June 10, 2020
by Carole Zangari -
Do you have a formal process for identifying how AAC communicators interact with the people who are part of their daily experiences? If not, you may want to add this tool to your AAC assessment protocol: Social Networks, A Communication Inventory for Individuals with Complex Communication Needs and their Communication Partners. In today’s video, we feature AAC pioneer Dr. Sarah Blackstone discussing this well-established tool and how to implement it. The video is an archived webinar done for the ECHO Voices initiative from the Oregon Technology Access Program (OTAP). You can download the handout for this session here. We are grateful to Dr. Blackstone and the OTAP ECHO Voices Team for hosting this wonderful presentation and making it freely available to the global AAC community. Direct Link to Video – https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FEvPWsBeJH80_kGYt8Z5YthP2l0M-3_2/view
Filed under: Video of the Week
Tagged With: AAC assessment, partners
February 20, 2017
by Carole Zangari -
Last week, we posted about taking data on communication partners, something that can be very helpful when we are looking for ways to expedite the AAC user’s progress. Based on feedback from that post, we’re sharing a sample data collection form for this purpose. Do you have another idea for collecting data on the behavior of communication partners? We’d love to hear about it.
Filed under: Featured Posts, PrAACtical Thinking
Tagged With: data collection, download, forms, partners
September 26, 2014
by Carole Zangari -
This resource from AAC Scotland has lots of great tips and strategies for helping to make communication exchanges with people who use AAC more successful. We love that many of them are straight from people who communicate with AAC. It is very interactive so make sure to click and explore. You can also download a pamphlet explaining AAC here.
Filed under: PrAACtical Thinking
Tagged With: AAC Scotland, interaction, partners, resources
January 13, 2012
by Robin Parker -
Like you, we are always looking at ways to take communication and language to the next level. We’re never really satisfied. Although we may be thrilled with things that our AAC friends are doing now, we can’t stop thinking about the next step. And often that involves helping communication partners facilitate the language learning process. When multimodal communicators interact, we try to react to solidify the language learning. Here’s are some of the things that have helped communication partners we’ve worked with. We’re learning to REACT by responding, expanding, acting, commenting, and turn-taking. 1. Respond to the Intent. What is the communicator trying to tell you? If you know what, then start doing it. If you’re not sure, take your best guess and start doing it. For the emerging communicator, respond quickly. For the more established communicator, begin to respond quickly so they know that you ‘got’ the message,... [Read More...]
Filed under: PrAACtical Thinking
Tagged With: expression, facial expression, partners, symbol