April 5, 2012
by Robin Parker -
Toca Kitchen Monsters – FREE, A GIFT FROM TOCA BOCA Wow, another amazing & educational app from Toca Boca. Learn to cook and feed the Toca Kitchen Monsters. This app is really fun to play and it’s free (not even any in-app purchase opportunities). The educational part of this app can be focused on cooking and eating language concepts, sequencing of language, and real-life skills (choosing food, cooking, and feeding or eating someone). Although the scope and sequence of this app is ‘real’, there is a main fantasy or pretend play aspect (other than the cooking and eating) – you are feeding funny looking monsters. This is great because all pretending is symbolic and so is language! So get your Toca Kitchen Monsters now! Look out for an updated post tomorrow about how we have HijAACked this app.
Filed under: PrAACtical Thinking
Tagged With: ALert, Apps, communication, Kitchen Monsters, Toca Boca
April 4, 2012
by Carole Zangari -
PrAACtical Questions is an occasional series in which we address concerns that our graduate students and others have posed to us about the real world challenges of implementing AAC. This post focuses on AAC evaluations. – The Question: I don’t have many SGDs in my school/clinic. How can I evaluate someone for AAC? — The Situation: A clinician with a good background in using the feature match process for AAC evaluations needs to evaluate a student with severe speech difficulties. Her center has a few AAC devices that she can use for this evaluation but there are a few others that she doesn’t have which are appropriate to consider. There isn’t much chance that she will be given approval to purchase those. How can we get the student an appropriate AAC evaluation? Some Ideas: This is a fairly common problem since few practicing SLPs have access to all of the SGDs, iDevices, apps, and... [Read More...]
Filed under: PrAACtical Thinking
Tagged With: assessment, collaboration, FAQs
April 1, 2012
by Carole Zangari -
If March was as busy for you as it was for us, then you may have missed some of these posts. Grading exams, meeting with students, clinical paperwork, grant-writing, teaching, travel, etc. Know wonder we’re tired! Enjoy this bit of catch-up. – The Fives 5 Great Resources for Helping Individuals with Vision and Hearing Loss AAC on the Go: 5 Tips for Traveling with AAC Tech it Up’- 5 Visual Schedule Apps 5 Resources for AAC Data Collection 5 Tips to Make AAC Assessments Run Smoothly 5 References to Support AAC Use – PrAACtical Thinking 1. The Secret to Succeeding At Anything 2. National Quilting Day & Employment 3. AAC and March Madness 4. Games are More Than Fun… Gaming for ALL 5. Hearing the Knock 6. HijAACked! AAC & Anti-Bullying with Stand Tall, Mary Lou Melon! 7. Emergencies and Resources to Help 8. Random Acts of Kindness 9. Do... [Read More...]
Filed under: PrAACtical Thinking
Tagged With: visual schedule
April 1, 2012
by Robin Parker -
Please check out the most recent set of suggestions here. We love getting EVERYONE involved in Autism Awareness Month. We like to take a goal focused approach to our Autism Awareness Month activities by choosing projects that facilitate positive attitudes & discussions. We pass out materials, have contests, go to events, do extra talks, and try and engage EVERYONE we know and even some we do not know. We do a lot of shopping (with small amount of money, but we have to EAT and accessorize). Our families, pets, friends, and students all participate. It is a month filled with purposeful fun. Here are some of the things we will be doing. Please share any activities or projects that you know about. Bake, share, & eat some desserts. Need inspiration?.. try these Puzzle Piece Rice Crispy Treats Join the webinar Autism Explosion by Dr. Coplan will be shown... [Read More...]
Filed under: PrAACtical Thinking
Tagged With: ASD
March 29, 2012
by Robin Parker -
Visuals Work– We just love the name of this app developer company. They describe themselves as providing visual learning strategies for the autism and related communities. We know that visuals work but are so glad that the word continues to spread. We hope soon everyone knows and then makes the decision to incorporate visual language into the education of children and students with communication difficulties. Visuals Work develop great e-book apps (iOS format/iTunes) that incorporate information about different holiday themes. The apps usually teach new vocabulary, prepositions, and questions within a commenting format. The apps are usually customizable so that the story can work for any age. Most of Visuals Work apps usually are free or very low cost (.99 cents). Well, they have done it again. They just released Easter with Bunny, Rabbit, and Me (eBook/App). It’s Available Free through iTunes! This Easter story was created by Lorrie Ann... [Read More...]
Filed under: PrAACtical Thinking
Tagged With: Apps, communication, easter, ebooks, random apps of kindness, visuals
March 28, 2012
by Carole Zangari -
When I took my daughter to a specialist awhile back, she recommended a treatment that was a bit extreme. Her verbal explanation for the expensive and involved treatment made sense, but I still wasn’t convinced and asked it there was something we could read that explained the scientific underpinnings of the approach. She disappeared for a moment and came back with a task force report on the treatment that reviewed literature on this approach. Reading through it and seeing the studies, critiques, and responses helped us make an informed decision. – Chances are, many of you have had similar experiences. Trust in our healthcare professionals is critical, but when it comes to big decisions, we want to know the science that stands behind the options. – Making the decision to use AAC is a huge one for all of us, but families are especially burdened with its weightiness. Not only... [Read More...]
Filed under: PrAACtical Thinking
Tagged With: research, resources
March 25, 2012
by Robin Parker -
This is a great time to check out MeeGenius. They are celebrating Springtime by offering a FREE book. All you have to do is them on Facebook for a free coupon code. We spoke about how great Meegenius was awhile back and have been using it frequently since then. We read e-books from MeeGenius in small groups on our iPad as well as have the children read MeeGenius e-books during individual structured reading time on the computer or with a mobile device. We loved that Free Technology for Teachers mentioned Meegenius this Saturday March 24th. One of the reasons we love MeeGenius is because of the automatic highlighting technology that goes with the book narration. So if you haven’t done it yet, download MeeGenius and the classic The Three Billy Goats Gruff and start reading.
Filed under: PrAACtical Thinking
Tagged With: Apps, Kindness, Random
March 24, 2012
by Robin Parker -
We were looking for some specific resources for a distant colleague. We wanted to get as much good information as possible because this colleague was not in our field but in another department that has direct impact over work. We do not necessarily see ‘eye to eye’ on many issues so we thought it might be helpful to our working relationship. In the process, a young man and his family would get some much-needed support. In our exploration, we found some great new videos about schedules- our topic of the month. We found several very prAACtical videos by the Watson Institute about mini schedules. We have found mini schedules to be very helpful for activities of daily living, community activities, leisure time activities and even in special event activities. We love that the Watson Institute put these on you -tube for everyone to learn from. They even have a you-tube video... [Read More...]
Filed under: PrAACtical Thinking
Tagged With: mini schedules, schedules, visual supports
March 19, 2012
by Robin Parker -
It has been a really long weekend. A very close relative had a significant medical emergency this week. The emergency involved intubation, an air ambulance (that is helicopter), and many many procedures. With the intubation, there was a temporary loss of speech which made communication difficult to say the least. This was a time that the patient (my relative) needed communication most, yet there were multiple barriers to effective communication (no speech sounds, tubes in the mouth obscuring lip movement, noise, etc..). Although the hospital staff was amazingly wonderful, communication was not their priority. Lucky, for us, I just happened to have some AAC apps on my iPhone. At one point, the AAC app was literally a lifesaver (thanks so much to Verbally for providing an easy way to communicate complex questions, reminders, and comments). As I was waiting around for many hours, texting Carole, we started thinking about... [Read More...]
Filed under: PrAACtical Thinking
Tagged With: change of schedule, distress, emergencies, Emergency, hospital, illness, Medical, pain, resources, visual supports
March 17, 2012
by Carole Zangari -
No one likes to be tested, least of all people with communication difficulties who don’t have the tools to express their anxiety or discomfort in the ways they would like to. Some of the people we evaluated had real issues with this and so we’ve experimented with ways to make the testing less stressful and more productive. Here are some of the strategies that we found to be most successful. – 1. Work with the team to establish Fair Testing Practices for the person you’ll be evaluating. Our chapter on ‘Language Assessment for Students Who Use AAC’ describes this in more detail, but essentially it involves writing a ‘rule book’ for how to test this person. It might specify how long the test session can/should be, how to set up the situation so the person can respond, and what other supports are needed so that we are testing the person’s... [Read More...]
Filed under: PrAACtical Thinking
Tagged With: assessment, social stories, visual schedule