AAC Awareness Month: A 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.
- 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!)
- We’ll send out the prizes. And, hopefully, the winners will take a moment to thank the prize donors.
How Often Can You Enter?
That depends on what kind of entry it is. See our AAC Awareness Rafflecopters for details.
The Fine Print
- Winners have 5 days to respond to the email with prize notification. On day 6 after the notification was sent, we will draw a new winner for that prize. Check your spam filters so you don’t miss our notification.
- Tech Support: Regrettably, we can’t provide it. If you have trouble with Flickr, Scoop.It, Twitter, or Facebook or anything like that, you’ll have to rely on your problem-solving skills to FIO (figure it out). We’re new to a lot of this ourselves, so we probably wouldn’t be much help anyway.
- In the event of unforeseen difficulties with prize donors or other things that give us grief, we reserve the right to make prize substitutions.
- What if you don’t like or need your prize? There’s probably someone in your community who does. Consider donating it to a local school, hospital, clinic, or library. We won’t be making substitutions based on winners’ preferences. (Sorry, folks. We gotta leave some time in the day for our real jobs.)
- The app codes that were donated are for the US app store.
- iPads are not included.
- Be sure to adhere to privacy guidelines for your profession and/or agency when posting pictures.
- We are not responsible for prizes that get lost in the mail.
That’s about it.
There are close to $2,000 worth of prizes that have been donated by people who love AAC as much as we do. Whether or not you decide to enter, we hope you can take a minute to support those who’ve generously contributed to this prAACtical celebration.
Good luck, everyone!
Filed under: PrAACtical Thinking
Tagged With: AAC Awareness Month
This post was written by Carole Zangari
22 Comments
You inspired me with your blogs about facilitating and scaffolding strategies. These are great to use when setting up language activities for my students who use AAC.
Leanne, thanks so much for those kind words. It’s great to hear that you’re out there doing the real work of AAC! We know how tough it is – thanks for taking the time to stop by!
Any opportunity to increase awareness of augmentative/alternate forms of communication is a positive step going forward. Thirty years ago, most people thought we were only talking about Bliss Symbols and signing…we have come a long way… What is equally important is increasing ones participation and the implementation of strategies in all natural environments on behalf of our AAC participants.
I am confident, I am most likely preaching to the choir!
Bonnie, we really have come a long way, haven’t we? I’m sure you remember those enormous 3-panel language boards we used to make-it still amazes me how powerful they were. Anyway, I think it is good to preach to the choir from time to time. As SLPs who love AAC, we’ve felt like outsiders in the wilderness for far too long. We need a place where we can all sing the same, right?! Thanks for stopping by to share.
I have referred any number of professionals to this site to look at your videos and handouts for Aided Language Input. It’s the best I’ve found and I thank you for the resources!
Martha, thanks so much for that comment. Sometimes it feels a little like we’re perseverating on the topic, but, honestly, it is such a powerful strategy AND so under-utilized. Thanks for spreading the word!
Just catching up with all the comments. Wow. If we all keep spreading the word, we will get to the tipping point and good AAC systems will become the rule rather than the exception.
I’ve been in the field of communication for almost 40yrs. and I agree with the other Bonnie. I remember when AAC device were VERY large and didn’t even have vocal output! One I remember only had ticker tape and the user had to spell everything out and it took forever! I also remember when I was in college only having one chapter on communication boards. AAC has always been my passion and I just want to see that every individual has an effective means to communicate with all communication partners! Have we come a long way you bet, but we have a long way to go yet!
Bonnie #2, your point is well-taken. I actually just got home from a community meeting that was attended by several parents of adolescents with significant communication challenges. Out of the whole room, ONLY ONE of their kids seemed to have a decent AAC system. It’s so frustrating to hear these same stories over and over and over. We’re moving forward but the pace is agonizingly slow…or, at least, that’s how it seems to me tonight.
I’ve introduced this site to my supervisor at my externship site as well as the other SLP’s. I’ve incorporated so many strategies that I have learned from Dr. Parker as well as others that I have learned from my work experience. What a great feeling to watch all the progress with my clients!
THANKS so much Melissa. Your clients and colleagues are lucky to have a clinician that is dedicated to continued learning and evidence based practices. Working together we can all ‘spread the word’ which ultimately will ‘tip’ the scales in the favor of ALL people who can benefit from AAC.
Melissa, that’s so awesome! It takes a lot of effort to grab onto new strategies and put them into action. So great to hear that your clients are making gains. Keep up the good work! You have a bright future ahead of you. 🙂
What an awesome assortment of AAC items! I would love to win some to use with our patients at the JD McCarty Center in Norman, OK. Thanks for offering an AAC giveaway 🙂
Good luck! We’ll be having weekly drawings all month. 🙂
Thank you for the wonderful giveaway opportunity! I have posted AAC-related content on my facebook page. And I am working on a newsletter on AAC that I will send out to my office mailing list (and link to my website) soon.
Thanks so much! We will be drawing the first set of winners on Wednesday and then start a new Rafflecopter right away. We’re just amazed at the generosity of the people and companies who donated prizes. Cassandra, thanks for all your efforts in sharing this with others. Much appreciated!!
This is inspiring .. knowing how busy you are and how important this is to you to make time to spread the word about something so important .. I’m inspired to do the same. Thank you! My families of children needing AAC need education first and this site is a great resource for them.
Thanks!
Kristy
Thanks so much!
I really appreciated your linked video on introductory AAC strategies using picture symbols “A Practical Look at Getting Started with AAC Symbols” (I’ve tweeted it/shared it to Facebook! ) I am both the parent of an autistic child and a special educator (Speech Language Pathology Assistant). I have a page, Special Apps, Special Kids, where I post things relevant to special needs, including AAC news. Your timely post coincides with the beginnings of a loan device library (currently one iPad, with hopes to expand to other devices!) that I am setting up here in San Diego- this video gives an easy to understand overview of the hows and whys of it- it should be a nice resource for the parents trialing the iPad with their children. I also read with interest your post “Building Acceptance of AAC”- we are fortunate to have options for assessment here in San Diego, but there still is a fair amount of resistance and misinformation surrounding AAC. Also finances, lack of knowledge, or just exhaustion means the parent may end up with the most “popular” AAC solution, despite it not being a good fit for their particular child. The loan device library will include AAC apps and AAC assesment tools to be used in conjunction with the expertise of a qualified AAC Specialist, so in this small way, I will keep plugging away at AAC advocacy.
WOW! It is great to hear the things you are doing. If we all keep ‘plugging away’ we can change the world.
This website has a lot of great resources. It was a good reminder about decreasing the number of questions and increasing the number of comments made in order to elicit longer responses.
Thanks for your comment, Meryl. I think we sometimes get so caught up on how different AAC is and how much specialized knowledge we have to have, that we (I) sometimes forget that the basics still apply. Language intervention is language interventions, and with AAC, we are just using some extra tools.