Poetry, taxes, and…autism! This month is Autism Awareness Month a.k.a. Minecraft Awareness Month. Despite growing numbers of children being identified on the spectrum, not much is known about this neurological disorder. Keeping up with the latest research can be daunting but this week’s database highlight, Access Video on Demand [1], offers hundreds of videos on educational topics, including autism, from producers like ABC, TED, PBS, HBO, and more. You can limit results by video type, language, and copyright date. Videos range from a minute to two hours.

Access Video On Demand features more than 13,000 videos and 207,000 video segments. New videos are added every year. – from the vendor

There’s a lot of misinformation about autism out there. It’s tough to know which website to trust. This week’s open site, the CDC’s Autism page [2], is an excellent starting point for anyone wanting to know more about the disorder or for anyone searching for general autism coverage. The site highlights current research, lays out the basics, and links to autism videos.

Bonus content – Kanopy [3] has a ton of educational, indie, and documentary films about autism.

Action Steps

• Find and watch a short video in AVOD [1] (try keyword: autism). Post something you learned in the comments.
• Check out the CDC page [2]. Is there anything on the page that you think customers would be interested in?

Notebooks for all commenters!