edition

The school counseling center has been offering the computer program “Richtig Lesen Lernen” (Learning to Read Correctly) from the publisher celeco since the beginning of the year. The goal is to treat dyslexia in children in grades three through five.

The first step is to assess the student’s reading skills. For 250 milliseconds, several letters flash on the screen, which the student must identify simultaneously. “To read fluently, a child must be able to recognize at least four letters at once,” says Jörg Michael Thurm, a psychologist at the school counseling center. If this is not the case, the solution is: practice, practice, practice. Students should then spend 15 minutes a day drilling the computer-based exercises with the flashing letters. “By the fourth week, learning success is already evident,” Thurm is certain. The software was developed by Munich-based medical psychologist Reinhard Werth. Diagnosis, counseling, and therapy are free of charge.

Excerpt from the press release issued by the IB&M Institute for Education and Media on June 20, 2013

Multimedia innovations in Europe

Comenius-EduMedia Awards 2013 for exemplary ICT*-based educational media in Berlin

On June 20, 2013, the most prestigious German and European awards for exemplary ICT*-based educational media were presented in Berlin. For the 18th time, numerous publishers, media producers, and educational institutions from Germany and Europe accepted the invitation of the Society for Pedagogy and Information (GPI) to attend the ceremony in Berlin.
With the Comenius-EduMedia awards, the GPI promotes ICT-based educational media that are particularly valuable in terms of pedagogy, content, and design: didactic multimedia products (DMP), general multimedia products (AMP), teaching and learning management systems (LMS), and computer games with competence-promoting potential (CKP). Even after eighteen years, the focus remains on educational content and didactic and methodological aspects. The decisions are made by an international jury of media experts from ten European countries. The jury’s decisions are made after scientific evaluation in a manufacturer-neutral assessment process based on the quality criteria of the GPI’s Institute for Education and Media. […]

ICT = Information and Communication Technology

Our software Richtig Schreiben Lernen was awarded a Comenius EduMedia Seal during the event.

Comenius EduMedia Award Ceremony 2015

Excerpt from the press release issued by the IB&M– Institute for Education and Media on June 25, 2015

Digital innovations in Europe

 

20 Years of the Comenius Award Ceremony

On June 25, 2015, the most prestigious German and European awards for exemplary ICT-based educational media were presented at a ceremony in Berlin entitled
“20 Years of the Comenius Award – Digital Innovations in Europe.”
This For the 20th time this year, more than 200 publishers, media producers, and educational institutions from Germany and Europe accepted the invitation of the Society for Pedagogy, Information, and Media (GPI) to Berlin. In the 20 years of the Comenius Award, almost 3,000 educational media from over 30 countries have been evaluated and awarded.
With the Comenius EduMedia Awards, the GPI promotes ICT-based educational media that are particularly valuable in terms of pedagogy, content, and
design: didactic multimedia products (DMP), general multimedia products (AMP), teaching and learning management systems (LMS), and computer games with competence-promoting potential (CKP). Even after twenty years, the focus remains on pedagogical content and didactic-methodological aspects. […]

Our software Richtig Lesen Lernen (Learning The Right Way) was awarded a Comenius EduMedia seal during the event.

 

Gehirn&Geist, July/August 2008

A new method first analyses the biological cause of children with reading difficulties and then designs an individually tailored treatment programme using a computer. With success: a quarter of an hour’s training reduces reading errors by almost two thirds.

Kevin’s mum was overjoyed: “I’ve been going from one therapy to the next with the boy for three years now and nothing has helped. With you, he reads after just one hour. How can that be?” Quite simply – unlike most dyslexia treatments, the new approach uncovers the psychobiological causes of the reading disorder instead of subjecting the children to a standard treatment across the board …

You can access the full article here.

(Published by Spektrum der Wissenschaft Verlag)

Translated by celeco

Psychology Today (Psychologie Heute)

A computer programme helps dyslexics achieve success quickly

The television breaks down in the middle of the most exciting scene. The picture is black, nothing works. The TV mechanic arrives, takes it apart and thinks about what the problem could be. He checks the fuses, measures the cables and replaces the broken module. The television works again. Reinhard Werth from the Institute of Social Paediatrics and Adolescent Medicine at the University of Munich says that a similar approach can be used to treat “reading and spelling difficulties” – formerly known as dyslexia – and that it can be just as effective. As soon as the correct cause has been found – the defective module has been discovered, so to speak – children can immediately read without errors. That is the promise of the neuropsychologist. He has developed a computer programme which he uses for therapy and diagnosis and which is also available to buy. Until now, dyslexia has been diagnosed using specially developed standardised test procedures and compensated for with speech therapy exercises. This means that there are lots of extra lessons in which the child has to memorise the correct rules for writing and speaking. The problem with this is that all dyslexics receive the same treatment. Individual differences are not taken into account. This is where Reinhard Werth comes in. For the Munich-based medical psychologist, there is no such thing as a dyslexic. For him, reading is the result of numerous brain functions. The various regions responsible for reading are spread across large areas of the brain. Reading is possible when the brain is able to bring these different areas together in an organised way. However, if one or more of these brain functions or their coordination is impaired, reading problems can arise. To identify the areas in which there are coordination or reception difficulties, Werth proceeds in the same way as the television mechanic. He looks for the defective module. To do this, he uses a computer programme he developed himself called celeco. This programme contains exercises that systematically identify sources of interference. Werth has been able to identify 14 major subgroups of reading disorders, such as the “dyslexic who pronounces too early”. Normally, when we read, we do not let our gaze flow from one letter to the next, but focus on an entire word or word segment. The sequence of sounds and their meaning associated with the sequence of letters we see are recalled in the brain, and then we make a jump in our gaze. The recall time for children aged seven years is a maximum of 300 milliseconds. A dyslexic child who pronounces “too early” needs several seconds to do this. If it tries to read faster, the brain cannot search long enough for the correct word in its memory. So the child guesses – and gets an F in reading. To check whether a child is a “dyslexic who pronounces too early”, Werth gives the child individual words to read on the monitor. First, the word is shown for 200 milliseconds. If the child reads the word incorrectly, Werth adds a signal to the word, which only sounds after several seconds. Only after hearing the signal is the child allowed to say the word aloud. In many cases, the child can read without mistakes for the first time in their life at this speed. Werth then reduces the waiting time until the signal at which the child begins to make mistakes. This gives him a benchmark that can be three or more seconds for a “dyslexic who pronounces too early”. This means that this child can read without errors if it takes at least three seconds for each word or segment. Werth has therefore quickly found the defective module and can swap it for a functioning one, namely a longer retrieval time. The child now has to practise the new reading behaviour. They should first internalise their individual retrieval time and then gradually reduce it. To do this, they are given the exercise with their individual retrieval time on a USB stick to take home with them. Further sessions with the therapist take place at regular intervals, during which the recall time is gradually reduced. Werth’s experience with many of the dyslexics he treats is that with daily practice of around 15 minutes, the child can read fluently and without errors in three months, even without a computer programme. “It may be a slow reader, but it will learn to read and understand without errors,” explains Werth. Another subgroup are “spelling dyslexics”. Many children labelled as dyslexic have considerable difficulty making the transition from reading letters to reading words. This means that the child can read individual letters correctly, but the moment the individual letters come together to form a complete word, the child is unable to read the word.

Psychologie heute Magazine

Translated by celeco

GEO 9/2002

Thanks to new, customisable software, dyslexics should learn to read more easily.

They either read haltingly and incorrectly or fluently without understanding what they are reading: Around 10 per cent of primary school pupils in the German-speaking world lag well behind the class average in their reading ability. The diagnosis is often dyslexia.

However, according to neuropsychologist Reinhard Werth from the Institute of Social Paediatrics and Adolescent Medicine at the University of Munich, such reading difficulties are not irreversible. He has recently started treating his young patients with software that he developed together with the Munich-based company celeco. This not only enables him to identify the cause of the reading difficulties, but also to treat them in a targeted manner.

For a long time, dyslexia was considered to be a disorder of the relevant area of the brain. For Werth, however, “the reading process is a complex network that requires many individual tasks – from the image capture on the retina of the eye to its processing in the brain”. And a lot can go wrong along the way.

After all, human visual functions are not exactly ideal for reading. This is because optimum visual acuity is only achieved at a single point on the retina – at the fovea, which is around 1.5 millimetres in size. The eyes must therefore fixate the word to be read precisely in its centre area. However, if the image of the word on the retina is shifted by just a few millimetres due to misalignment of the eyes, it can no longer be read correctly. According to Werth, this could be one of the causes of dyslexia.

However, as Werth has observed, some children simply do not look correctly when reading. As a result, their gaze either misses the word or it is only looked at so briefly that its meaning cannot be grasped.

This is where Werth’s software can help: It trains pupils to fixate on each word segment long enough. Letters or word segments are shown on the monitor in periods of 100 to 500 milliseconds – depending on the child’s receptivity. If it takes too long to grasp words, this ability can be treated through training in which the time intervals are gradually shortened.

Others jump around too much while reading: the eyes skim over several letters of the word. For example, Thursday becomes Thursday. In this case, the software presents a text in which the word segment to be read is highlighted in colour. The highlighting jumps from one word segment to the next and thus determines the size of the eye jumps. To ensure that the reader is not distracted by the rest of the text when reading a word, this is only faintly visible.

Some patients, on the other hand, spell out every word. The programme then helps them to learn to combine the individual characters into a segment. To do this, words or word segments appear on the monitor for less than 250 milliseconds – a seven-year-old can easily recognise a word in this time. The short presentation time prevents the children from looking at letter by letter, forcing them to recognise whole words.

According to Reinhard Werth, the programme can be used individually – and “with the right motivation and about ten minutes of concentrated practice per day, reading skills can be significantly improved after less than three months”

GEO Magazine

Translated by celeco

Buersche Zeitung, 11 March 2005 Number 59

School counselling centre: remedying girls’ and boys’ reading weaknesses

“The boys and girls either read haltingly and incorrectly or they read fluently without understanding anything,” says Dr Jürg-Michael Thurm from the school psychology advice centre on Auf dem Bettau Street. “Around ten per cent of schoolchildren fall behind the class average.”

The diagnosis is often dyslexia. But there are ways to remedy this so-called reading weakness.

One of these tools is the software developed by a neuropsychologist together with the Munich-based company celeco. This not only makes it possible to identify the cause of the reading weakness, but also to treat it in a targeted manner. Dr Thurm: “The school counselling centre can tailor the new learning programmes to the individual child. The customised software is available free of charge for the children in our care.” After a 20-minute session in which the psychologist identifies the deficit, the girl or boy is given their homework. As a rule, the programme is aimed at third and fourth graders. “But with the programme, we also help schoolchildren up to the fifth and sixth grades:” So what used to be explored with pencil and paper can now be recognised on the screen. The programme involves reading and eye movements, eye movements and letter recognition. This is because some children do not look at the text properly when reading. Dr Thurm: “As a result, they either miss the word or look at it so briefly that the child doesn’t grasp the meaning.” This is where the software helps. The pupils learn to look at each word segment long enough, in periods of 100 to 500 milliseconds on the monitor – depending on the child’s receptivity. If it takes too long to grasp words, the ability can be treated through training in which the time intervals are gradually shortened. The advice centre has already been working with the new software for some time – “with quite good success”, as Dr Thurm noted.

Rainer Wagner

Translated by celeco

GEO 12/2002

GEOskop No. 9/2002 reported on a new software programme to help dyslexics: “When the eye slips”. We have been using the “celeco” software programme presented in GEO with great success for three months now. For four years we had previously practised reading daily with our son, who is now ten and a half years old. Unfortunately without any significant success. Ever since he was diagnosed with a reading disorder, he had been undergoing dyslexia therapy. Only a new, highly qualified German teacher recognised the exact cause and recommended the programme to us. In our opinion, “celeco” is an excellent reading learning programme that will certainly help many more children – and adults – to learn to read not only confidently but also quickly.

Christina Blahusch (via e-mail)

Translated by celeco

Deutsche Apothekerzeitung 142nd volume 25.04.2002 No. 17

Neuropsychologist Reinhard Werth from the Institute of Social Paediatrics and Adolescent Medicine at the LMU Munich has developed a learning programme to combat dyslexia. Schoolchildren affected by reading difficulties can be treated individually on the computer. Werth originally used the method of visual field determination to treat children who had problems seeing due to brain disorders.

Reading is a complex process in which the brain has to perform various tasks: the fixation of a part of a word, the recognition of letters, words and word segments, as well as the gaze jump to the next part of a word. In all of these processes, errors in brain function can occur, which then lead to reading difficulties, known as dyslexia. With the help of various reading exercises and lots of training, it is usually possible to compensate for the weakness, but this is not easy for the children affected. Perhaps the computer will be able to help them with reading in future. The learning programme developed by Werth was designed in such a way that all possible phenomena can be dealt with. The neuropsychologist first uses the computer-assisted learning and diagnostic programme to investigate the individual reason for a child’s reading difficulties.

When “Thursday” becomes “Thursday” The programme can display letters, word segments and whole words in such a way that the cause of a reading disorder can be identified. The cursor shows the children where or what they should be reading. A common cause of dyslexia is, for example, excessive eye jumps over ten letters, says Werth. This causes the reader to make a big leap with their eyes to the next word segment, which means they can no longer see some letters. “For example, instead of Thursday, they only read Thursday,” explains the neuropsychologist. The programme can be used to train away this disorder by marking the text to be read in colour and making the following word segments on the right only faintly visible. Over time, the contrast on the right is then increased and the word segment becomes increasingly easier to read. “The effect of the learning programme varies,” says Werth. In difficult cases, the children need six months to see a positive effect. For some, however, half an hour is enough.

Translated by celeco

Münchner LehrerZeitung 1/2002

In the presentation “Dyslexia and other reading disorders. A new diagnosis and therapy programme”, which was presented at the German conference of the BLLV’s vocational science department on 8 December 2001, the speaker, Dr. Dr. Reinhard Werth, who works in Munich, explained where and how reading deficiencies can be identified from a medical point of view and which therapies can be used as countermeasures. The first prerequisite for reading is recognising or knowing letters, segments and/or words. Fluent reading consists of a sequence of fixation phases and gaze jumps during which visual performance is continuously switched on and off. In order to read a word, a sequence of sounds must be associated with the word segment/word. We must be able to memorise the sounds and sound sequences associated with letters and letter combinations and, at the moment of reading, be able to retrieve what is stored in our memory quickly and without errors. In addition, the meaning of words and sentences must also be recalled or recognised from memory.

1. fixation

A pupil (and adults too) reads in stages. This sequence of stages is tripartite. Werth said that reading deficits can occur during each stage. A narrowing of attention in the search for the fixation point results in some children, for example, with increasing distance from the fixation point.

2. Segment/word recognition

Many of those affected can read individual letters on their own, but no longer recognise the same letters if they are masked. However, this is always the case when reading a word segment or a word.

3. Gaze jump

Measurements at the third stage, the “gaze jump”, normally result in a rhythmic jump curve. This sometimes looks very different in children with deficits. In these children, the eye jumps uncoordinated from left to right and the gaze does not move normally to the right. Incidentally, all reading deficits are closely linked to hyperactivity and ADD (attention deficit disorder), noted Werth. Parents, teachers or therapists can localise the deficits relatively easily using a PC test. Werth describes the core of his therapy programme as follows: “Reading must then be targeted at the specific point in the sequence of stages. But beware of incorrect diagnoses or overlooked reading errors! Reading errors are also systematically trained!

The software is available on the Internet at www.celeco.de info@.celeco.de. Here you will also find further information on the subject.

Heinz Preß

Translated by celeco