December 8, 2012
by Robin Parker -
Organizing vocabulary on communication boards sometimes feels overwhelming, especially if you have not had specific training or education in this area. It is a huge responsibility because if the communicator can not navigate the communication book easily and quickly they might ‘lose’ motivation or ‘lose’ a listener. A problem that often occurs in ordering vocabulary for a communication book is that there appears to have been no plan. And when there are no plans, disorganization usually occurs and with disorganization comes chaos. So to avoid chaos, it is very helpful to make long term plan. Long Term Plan Considerations- A Beginning: Language Learning– it is often helpful to order vocabulary on a communication display so that the communicator can learn language and literacy in addition to functional communication. With this in mind, core and fringe vocabulary can be organized in a way that follows a left to right access to... [Read More...]
November 14, 2012
by Carole Zangari -
Want to help AAC learners accelerate their receptive vocabularies? Here’s one quick and easy step in the right direction: Talk to them. We’re not trying to be snarky here. The truth is that we speak less to people who are minimally verbal than we do to people who talk. In general, kids with AAC needs hear far less language than speaking children do. Fewer words heard means fewer opportunities to learn language. That’s a cycle worth breaking. When we’re around typically developing children, they’re always asking questions. “What’s in the bag, Mom?” “Why is she doing that?” “How come Billy gets to have one and I don’t?” “Where are we going?” “Are we there yet?” Kids ask lots of questions, particularly in the early years. Annoying? Sometimes. Valuable? Always. From a language learning perspective, those pesky questions serve a very useful purpose: they invite (or demand) a linguistic response. They... [Read More...]
November 7, 2012
by Carole Zangari -
Earlier this month, we introduced a general sequence of how we conceptualize semantic instruction. We promised to elaborate on that. There are two things that I really love about this approach to to vocabulary teaching. The first is that is honors a principle that we know to be true: providing repetition with variety not only helps us reach learners with different strengths, but also gives our AAC learners much-needed practice. The other thing that makes this really work for us is that assessment has an active role but not a central one. Testing takes a backseat to teaching. As we all know, getting accurate assessment information from people who are learning their AAC systems is a huge challenge. Often, our AAC friends don’t have decent test-taking skills so we’re not really testing what we think we’re testing. Just last week I got to see Kristofer, an adorable little fellow who... [Read More...]
October 10, 2012
by Carole Zangari -
A full year of online CEUs AAC Notecards AAC Eval Genie App Practicing Unity Patterns App Set of PODD CDs Pillow Pet and Storybook 6 different RJ Cooper Apps 15 Codes for Alexicomm Apps We are so thrilled to be able to announce the first set of winners for our AAC Awareness Month Giveaway! This morning we used Rafflecopter to draw 12 names for prizes from Alexicom, Hump Software, RJ Cooper, Dynavox/Mayer Johnson, TapSpeak, Say It with Symbols, SpeechPathology[dot]com, and some from us. Congratulations to Karen McKenzie (#173), Susan Enders Fronek (#140), Leanne Talley Pool (# 65), Mary Behl (#195), Tea Moore (#88), Rebecca Kasdon (#27), Carly (#208), Kristy Davies (#491), Christina Frenzel (#36), Cassandra Stafford (#684), Juliana Escobar (#652), and Angela Bancker Larios (#710). We will be contacting you by email with the particulars later today. Winners, please take a moment to thank your prize donors. We’ll be posting... [Read More...]
July 18, 2012
by Carole Zangari -
This post was inspired by a budding young professional who loves AAC and is DETERMINED to provide best practice services for the young students she serves. (See?? This is why we love being clinical educators!) We were chatting about a youngster on her caseload who uses an eyegaze SGD and is making some good progress with the technical aspects of it. Our conversation turned to goal setting. – First, a word about how to talk about AAC in the goals and objectives. For people who use SGDs, there are pros and cons to naming the actual device in the goal. Some SLPs favor that, while others prefer a more flexible approach and describe the device features. More about that another time. A more general concern about writing AAC goals is the tendency to focus more on operating equipment than on becoming an effective communicator. Clearly, we advocate the latter: AAC... [Read More...]
July 14, 2012
by Carole Zangari -
1. Partner-assisted scanning (PAS) offers great flexibility and spontaneity. Don’t want to take your SGD to the beach? A print-out of the screens and PAS is a great option. Missing key messages for the trip to the doctor’s office? A minute of brainstorming and the use of PAS may just save the day. No way for your client to access her device once she’s in bed? A communication board/book and PAS just might do the trick. – 2. Voice banking: For people are likely to lose their speech due to a degenerative disease, like ALS, the option of saving samples of their speech and having it digitized for future use seems to hold great appeal. We’d love to see more SLPs familiarize themselves with this strategy and the tools to implement it, so that this option is more widely used about individuals whose speech is deteriorating. – 3. Qualitative rating... [Read More...]
May 30, 2012
by Carole Zangari -
When I first heard about curation being the next big thing on the internet, I had a hard time seeing how I would have time to get involved. Less than a year later, I can’t conceive of being on the internet without my curation tools. Every day, something comes up that I want to store on a curation site. And it’s almost every day that I send someone to those places for a specific tool, video, article, etc. – In addition to Pinterest, which we blogged about earlier, we are frequent users of Scoop.It and LiveBinders. Each one has its unique properties and so, they are each useful for different things. – Scoop.It is a pictorial magazine where you can collect and share websites related to topics of interest. Unlike Pinterest, with Scoop.It, you can add things that do not have a sizable image. Anyone can view Scoop.Its, but if... [Read More...]