Talking With Tech AAC Podcast
Join speech-language pathologists Rachel and Chris as they discuss supporting complex communication needs with alternative and augmentative communication (AAC) and assistive technology!
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Episodes
Tuesday Sep 17, 2019
Tuesday Sep 17, 2019
We need your help to keep Talking with Tech going strong! If you are a loyal listener, please support our podcast at patreon.com/talkingwithtech.
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!
Tuesday Sep 10, 2019
Tuesday Sep 10, 2019
We need your help to keep Talking with Tech going strong! If you are a loyal listener, please support our podcast at patreon.com/talkingwithtech.
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!
Tuesday Sep 03, 2019
Tuesday Sep 03, 2019
We need your help to keep Talking with Tech going strong! If you are a loyal listener, please support our podcast at patreon.com/talkingwithtech.
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!
Tuesday Aug 27, 2019
Tuesday Aug 27, 2019
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!
Tuesday Aug 20, 2019
Tuesday Aug 20, 2019
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!
Tuesday Aug 13, 2019
Tuesday Aug 13, 2019
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
Tuesday Aug 06, 2019
Tuesday Aug 06, 2019
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!
Wednesday Jul 31, 2019
Wednesday Jul 31, 2019
This week, the TWT team presents the first 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 first half of the “ABCs”, Chris and Rachel discuss using the power of core vocabulary, changes to their schedules from summer, celebrating an AAC user’s circle of support, and more!
Key ideas this week include:
🔑 Modeling looking for vocabulary (and using the search function) on a device is a great way to help everyone feel more comfortable looking for vocabulary.
🔑 “Think-alouds” can be used in combination with modeling on the device(e.g., “Hmmm…how do I search?”) to help clients think about solving the problem themselves.
🔑 The “ABCs of AAC” from Rachel and Chris is an excellent introduction into AAC and is intended for anyone interested in a better understanding of the fundamentals of AAC.
Listen this week and to part 2 of the “ABCs of AAC” next week, then head to bit.ly/techceu to earn CEU credit for listening to these episodes!
Tuesday Jul 23, 2019
Tuesday Jul 23, 2019
This week, the TWT team is pleased to share the second half of the “Golden Rules of AAC Competency in a New Era of Communication.” This session was originally presented by Lucas, Chris, and Rachel as part of the #XedAAC18 conference!
Key ideas this week include:
🔑 Overlapping treatment with other professionals can teach you strategies you did not learn in your own professional training.
🔑 It is important to support an AAC user’s “operational competency” - the ability to turn on the device, change the volume, plug it in, etc.
🔑 The COLE (Continuum of Language Expression) is a free tool used by therapists and IEP teams to evaluate early language development. http://bit.ly/colegooglesheets
Before we present the second half of the “Golden Rules”, Chris and Rachel discuss accessible programming, learning from other professionals, operational competency, and more!
Listen to part 1 of the “Golden Rules of AAC Competency in a New Era of Communication” and this week’s episode, then head to bit.ly/techceu to earn CEU credit for listening!
Tuesday Jul 16, 2019
Tuesday Jul 16, 2019
This week, the TWT team is pleased to share the first half of the “Golden Rules of AAC Competency in a New Era of Communication.” This session was originally presented by Lucas, Chris, and Rachel as part of the #XedAAC18 conference!
Before we present the first half of this session, Chris and Rachel discuss several topics related to 3D printing, including creating 3D core word symbols using Project Core!
Key ideas this week include:
🔑 Teachers and SLPs can coordinate with students in “maker clubs” to print 3D core word symbols using Project Core.
🔑 The “AAC competencies” are a helpful framework for planning AAC intervention by providing a broader definition of communication competence and success with AAC.
🔑 Five domains of communication competence in AAC: social, operational, linguistic, strategic, and emotional competence.
Listen this week and to part 2 of the “Golden Rules of AAC Competency in a New Era of Communication” next week, then head to bit.ly/techceu to earn CEU credit for listening to these episodes!
Join AAC experts Rachel Madel and Chris Bugaj as they dive into a weekly discussion about all things AAC (Augmentative and Alternative Communication). Every episode they deliver practical resources, clinical guidelines and relevant research to help clinicians better utilize technology for individuals with complex communication needs.
Episodes include interviews with industry thought-leaders, clinicians, parents, researchers and app developers to keep you on the pulse of the educational technology scene and better support communication through the use of technology.