Assistive Tech 5173 - Day 4 - Summer Course

We started class today with a brief video on Aided Language. This can be used can be used with low-tech communication systems or high-tech communication systems; it's a way to communicate with pictures. It is used to model communication for: making comments, asking questions, sharing information, greetings. I think it's important to keep in mind that it's just like learning a new language. In order to best utilize it and make it relevant to the learner, you need to communicate using it at least 20 times per hours. The goal is that they'll use the pictures to begin to tell you things spontaneously and to make it an enjoyable, shared interaction. It's crazy to think that by the time a child is 18 months, they're exposed to 4400 hours of language; if you only used aided language for 10 minutes a day, it would take 80+ years to get the language exposure of an 18 month old. So if we don't give them the opportunity, nothing happens...we need to presume competency & not give up!

The presentations today using Proloquo2Go were awesome. Everyone had such interesting takes on the activity and they were all very creative. I love how all of us new users were able to identify the task, create an activity and find meaning from it, all within a day or so. It speaks to the ease of the app. If we're able to learn the basic features of it in that short amount of time, that means it would be a straight-forward app to bring back to schools to teach your LC's, Resource, classroom teachers and most of all, the users. I appreciate Barb saying that if it is the first time using an aided language device, you may be better off using one of the free (or cheaper) apps. At $300+, Proloquo2Go is not a cheap app. That being said, if you have a student who is able to get meaning & use out of a device, Proloquo is a great program to work up to.

I'm really looking forward to next week & seeing what AT devices we can find at the Dollar Store. It's going to be fun!