In the lead-up to the Bendigo Inventor Awards on September 2, the Bendigo Advertiser will feature all the finalists, beginning with this report from ELISE SNASHALL-WOODHAMS.AN innovative program developed in Bendigo is helping autistic, highly gifted and disengaged young people learn “outside the box”.PLIESE – Portable Lasting Integrated Education based on Self Exploration – is an online tool that matches “problem” students to a hands-on project that will help them reconnect with their school studies.Co-developer Nigel Vernon regularly works with disengaged kids, and those on the autism spectrum, in his role as a case manager at Girton Grammar.“I started my teaching career in Arnhem Land and I’ve worked in juvenile justice so I have had a lot of experience with disengaged youth,” Mr Vernon said.He said PLIESE was all about goal-based learning.“Kids with autism or ADD – or any acronym you want to throw at them – they don’t quite fit the traditional education mould,” he said.“It (PLIESE) allows kids to do project- based learning and connect with professionals in the community who are interested in what they are doing.”Mr Vernon began piloting the program within Girton Grammar.But when he presented PLIESE at a National Boys Education conference in Sydney the response was huge, and he was encouraged to expand the project online.There are now participants from as far away as the US.Success stories from PLIESE include a four-year-old boy, autistic and highly gifted, who developed a new Mario game for Nintendo, and a nine-year-old who put together a scene from Star Wars completely out of Lego.Mr Vernon said the idea was to tackle the academic areas children were finding difficult through activities they enjoyed.“So someone who is having problems with maths might learn ratios through bike riding, which he enjoys,” he said.“He doesn’t think he’s working on numeracy or literacy, it just comes out of the project.”