Brandi Lee Wentland: Strategies for AAC Collaboration with Behavior Analysts, SLPs, & More

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This week, Chris interviews SLP & AAC Specialist Brandi Lee Wentland, owner of We Speak AAC!  Brandi shares lots of helpful strategies for working with AAC users, including collaborating with other professionals, using a reinforcement matrix, helping others to get started on their AAC journey, and more!
 
Key ideas this week include:
 
🔑The cost of agreeing to increase speech therapy minutes can be much greater for a district than vs the cost of a device, but a request to increase speech minutes may be much less scrutinized in some settings than a request for AAC.
🔑BCBAs want research, preferably research of a certain type. Instead of debating the merits of some AAC research, more productive conversations can be had about video modeling, functional language, and utilizing AAC with motivating activities.
🔑Increasing the number of communication partners that model AAC with an AAC user both a) increases their exposure to language overall and b) demonstrates respect for the AAC user’s chosen mode of communication.
 
Visit bit.ly/twtpod for access to previous episodes, resources, and CEU credits that you can earn for listening to TWT episodes!

Supporting AAC Users with Aggressive Behaviors

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This week on TWT, Rachel shares about her recent experience with a client who became aggressive, self-injurious, frustrated during a therapy session, and what she was thinking and feeling as the situation felt like it was slipping out of her control. Rachel and Chris discuss the wide variety of emotions and thoughts that can occur after an experience like this, and they consider how we can best support students with complex communication needs who also demonstrate challenging behaviors.
 
Key ideas this week include:
 
🔑 Chris wonders whether videotaping sessions with the client could be helpful in figuring out what may have caused the client’s aggressive outburst. 
🔑 Gradual exposure to a disliked item, like a particular food being moved closer to the client each session, can be effective in some cases where students become upset or disregulated interacting with it.
🔑It is worth considering whether we can we make therapy that is engaging and fun that in order to reduce aggressive behaviors overall?
 
Visit bit.ly/twtpod for access to previous episodes, resources, and CEU credits that you can earn for listening to TWT episodes!

Meghan Betz: Improving Collaboration & Communication with Parents & Teachers

This week, Chris interviews SLP and AAC Specialist Meghan Betz about her experiences with AAC and what she has learned about reflective listening, working collaboratively in IEP meetings, working successfully with parents in the home, chunking information for parents & teachers, and more!
 
Key ideas this week include:
🔑 Rachel & Chris talk iPad stands - Rachel talks about her favorite sturdy and inexpensive iPad stand on Amazon and Chris shares about making iPad stands with 3D printing at thingaverse.com. 
🔑 Chris discusses his article for USAAC on using block coding to teach language.  Learn more about coding at code.org and about the robots Dash & Dot at https://www.makewonder.com/robots/dash/
🔑 Meghan & Chris discuss the importance of listening as much as we talk when interacting with parents and teachers in order to build their confidence and buy-in with therapeutic interventions.
 
bit.ly/twtpod also has previous episodes, resources, and CEU credits that you can earn for listening to TWT episodes! 

Kelly Key: Supporting Core Words & AAC Implementation School District Wide

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This week, Chris interviews Kelly Key about her role as Assistive Technology Coordinator with the Barrington 220 School District! They discuss promoting core vocabulary in Kelly’s district, using the SETT framework to evaluate AAC needs, helping to find communication opportunities in the school day, and more!
 
Key ideas this week include:
 
🔑 Discussion of the story on Twitter about Rachel Romeo teaching a young boy with ASD basic AAC skills during an 8 hour-flight.
🔑 Rachel & Chris’ experiences helping others with assistive technology out in public.
🔑 Kelly shares about growing her school district’s “Core Vocabulary Initiative” from 5 to 75 professionals!
 
Visit bit.ly/twtpod for access to previous episodes, resources, and CEU credits that you can earn for listening to TWT episodes!

Gail Van Tatenhove: Aging and its Possible Impact on AAC Users

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This week, Chris & Rachel connect with the amazing Gail Van Tatenhove about her career, working with adults with developmental and intellectual disabilities who use AAC, and more!
 
Key ideas this week:
 
🔑 Gail shares from her wealth of experiences, including how communication needs change as young AAC users grow into adulthood and beyond.
🔑 The idea that people with verbal speech don’t benefit from AAC is a myth - the first “A” in AAC is for “augmentative” communication!
🔑 If we rely only upon verbal speech to develop language, then language can be delayed when speech sounds are delayed. “Visual supports” are a great way to teach language while speech sounds develop.
 
Visit bit.ly/twtpod for access to previous episodes, resources, and CEU credits that you can earn for listening to TWT episodes!

Charlotte DiStefano: Researching ASD and Complex Communication Needs

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This week, the TWT team is pleased to share Rachel’s interview with Charlotte DiStefano. Charlotte is a researcher at UCLA with the Center for Autism Research and Treatment, as well as a Clinical Psychologist at the UCLA Neurodevelopmental Disabilities Clinic. Charlotte shares about being a researcher at UCLA, her involvement with JASPER, her research on autism & language development, ways therapists can improve interventions, and more!
 
Key ideas this week include:
 
🔑 The importance of school districts providing access to AAC devices after school and during the summer. 
 
🔑 When making device selections, try and involve parents, private SLPs, and teachers where possible! This can improve buy-in and help us make the most informed decision possible. 
 
🔑 JASPER (Joint Attention, Symbolic Play, Engagement, and Regulation) is a treatment approach that "targets the foundations of social communication and uses naturalistic strategies to increase the rate and complexity of social communication.” 
 
Visit bit.ly/twtpod for access to previous episodes, resources, and CEU credits that you can earn for listening to TWT episodes!

Productivity “Hacks” to Improve Efficiency, Effectiveness, and Collaboration - Part 3

This week, the TWT team presents their third “Productivity Hacks” episode! This episode covers additional “hacks” that Rachel and Chris were not able to get to during their AAC in the Cloud presentation, including Slack, Trello, Voxer, ITT, Doodle, and more!
 
Key ideas this week include:
 
🔑 Using Slack to coordinate and organize messages between groups of people, such as an IEP team.
🔑 Rachel is “obsessed” with Voxer, a walkie-talkie app for team communication that allows sharing of short voice and video messages.
🔑 Doodle makes scheduling easier for meetings by highlighting the times everyone is available at the same time.
 
Before Rachel and Chris share these “hacks”, the adorable Margaret Bugaj joins the podcast to share about modeling using LAMP Words for Life with a new AAC user while they watched movies together. Margaret also shares about being a temporary LAMP user herself when she recovered from stitches, and her advice for new LAMP users!

Productivity “Hacks” to Improve Efficiency, Effectiveness, and Collaboration - Part 2

This week, TWT presents the second half of the presentation “Tech Hacks that Support Team Collaboration, Productivity, and Efficiency.” This session was originally presented by Chris and Rachel as part of the AAC in the Cloud 2019 conference!
 
Key ideas this week include:
  
🔑 Rachel discusses how she uses TheraNest to help her schedule multiple clinicians at once.
🔑 Summer vacation gives some AAC users a chance to work with different communication partners. We can use this opportunity to see how AAC skills are generalizing outside of the therapy room. 
🔑  This week’s half of the “Productivity Hacks” presentation continues to share lots of ideas to help you become more productive and effective, including using Google for to do lists, sending screen captures with Loom, holding team meetings with Zoom, and more! Slides at bit.ly/AACproductivityhacks.
 
Before we present the second half of “Productivity Hacks”, Chris and Rachel talk about the end of extended school year services, using technology to schedule clinicians, assessing how skills learned in the therapy room are generalizing, and more!

Productivity “Hacks” to Improve Efficiency, Effectiveness, and Collaboration - Part 1

This week, the TWT team presents the first half of their presentation “Tech Hacks that Support Team Collaboration, Productivity, and Efficiency.” This session was originally presented by Chris and Rachel as part of the AAC in the Cloud 2019 conference!
 
Before we present the first half of “Productivity Hacks”, Chris and Rachel talk about working with impulsive clients, using wait time and eye contact to distinguish communication attempts, doing therapy alongside communication partners, and more!
 
Key ideas this week include:
🔑 Developing “care plans” for communication partners - e.g., “next week, we will practice expanding utterances by one word” - is a great way to think more about coaching.
🔑 Rachel uses her Core Word Bundle every week to explain core words, language expansion strategies, parts of speech, and more to parents. https://www.rachelmadel.com/shop/core-word-vocabulary-bundle
🔑  This week’s “Productivity Hacks” presentation shares lots of great ideas about how to become more efficient and effective in your AAC practice, including making QR codes and using bit.ly links. Slides for this presentation: bit.ly/aacproductivityhacks 

ABCs of AAC - Part 2 (Earn CEU Credit)

This week, the TWT team presents the second half of the “ABCs of AAC.” This session was originally presented by Chris and Rachel as part of the SLP2B 2019 conference!
 
Before we present the second half of the “ABCs”, Chris and Rachel talk about augmented reality in therapy, the “Do Not Touch” app, supporting literacy, and more!
 
Key ideas this week include:
🔑 Rachel loves to use some slang in therapy because shared use of slang fosters peer acceptance. We need to program and teach users how to communicate in the same way others are communicating.
🔑 It helps to get the community involved with AAC, so more people know more about how to connect and interact with AAC users.
🔑  Avoid repeating phrases too often for children who use scripts. instead, teach language concepts as individual units so kids can say whatever they want to say, whenever they want to say it. 
 
Listen to part 1 of the “ABCs of AAC” and this week’s episode, then head to bit.ly/techceu to earn CEU credit for listening!