Group items tagged

"This site is compilation of vocabulary lists, evidence based research articles, questionnaires, communication grids, visual supports, video clips and general information from a variety of educators and therapists close to home and around the world.  The Assistive Technology Team at Region 13 would like to keep this site dynamic, ever growing and up to date.  As the field of technology rapidly increases and changes, the ESC AT team needs to rely not only on information obtained from within but information provided by the educational teams it serves.  

When writing communication goals and objectives for learners with complex communication needs one place  to start is the research.

Results All participants exhibited a positive increase in multisymbol message production almost immediately upon introduction of the LTM prompting procedure.

How to add a word to the LAMP:WFL app

"A comprehensive suite of supports for struggling students; including reading, writing, study skills, and test taking." comprehensive supports for their communication initiative.

The results of this research add to the evidence regarding the effectiveness of using AAC with people with an ASD (Mirenda, 2001; Schlosser & Blischak, 2001), and adds to the knowledge of why AAC systems are potentially beneficial for children with autism, (The National Standards Report). Effective teaching of motor plans, using the LAMP theory, can be seen to allow for increased storage and retention of symbolic information, resulting with more automatic communication over time, and reducing the cognitive demands associated with analysing and choosing from different symbol sets, as described in the LAMP Manuals (Halloran and Emerson, 2006: Halloran and Halloran, 2012).

Research suggests changing the icons size and location decreases the speed and accuracy of a person learning to use a speech generating device.

Research supporting the use of LAMP

Children and adults with developmental delays have benefited from the use of augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) systems to develop language skills necessary for more generative and functional communication. Beginning communicators however, have historically been considered too young or too pre-linguistic and therefore have not been introduced to AAC systems until behaviors, thought to be prerequisites, have been noted. Recent research and theories about early communication development have challenged this traditional practice and broadened the scope of what is considered to be AAC. Practitioners and parents unfamiliar with early AAC options may not recognize possible applications of communication strategies used with typically developing children and older persons with developmental disabilities. AAC is applicable at all ages for learning communication roles and behaviors as well as for functional communication for persons who do not yet demonstrate clear referential symbol use. This article addresses nine questions that are frequently asked about early introduction of AAC systems to children under 3 years of age. Rationales and strategies are provided that can assist early interventionists and parents in considering AAC options for children at risk for being unintelligible or non-speaking.

"Chris Klein is a voice to those that have none and helping hand to those with disabilities, even though he was born with cerebral palsy and uses augmentative communication to help him interact with the rest of the world. Over the past four years, Chris has been working closely with people that use AAC. He has recently been elected president of USSAAC (United States Society of Augmentative Alternative Communication). He has also formed an organization called BeCOME AAC. It stands for Building Connections with Others through Mentoring and Education about AAC. Chris is a graduate of Hope College and has studied at Western Theological Seminary. He currently lives in Grand Rapids with his wife Dawn."

WatchKnowLearn.org is a website with thousands of educational videos for students who want to learn core subjects like math or language arts, to hobbies, career development, and even philosophy. The videos can be grouped by Common Core, age, subject, and even type of classroom.

From Karen Erickson and crew

A Stepping-Up Technology Implementation Grant directed by the Center for Literacy and Disabilities Studies. The universal core vocabulary will be provided in multiple formats and levels of complexity to meet the diverse sensory and physical needs of students.

Is it possible that a few simple words like "give," "go," "like," "you," and "stop" can change the lives of nonverbal students? Finding the answer to this question has been the work of speech-language pathologists, assistive technologists, and teachers in the Spotsylvania (Virginia) County Schools for the past four years.

Jennifer Ro and Amy Thomsen presentation on how to implement core vocabulary IDEAS 2014 Conference Forsyth County Schools Assistive Technology Team

Speaker: Debbie Witkowski Presentation: Getting the most from High-Tech AAC Devices In this segment the speaker provides several advantages to prioritizing a focus on Core Vocabulary in AAC devices. These advantages include Core Vocabulary's role in language development, the ability to target multiple pragmatic functions, the flexibility of core vocabulary, the fact that Core Vocabulary reduces programming, and the fact that core promotes novel utterance generation.