606 Search Results for visual support

AAC Awareness Month Giveaway # 2

October 10, 2012 by - 2 Comments

AAC Awareness Month Giveaway # 2

We’re bAACk with another giveaway to celebrate  AAC Awareness Month, made possible by the very generous people at the organizations listed below: Ablenet, Inc Abilipad Alexicom BeeVisual Dynavox/Mayer Johnson Gail Van Tatenhove, PA Hump Software iClick iTalk MarbleSoft News-2-You Patient Provider Communication Paul H. Brookes Publishing Company RJ Cooper Safe N Sound Mobile Say It with Symbols Silver Lining Multimedia SpeechPathology.com TapSpeak TherapyBox/TBoxApps Verbally How Does It Work? We use Rafflecopter to administer the giveaways. All entries made through there will be counted toward our drawings. We’re holding three additional drawings this month, and will pick winners on October 17, 24, and 31. Prizes are randomly assigned to each winner. We’ll send an email to each one letting them know what they’ve one. The winners will have 5 days to respond to our email. You’ll need to be a good sport to play along because we’re not going to get... [Read More...]

AAC Awareness Month: A PrAACtical Celebration

October 1, 2012 by - 22 Comments

PrAACtical Celebration

It’s a prAACtical celebration! Thanks to the generosity of a lot of companies and individuals, we’re hosting some AAC Surprise Giveaways in honor of AAC Awareness Month. As you can see, we’ve had lots of prizes donated from these wonderful folks: Ablenet, Inc Abilipad Alexicom  BeeVisual Dynavox/Mayer Johnson Gail Van Tatenhove, PA Hump Software iClick iTalk MarbleSoft News-2-You Patient Provider Communication Paul H. Brookes Publishing Company RJ Cooper Say It with Symbols Silver Lining Multimedia SpeechPathology.com TapSpeak TherapyBox/TBoxApps How Does It Work? We use Rafflecopter to administer the giveaways. All entries made through there will be counted toward our drawings. We’re holding four drawings spaced throughout the month, and will draw winners on October 10, 17, 24, and 31. Prizes are randomly assigned to each winner. We’ll send an email to each one letting them know what they’ve one. The winners will have 5 days to respond to our email.... [Read More...]

While We’re Waiting & the ‘Aha Moment’

August 22, 2012 by - Leave your thoughts

While We’re Waiting & the ‘Aha Moment’

We tried to be patient. We really did. We tried to wait until we had the new venue for our site all figured out and ready to go, but the truth is, we missed blogging and hated the thought of going a few more weeks without being able to post. So we decided to reactivate our old site for the time being and post occasionally to this site. Pardon our dorky look, please. In case you missed these on Facebook, here are are a couple of things we shared in the past few weeks: Lemonade: http://screencast.com/t/xaFcbxySW Building Classroom Participation: http://www.screencast.com/users/CZee/folders/Jing/media/15818f72-c49f-4da6-a12d-e52250794234 PrAACtical Alert: Online Trainings: http://bit.ly/NZ9HYT COCOA: http://www.edutecher.net/educlipper/index.php?shareImgid=2478 AAC Rating Scales: http://www.edutecher.net/educlipper/index.php?shareImgid=2499 and http://bit.ly/Ocgte5 And now onto something new… Last week, I had the chance to talk with Karyn, a mom whose adorable daughter with significant vision impairment and multiple disabilities is entering school for the first time. As she helped... [Read More...]

5 Different Gifts to Give To A Classroom

August 3, 2012 by - Leave your thoughts

5 Different Gifts to Give To A Classroom

We can’t believe there are only a few weeks left before school starts.  We have been talking to teachers, scheduling school and teacher trainings, helping to prepare communication dictionaries, and making recommendations for classroom materials.  We realized that there are some bigger resources that would help MANY students in a classroom and even a school. These are gifts that might cost a lot of money ($150 or more) or a lot of  time to set up (but are free).   We realized that these would be great gifts for a parent group (PTA’s/PTO’s) or charitable organizations/foundations to give to a teacher, classroom, or school that has students who use AAC even though the gift will benefit ALL learners.  Give a gift before school starts or after a successful fundraiser. 5 Great Gifts to Give to A Classroom News-2-You – A symbol based current event newspaper that allows ALL students to talk... [Read More...]

Setting Clear Expectations

July 29, 2012 by - Leave your thoughts

Setting Clear Expectations

This week we return to the Geneva Centre for Autism for have two short videos from on strategies to support positive behavior. – Enjoy these explanatory videos on Clear Expectations With Visual Rules and Classroom Rules. –

7 Apps for Adolescents with Special Needs

June 29, 2012 by - 1 Comment

7 Apps for Adolescents with Special Needs

We have ‘grown up’ with many of our students and their families.  We have learned from the students themselves, their parents, siblings, teachers, and their other SLP’s, OT’s, & ABA therapists. So when we recently met with a terrific mom and contemporary ABA therapist, we needed to speak about apps for adolescents (goals and activities had been discussed previously).  The student communicates and organizes herself through natural speech, the Dynavox Maestro, apps on the iTouch, & apps on the  iPad.  The student is now 16 and she cooks amazing food, hikes through the mountains of Switzerland, takes inventory for her school, types shopping lists, puts together scrapbooks, and does a lot more really cool things.  Here is the list of apps we recommended to support her favorite leisure &  literacy activities, and quest to be more & more independent. We only stopped giving more apps when ALL of us were... [Read More...]

Father’s Day Language Facilitation Activities and Gifts

June 14, 2012 by - Leave your thoughts

Father's Day Language Facilitation Activities & Gifts

Father’s Day is almost here.   We love celebrating fathers and/or the positive male role model in our students lives. The reason we celebrate a variety of ‘father figures’ is that we want to include ALL of our students. So we celebrate grandfathers, uncles, godfathers, husbands, brothers, or any other male the child feels represents a ‘father’ figure. Speech-language pathologists tend to love holidays and art projects.  Communication and language is learned in real (authentic) activities. So we found some great Father’s Day Crafts that we are using to facilitate communication/language AND to give ‘dads’ a great home-made gift. Remember though with a little AAC training, Anything we can do, families can do better and more often at home… Dad Tie Snack Jar Candy Bar Letter Tie Wreath Photo Collages Possible Goals (but limitless): requesting with adjectives– ‘want blue crayon’; ‘can I have striped tie?’; ‘need wood glue’ commenting– ‘pretty’; ‘that’s... [Read More...]

Digital Curation: AAC Treasures

May 26, 2012 by - 2 Comments

Digital Curation: AAC Treasures

– A curator? Who, me? When a colleague first suggested that the online things we were sharing were part of the digital curation trend, I didn’t quite see it. Yes, I was always on the hunt for sites with quality AAC-related content. Yes, I sifted through those finds carefully to figure out which to keep, which to share, and how to organize it all so that I could actually find it when I needed it. But a curator?! Images of quiet basement rooms and dusty shelves came to mind…not quite the realm of my day-to-day experience. – On closer inspection, though, I began to see what my colleague was saying. Because I teach so many AAC graduate classes fully online, I am always trying to figure out new ways to use technology to get student SLPs engaged and passionate about AAC. It’s been exciting exploring the new web tools over... [Read More...]

It's PrAACtically Memorial Day!

May 24, 2012 by - Leave your thoughts

It's PrAACtically Memorial Day

Memorial Day Weekend is big for us.  We remember, appreciate, and honor the people who have protected our freedoms.  We both have annual relaxing weekends planned.  As we started to get ready, though, we started looking for Memorial Day AAC materials.  It was surprising to see that there was not much to be found.  We found some gluten-casein free Memorial Day recipes, which are great, but what about symbols to go with the recipes or symbols to explain the holiday and what about AAC language activities for the typical long weekend or trip?  Not much….   So as we began preparing for our own weekends, these are some of the things we have done or are doing for PrAACtical AAC at home and on our mini-vacations: – Before We Leave Create a personal participation story (modified social story) so ALL the children can SEE the language for the trip. Here’s something that... [Read More...]

International Cri du Chat Awareness Week

May 14, 2012 by - 2 Comments

International Cri du Chat Awareness Week

– Today’s post is in honor of the first ever International Cri du Chat Awareness Week and the lovely young lady pictured here (as well as in the brochure linked below). – Cri Du Chat Syndrome (CdCS, also called Lejeune’s syndrome and 5p deletion) is a low incidence genetic disorder caused by a deletion on the short arm of chromosome 5 (5p-). Most children with CCS experience general developmental and communication delays, some of which are quite significant. They tend to have strengths in receptive language. Their speech is often marked by frequent articulation errors, small phonetic inventories, and restricted syllable shapes. Many infants and children with CdCS also have feeding and swallowing difficulties. Children with CdCS have a higher co-occurrence of cleft lip/palate. – 1. 5p- Society (US) and the Annual Conference: Positive Attitude, Reaching New Heights (July, 26-29 in Denver, CO). This group also has a network of... [Read More...]