Khuluma Education

ing appropriate technology to provide innovative, sustainable and effective solutions to address the key education challenges here in South Africa. Khuluma has identified GemIIni Education Systems as one such program and has secured the exclusive rights to distribute the program in South Africa. The GemIIni Program is a proven and highly effective online education tool, primarily offering an extensive English language and literacy development tool. The Khuluma Education Team & Background
Julian Moore (Managing Director) Julian is a corporate finance and private equity professional, with over 10 years’ experience in the finance industry in the UK, Ireland and South Africa, advising a diverse range of public and private companies. Julian qualified as a chartered accountant with KPMG in Dublin having graduated from the University of Cape Town with a Bachelor of Business Science (Honours in International Finance). Julian was introduced to Laura Kasbar (founder of GemIIni) in 2009 in London and having seen the remarkable impact the program was making spent several months working with Laura on the development of a business plan to help GemIIni raise its initial venture capital investment. Julian recognised the significant potential GemIIni had for improving language education in South Africa and in late 2012 was able to secure an exclusive licence with GemIIni for the South African market. Naomi Botha (Operations Director - Head of Special Needs) has a background in Psychology in the UK and has gained over 12 years’ experience as a professional in special needs teaching and education. She gained a BSc (Honours) Degree in Psychology (Royal Holloway University of London, 1998), a Post-graduate Certificate in Primary Education (Exeter, 2000) and a Post-graduate Certificate in Asperger syndrome (Sheffield Hallam, 2009) and has extensive training and experience with special educational strategies and autism support strategies and language acquisition tools (e.g. Naomi worked as an Advisory Teacher in the UK, for a Local Authority autism support team and then as Teacher in Charge of a specialist provision for learners on the autism spectrum, prior to moving to Cape Town, in 2012. She taught at Oakley House, remedial school, in Cape Town before joining the Khuluma Team and continues to work supporting parents and their children on the autism spectrum, with language and communication needs. Naomi is passionate about giving individuals a voice to express themselves and in supporting them to understand themselves and the world around them and to reach their true potential. She has seen that using the GemIIni program is one effective way to help achieve this. What is Video Modeling? Video Modeling is an intervention, whereby students learn a skill or concept by watching a model perform a specific skill or demonstrate an example of a concept on a screen, either using a TV or computer. Video modeling is a well-studied method of intervention and appears to be internationally accepted as a highly effective treatment for autism and other special needs; it has been used in over 100 studies and has been used successfully to teach a wide variety of skills. Examples of studies which have used video modeling to teach a range of specific skills include:

• Social Interaction (Apple et al. (2005), Buggey (2005), Charlop-Christy et al. (2000), Maione & Mirenda (2006), Nikopoulos & Keenan (2003), Nikopoulos & Keenan (2004), Taylor et al. (1999)).
• Academic Skills (Kinney et al. (2003)).
• Communication Skills (Buggey et al. (1999), Charlop & Milstein (1989), Charlop-Christy et al. (2000), Sherer et al. (2001), Wert & Neisworth (2003)).
• Daily Living Skills (Alcantara (1994), Haring et al. (1995), Shipley-Benamou et al. (2002)).
• Play Skills (McDonald et al. (2005), Dauphine et al. (2004), D’Ateno et al. (2003).
• Perspective Talking (Charlop-Chrsity & Daneshvar (2003), LeBlanc et al. (2003)).
• Generalizing previous learned skills (Haring et al. Proven benefits of Video Modeling
Video modeling has been found to be particularly effective when used in combination with ABA programs to teach specific behaviors to children with autism (Nikopoulos & Keenan, (2004). Nikopoulos & Keenan (2003) also found that video modeling was a ‘time efficient teaching tool’ and an ‘effective method of enhancing appropriate skills’ for children on the autism spectrum. Charlop-Christy et al. (2000) discovered that children demonstrated much quicker rates of acquisition and greater increases in their generalization of skills, compared to live (in vivo) modeling. Dowrick (1991) also established some additional benefits of video modeling, including ‘an increased ability to gain and hold the student’s attention’ as well as ‘the ability to have complete control over the observed stimuli.’

Recent research established video modeling as ‘an evidence-based intervention with implications for its use with students with children in the school setting’ (Bellini et al., 2007). Delano’s (2007) review of 19 published studies of video modeling interventions concluded that, ‘video modeling interventions are effective in teaching a variety of skills to children with autism.’


GemIIni Video Modeling Program
GemIIni Systems’ video modeling program, is an online, fully-customizable English language video-modeling tool that blends many evidence-based tactics from both the ABA and speech literature into each of their videos:
• repetition,
• massed trials,
• stimulus differences,
• generalization,
• multiple cues,
• peer models,
• hyper-articulation,
• individualized programming. It is primarily a language, communication and literacy development tool that provides educators and therapists with a resource to support the specific needs of learners. GemIIni Systems uses cutting-edge technology and unique tools, providing an elegant blend of some of the most studied and proven therapy elements to ensure learning is extremely effective. They intentionally incorporate the following features in their videos:

• Use of age-appropriate peer models (for learners to relate to and connect with)
• Close up of mouth for articulation (to give learners a clear visual cue to follow)
• Sensory management (visual and auditory clutter has been filtered)
• Hyper- articulation (emphasizing sounds to aid repetition by learner)
• Discrete presentation of concepts (one piece of information is given at a time)
• Generalizations (each word is taught with various video examples of the word). The GemIIni Program is far more than just a language development tool. It also offers:
• Testing Tool - The GemIIni program includes interactive testing modules for receptive and expressive language, allowing parents, therapists and educators to track and monitor their learners’ progress with using the program. This testing tool provides up-to-date progress reports, immediately when required.

• Data recording, correlation and sharing - The GemIIni program includes data tracking, offering a tool to help find correlations between behavior and biomedical or therapeutic interventions. There is also an area for communication, collaboration and online interaction between educators, therapists, parents and students all across the world ‘to share best practices and success stories.

• Sequential Processing and Memory Tool - GemIIni also includes interactive games and tools for improving sequential processing and memory. Many children with special needs have difficulty using their short-term memories and the GemIIni program has ‘a series of sequential processing tasks that aid in the improvement of short-term memory and concentration and allows for progress to be recorded and tracked.’

GemIIni allows educators and therapists the ability to create custom video modeling therapy sessions, from an extensive video library, or select pre-made sessions, for each child in their care. These therapy sessions can then be assigned to learners online. When contacted directly, GemIIni provided us with preliminary write-ups of group-designed clinical trials they have recently conducted in the United States (to be published), showing significant increases in joint attention play, attending skills, intraverbal behavior and basic labeling skills (GemIIni, 2013). GemIIni claims to be an effective intervention that can ‘supercharge an existing therapy/teaching program or deliver services to underserved populations’ (Kasbar, 2012). Referring to their recent research findings in the USA, GemIIni state:
‘All the evidence suggests that in GemIIni we have a globally significant tool for the low-cost treatment of speech, language and communication delay for learners with autism and other special educational needs…’ (GemIIni, 2013)

The GemIIni program currently contains around 9 000 video elements that can each be selected and ‘sewn’ together into fully customized video sessions to meet a child’s specific needs and to teach a wide range of different subjects, ‘from basic labeling through to grammar, intraverbals, play skills, hygiene, mathematics, geography, pragmatics, etc. and continue in increasing sophistication until they are teaching university level vocabulary and advanced teen/adult social stories’ (GemIIni, 2013; See Appendix … for specific examples of GemIIni content). Background of GemIIni Systems
GemIIni was developed by Laura Kasbar, the mother of three children on the autism spectrum, over the last 14 years. Her most severely affected son, Max, was a 3 year-old, non-verbal, severely autistic child when she first developed her video modeling sessions, and is now a 16-year old linguistics student, ‘who reads, writes and speaks at a university level, as a result of using GemIIni, coupled with-home therapy’. (GemIIni, 2013). Following many similar successes with other children on the autistic spectrum and with input from many professionals in the autism field in the USA, Laura and her team created the current online platform (www.gemiini.org), and launched GemIIni Education Systems Inc. in the USA. As it is an online platform, the program is now available globally, wherever there is internet access. GemIIni Clinical Trials and Case Studies
In a recent clinical trial in Spokane Public Schools, USA, non-verbal children using GemIIni showed over a 9,000% increase in language acquisition rates over baseline across the population, after only 1 week. These results confirm what the GemIIni Team has seen in non-clinical trials in hospitals, clinics and schools over the past two years and suggests that GemIIni is a globally significant tool for the low-cost treatment of speech and language delay and communication in autism and other disorders. In order to test this, Naomi Botha completed a very recent trial here in Cape Town, the results of which corroborate the efficacy of the GemIIni video modeling program; the low verbal children on the autism spectrum involved in this trial made an increase of between 266-533% in their language acquisition in only 10 days. (See the attached Trial Summary for further details). She has just submitted her detailed study write-up to Good Autism Practice (GAP) Journal, for publication... It really does work! Throughout October 2013, Naomi also worked closely with the speech therapists at a School for Learners with Autism in Cape Town and 10 class teachers who volunteered to be part of a short trial using the GemIIni video modeling sessions in their classes and to observe the level of impact on the language, engagement and performance of the learners at Vera School. All the feedback from the staff involved has been incredibly positive. As a result, Naomi is due to embark on a larger scale study and data collection at the school at the start of 2014, using GemIIni with a number of their learners. In 2014, we are busy developing links with local schools who are keen to use the GemIIni program with their learners and in receiving requests from parents to register their children for individual students accounts with GemIIni, to have access to the program at home...

If you are interested to find out more and to register your child, please email: [email protected]