TAGteach Nominated for SuperNova Award for Use of Gabitat Social Team Software

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TAGteach International is proud to announce that it has been selected as a finalist in the SuperNova Awards, sponsored by Constellation Research. The finalists were selected from a pool of over 220 applicants, and recognized by the SuperNova Award Judges as exceptional examples of those who embody the SuperNova Award spirit to innovate and overcome the odds in successfully applying emerging and disruptive technologies within their organizations. The winners of the SuperNova Awards will be announced at the SuperNova Awards gala dinner on October 30, 2013 in Half Moon Bay, California. Applicants were subjected to a vigorous set of criteria that reflect real-world and pragmatic experience.

"We've been very impressed with the quality of this year's SuperNova Awards finalists. The individual and companies who have been selected truly buck the trend and show disruption," said R "Ray" Wang, principal analyst and CEO of Constellation Research, Inc.

TAGteach International is a finalist in the category, The Future of Work, for using the new social team software, Gabitat in publishing and marketing its book: Chaos to Calm: Discovering Solutions to the Everyday Problems of Living with Autism. Gabitat allowed the team scattered across North America in three time zones to work together efficiently, share documents using Box, track tasks using Asana, share and edit Google docs, and communicate using a central discussion area, all from within a single user interface.

"Overall, I don't see how we could have done this project and taken a manuscript from draft from to published book in the time we did without Gabitat. There were no problems with losing documents or data; there were no system crashes. It was reliable, convenient and easy to use", said author Martha Gabler.

Public voting continues until Oct 9, 2013 and will contribute 30% toward the final decision, with judging by a panel contributing 70%.

About TAGteach
TAGteach is a company dedicated to promoting positive strategies for increased productivity and success in every facet of life. TAGteach offers public seminars and private consulting to teach people in all fields of endeavor how to reduce instructions into manageable pieces, present these to the learner in an effective way and provide immediate positive reinforcement.

About Gabitat
Gabitat is social team software that gives users a single interface from which to share and discuss content from many different cloud applications.

About Constellation Research
Constellation Research, Inc. is a research and advisory firm focused on helping organizations apply emerging technologies to disrupt business models.

TAGteachers! Please vote for us - in Category 5

Click here to vote (Final day for voting is Oct 9)

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TAGteacher Tale: Douglas Goes to Camp - The Magic of TAGteach in Action

 

By Joan Orr, MSc

Doug is the subject of the book Chaos to Calm: Discovering Solutions to the Everyday Problems of Living with Autism, by Martha Gabler. Martha explains step-by-step in the book how she methodically taught Doug many simple and then more and more complex behaviors necessary for life in a busy family. She used TAGteach, an approach based on the science of behavior, to teach new behaviors to replace screaming, running around, self injury and other chaotic behaviors with which many autism parents struggle on a continual basis. All Martha's teaching used positive reinforcement to strengthen desired behaviors. Now Doug is 17 and his self-stimulatory behaviors are almost non-existent. He chooses to exhibit behaviors that he has learned and that have become more reinforcing for him than the chaotic and sometimes violent behaviors in which he engaged during what Martha refers to as "the dreadful early years". Doug at 17 is happy, affectionate and cooperative. He loves his math and reading lessons and he loves outdoor activities. This summer Doug went to Shadow Lake Camp for a week and his counselor was my daughter Anne Wormald who is a level 2 TAGteacher. Martha came prepared with a tagger and some treats that Doug likes and left him in Anne's capable hands. Anne had read Chaos to Calm, so she knew many of Doug's tag points. The other staff at camp looked after Doug while Anne was on break and they too learned to use TAGteach with Doug. He had the whole camp trained by the end of the week! Here is what one of the other counselors said about Doug:

"He's so cute and well-behaved! When you first gave me the tagger I was kind of unsure, but once you told me about how he was before and I used it, it became obvious that it really works. I really want to read the book!"

Doug's experience at camp is a testament to the power and effectiveness of TAGteach and the skill of Martha as a teacher. Martha was able to hand over her son, a tagger, some treats and some basic tag points and he was able to enjoy himself immensely at sleep away camp for a week with strangers. Anne kept in touch with me by text during the week with Doug. Here is a transcript of those messages:

Here are some videos of Doug having fun at Shadow Lake Camp. In the swing video, Anne is tagging him for "hands on". He had been letting go with both hands at the top of the upswing so she gave him a tag point for a behavior incompatible with the undesirable behavior. You can see from the video that Doug no longer needs to get a treat after every tag. He will in many circumstances defer the reinforcement in order to keep on doing a fun behavior. The swinging behavior itself is reinforcing to Doug and he would rather keep doing that, than stop to come and get a tictac after each tag. This is a good example of a learned behavior that has become self-reinforcing.

Click here to read more about TAGteach and autism

Click here to read more from Martha Gabler and how she taught Doug to be confident and cooperative enough to be able to enjoy himself at sleep away camp for a week with strangers.

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TAGteach Has Published its First Book!

Hey TAGteachers and Friends of TAGteach:

We are thrilled to announce that the first ever TAGteach published book is now available in the Kindle store on Amazon!

Here is a link to get the free Kindle Cloud Reader for computers and free reading apps for mobile devices.

Will You Help?

We would very much appreciate it if you would help us to spread the word about Chaos to Calm. Martha's book is in turn heart-breaking, humorous and brutally honest. She gives us a close-up look at what life is like for young parents with a profoundly non-verbal child with the frightening diagnosis of autism. The isolation, the uncertainty, the fear, the dreadful behaviors, the lack of sleep, the lack of help...This is the only book that we know of that gives step-by-step descriptions of the shaping process for many important behaviors (including going to sleep!). Martha explains how to capture a tiny flash of desirable behavior, reinforce it and build on success until it becomes a solid part of the child's behavior repertoire.

Every autism family seeks the light in an ocean of despair. Every autism mom, every autism dad, in fact every person who loves another person with autism, can use TAGteach with ease. This book shows you how.

How You Can Help

Here are some ways that you can help us get the word out to other autism parents who so desperately want to reach out and communicate with their child:

• Click on the picture of the book above to go to Amazon. Take a look at the reviews (they are awesome by the way) and click on the "yes" button if you think the review is helpful. The reviews that are the most helpful as measured by the number of "yeses" will remain prominent. This will help the book to do well, even if all you do is click on the yes beside the most helpful reviews. Each "yes" for a 5-star review boosts the prominence of that review.
• If you purchase the book, please write a review, or comment on an existing review. The more positive reviews the better the book will rank on Amazon.
• Spread the word by sharing this link to Martha's blog in your social media, AutismChaosToCalm.com where she will be providing more information and insight for parents.
• Visit Martha's blog and Facebook page and comment, like and share.
• Tell anyone you know who has a child diagnosed with autism, or who works with children on the spectrum about this remarkable book.
• Request an article from Martha, or an interview with Martha for your blog or podcast. Martha@tagteach.com

Speaking of Podcasts...

Listen to this terrific interview with Martha. Thanks to Annie Jennings PR for producing this super podcast.

Thanks to you for helping us spread the word! Congratulations to Martha for giving so much to help others.

The print version of the book will be available by the end of July, 2013

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Mein Hund zerrt! My Dog pulls!

By Bina Lunzer

I had an extremely cool TAG session yesterday night. It was about teaching my loose leash protocol to handlers who started in a beginners' course today. I had doubts if I should do a TAG hour at all - I had one elderly lady, one person with severe health issues (spine problems, had several surgeries), some "serious" people in academics (e.g. PhD in Pharmacy) etc. --- and I could not imagine them playing "the dog". :-D In the end I gave it a try and it was a blast! 1.5 hours of laughing almost nonstop for all attendees - and they learnt SO MUCH. They said things like: "Bina, I did not realize that I pop the leash automatically every time I stop! This is awful, I am happy to know now." So they had very important self-reflections without feeling embarrassed - really wonderful. And the person with the spine problem was magically cured and even wanted to pretend to be the dog- four legged on the floor (which I do NOT ask from participants when playing "the dog"!!!!!), The elderly lady had to hold on to other people as she was laughing so hard she was afraid she would fall. We had a great time.

Today, the course started, and many said that they were happy to have the opportunity to hone their handling skills on humans and that they feel much safer now in the task with their dogs.

Great experience for me as a trainer.

The Tag Points

Bina has created several tag points to help teach students her loose leash walking approach. You will need to watch the videos to understand the process and the tag points. This teaching is done without the dogs present. Students work in pairs and take turns pretending to be the dog. Here are some of the tag  points:

The directions are: Before the click, hold hand still

          The tag point is: hand still 

 The directions are: After making eye contact, walk ahead

           The tag point is: walk ahead 

 The directions are: If the dog crosses the toe boundary, turn 90 degrees

           The tag point is: turn 90 degrees 

 The directions are: While redirecting the dog,

           The tag point is: look at hand 

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Purchase Bina's book (in German)

Mein Hund zerrt! Wie man einen Schlepplift im Wolfspelz in einen leinenführigen Hund verwandelt (Hilfe! Mein Hund...) [Kindle Edition]

Bina Lunzer (Autor), Lili Chin (Illustrator)

Video in German



Video in English

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Karen Pryor's New Book

Karen Pryor's new book, Reaching the Animal Mind was released yesterday. This book contains a chapter dedicated to TAGteach - Chapter 11. The associated website has links and additional resources to augment the material in the book.

Reaching the Animal Mind

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