February 4, 2012
by Carole Zangari -
Is anyone else totally floored by the stories of good people getting into bad situations that have been in the news lately?? While it can happen to anyone, it is probably true that people who use AAC face a number of safety risks that the rest of us don’t think much about. The people we work with may not have the vocabulary they need to talk about safety issues, report abuse, or even state objections/resistance in a forceful way. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. The latest story to cross my inbox made me think of some of our AAC friends and what we, as SLPs and clinical educators, should be doing to provide support. The Canadian organization Augmentative Communication Community Partnerships, has some wonderful resources to help get us started. Among them is a set of communication displays, both text and picture-based, that can be useful to individuals with AAC needs.Originally... [Read More...]
Filed under: PrAACtical Thinking
Tagged With: advocacy, communication boards, safety
February 4, 2012
by Carole Zangari -
Imagine having one key communication strategy and no one knew that it existed. This horrifying experience was documented in the book ‘I Raise My Eyes to Say Yes,’ the autobiography of Ruth Sienkiewicz-Mercer. For years, she effectively used eye gaze with her family to answer yes/no questions, but when Ruth was placed at a residential facility, things eventually changed. Staff turnover, something we’re all familiar with, was the culprit. With time, new staff came in and didn’t realize that Ruth communicated with her eyes. Ruth was silenced for years until someone noticed that her ‘eyes up’ movement wasn’t reflexive or random. She was talking, but no one was listening. — While this was an extreme example, most AAC practitioners can recount their own stories of people whose AAC messages weren’t effectively translated once they moved to new settings. The transition to a new environment, where untrained partners may fail to recognize... [Read More...]
Filed under: PrAACtical Thinking, Strategy of the Month
Tagged With: AAC system, collaboration, Multimodal, visual literacy
February 4, 2012
by Carole Zangari -
inspiration /inspəˈrāSHən/ Noun; The process of being mentally stimulated to do or feel something, esp. to do somethingcreative. The quality of having been so stimulated, esp. when evident in something We’re inspired by: Master clinicians, like Gail Van Tatenhove, John Costello, and Joan Bruno Clinically relevant research, like this work from the AAC Group at Penn State Far-reaching projects, like the work done by Sarah Blackstone and others at the Patient Provider Communication group Supportive publishers, like Paul H. Brookes who keep cranking out top-notch AAC books like this one by Pat Mirenda and Teresa Iacono Groups that make cool things for kids and share them for free, llike Priory Woods
Filed under: PrAACtical Thinking
February 3, 2012
by Robin Parker -
How we integrated AAC strategies into a community event… The name of our website is PrAACtical AAC. We continue to look for ways to make AAC strategies fit praAACtically into ALL activities. We are extremely proud to be part of the Dan Marino Foundation WalkAbout Autism, which is a large South Florida Community Event. The Walkabout helps raise money services for individuals with autism and other developmental disabilities and their families. It also promotes a sense of community collaboration and awareness about autism spectrum disorder and developmental disabilities. We are including this information about the WalkAbout not as a plea for money (although read about the WalkAbout and donate if you are so inclined), but instead to tell you how we are incorporating AAC into community events. This past weekend was the 2nd WalkAbout Autism. It was a truly amazing event and day! There was great music and bounce houses,... [Read More...]
Filed under: PrAACtical Thinking
Tagged With: autism spectrum disorder, community, dan marino foundation, implementation ideas, Learning, personal participation, song, south florida community, WalkAbout
January 23, 2012
by Robin Parker -
AAC & The Art of the Unconventional Conversation, Carole’s post from Saturday, recounts a young girl who some people might have thought was not ready for AAC. It reminds me a young man I know, Michael. I met Michael when he was 14, after he was discharged from all of his communication intervention or I should say his speech-language therapy sessions. He was discharged at school because when he moved from his autism classroom in middle school to a high school classroom for children with varying exceptionalities, it was ‘felt’ that he did not need it anymore. He had not made ‘progress’ in his speech and language goals, he did not talk, he did not consistently identify objects, and he did not essentially do a lot of things. He was discharged from his private therapy as he was not making progress in a lot of goals there either. Everyone... [Read More...]
Filed under: PrAACtical Thinking
Tagged With: intervention
January 20, 2012
by Carole Zangari -
There’s an art to having a conversation with someone who has significant communication challenges. One of my favorite experiences with this dates back to the 1980’s, when I was working with a preschooler who had Rett Syndrome. Julia was a beautiful little girl who lived with her (very young) mom and her grandma. Grandma watched Julia while mom was in school, and I spent a good amount of time visiting them in their modest home (a trailer) trying to earn their trust and figure out how to help Julia communicate better in school. – At home, as it turns out, she was communicating just fine, at least for the very basic things. A typical conversation between Julia and her grandma went like this. Julia paces around the coffee table, wringing her hands, rocking a bit, and staring at the carpet. She pauses in front of the TV and Grandma says... [Read More...]
Filed under: PrAACtical Thinking, Strategy of the Month
Tagged With: communicative acts, Conversations, Multimodal
January 18, 2012
by Carole Zangari -
It’s great to have some places to turn to when we need answers to AAC questions, resources to share, and the like. Here are some of the AAC groups that we’ve been able to count on for support. 1. ACOLUG: An oldie but a goodie. Run by Diane Bryen and Tracy Rackenberger, this email list is primarily a venue for people who use AAC to connect with one another but, in the spirit of inclusion, keeps the list open to professionals and students as well. 2. ASHA SIG 12: We can always count on their quarterly publication, Perspectives on AAC, and the online AAC community for support and pertinent information. We miss their annual conference, though! 3. Communication Matters AAC Forum : The ISAAC UK Chapter runs this and it is chock full of helpful information. We love the search feature and the digest options. 4. PACT: Promoting Augmentative Communication... [Read More...]
Filed under: PrAACtical Thinking
Tagged With: resources
January 17, 2012
by Carole Zangari -
We’re super excited to see more and more AAC apps give real attention to core language. There are plenty of AAC tools and apps that allow for choicemaking, requesting, and other types of functional communication. Not all of them, however, have the key ingredients for the development of linguistic competence. We’ll be talking more about that in future posts, but for now, let’s just celebrate the fact that more AAC apps have what it takes for us to teach morphology and syntax.Speak for Yourself is one of the newest kids on the block and it looks like this one was worth waiting for. Developed by two SLPs, Heidi LoStracco and Renee Collender, Speak for Yourself piqued my interest when I saw it at the ASHA convention in San Diego. We’re having fun exploring what it can do and looking forward to using Speak for Yourself with some of our AAC... [Read More...]
Filed under: PrAACtical Thinking
Tagged With: Apps, core language, linguistic competence
January 16, 2012
by Robin Parker -
Just returned from the 19th Annual Statewide Center for Autism and Related Disabilities (CARD) Conference (under full disclosure, I am the Director of the CARD Grant at NSU). It was a very busy long weekend that began with a free pre-conference educators day and ended with one of the 47 session options. I have tweeted some educational highlights that included a keynote by Dr. Amy Wetherby about the new DSM 5 (thats right no more Roman Numeral) diagnostic features for Autism Spectrum Disorder (that’s right again, no ‘s’ on the end) and a dinner party talk by Dr. Temple Grandin (wow!). I tend to look at conference information as a teaser… first information is highlighted and then I do a more in-depth review and analysis into specifics that are related to me. Quick Info on My First 3 Favorite Topics/Resources The Learning Curve– resources that include interesting and interactive materials for teachers of... [Read More...]
Filed under: PrAACtical Thinking
Tagged With: ASD, CARD, conferences
January 15, 2012
by Carole Zangari -
Sean Sweeney, from Speech Techies, always has great ideas for free or low cost apps or web-based materials that have wonderful therapeutic potential. Recently, he posted about Painting with Time, a free app that you can read about here. It’s such a cool app that we decided to use it to launch our Magic Moments series. – Magic Moments is an occasional series that gives PrAACtical suggestions for therapy materials, apps, software, and websites that are easy for SLPs to access and use in their clinical work. We’ll focus on materials that many of us already own and use, as well as on free or nearly free materials. Sometimes the materials will be electronic, like iPad apps or software. Other times, we’ll go ‘old school’ and bring out some of our favorite therapy materials, like toys, games, photo albums, and more. The focus will be on using those materials to teach language... [Read More...]
Filed under: PrAACtical Thinking
Tagged With: Apps, intervention, iPad, Magic Moments