February 2, 2015
by Carole Zangari -
The ATIA 2015 Conference was one of the best ever, with strong presentations, a vibrant exhibit area, lots of fun social events, and great networking opportunities. There were lots of highlights, but here are a few prAACtical ‘finds’ that might interest you. Spanish version of Word Power: The language options for AAC devices and apps keeps getting better and better! I love that you can purchase the Spanish pageset/voices, then configure Word Power so that the user can toggle back and forth between English and Spanish user profiles. Once configured, your client can independently go from English to Spanish words, phrases, grammar, and voices (and vice versa). This will help our prAACtical friends who speak English in school and Spanish at home. I explored it on the Nova Chat from Saltillo but there is also a Spanish add-on to the TouchChat app. Book Bridge: We’re all looking for better ways to make... [Read More...]
October 1, 2014
by Carole Zangari -
Could it really be October already?! Let’s start off AAC Awareness Month with a giveaway. We are so grateful to the following organizations for donating raffle prizes for this drawing. Please take a moment to thank them. Aacorn Ablenet Alexicom Appy Therapy Choice Works/Bee Visual Hump Software Lesson Pix News 2 You Safe N Sound Mobile Saltillo Smarty Ears Speak For Yourself Speak MODalities SpeechPathology.com Speech Tree Apps TapSpeak Therapy Box Tobii-Dynavox How Does It Work? We use Rafflecopter to administer the giveaways. All entries made through there will be counted toward our drawings. Once we’ve drawn our winners, we’ll send an email to each one. You’ll need to be a good sport to play along because we’re not going to get into requests for specific prizes or substitutions. (As I learned from wise-beyond-her-years Pauleen, “You get what you get, and you don’t get upset.” Love that!) The winners will... [Read More...]
March 4, 2014
by Carole Zangari -
In this Teach Me Tuesday post, we feature a versatile and popular SGD, the NOVA Chat (Saltillo). Come along and learn with us! Product Information for NOVA Chat 10, 7, and 5 Video Tutorials Webinars Facebook – Users Group Knowledge Base Where to Go for Help More Interactive Support for NOVA Chat Free live online product training https://www.prentrom.com/onlinetraining/products Free interactive self-study courses https://www.prentrom.com/training/courses Current PRC product tutorials: Accent Line and Eco2 http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLeOTpEi0oXbhmtDfAHFZvGPkxFuoUSUuv
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...]