Talking With Tech AAC Podcast

Judith Schoonover (Part 1): Quickly Create AT Solutions From Common Objects

This week, Chris interviews Judith Schoonover, an occupational therapist who, along with Chris, was a founding member of the Loudoun County School District Assistive Technology Team. She shares about the importance of focusing on the specific needs of a student during assessment, not just their label; the consistent move of technology from special education to general education, her history as an AT “maker”, ideas for supporting maker groups in your area, and more!
 
Before the interview, Chris and Rachel catch up about Rachel’s work during the summer with clients doing “intensives.”! Intensives in Rachel’s practice involve having the entire communication parter team, along with the AAC user, attend three 90 minute sessions per week for two weeks. This is followed by three more sessions with just communication partners to train them further on how to be an effective communication partner using the information learned the previous two weeks. Rachel also discusses her new literacy intensive, and the positive results she has been getting from them as well.
 
Key Ideas This Week:
 
🔑 When people request assistive technology using broad terms (“What app is good for Down Syndrome?”), we should guide them towards figuring out the task that needs to be done and then help them feature match for those specific needs.
 
🔑 There is always a move for assistive technology to become more widely adopted in general education; for example, computers were initially only given to students in special education, while now many districts  have 1:1 computer initiatives. When supporting kids in special education who use a particular AT tool, try and consider if the tool is something that would be of benefit to kids in general education as well.
 
🔑 Judith likes quick AT solutions using Therese Willkomm’s “make in a minute” strategy, which capitalizes on the momentum we feel when we first start a project. She advocates for using notepads, squeeze balls, pool noodles, and more to quickly create helpful AT solutions. That way, the maker builds confidence in their skills and the district builds capacity. Watch more at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNpOeH4jnC4 
 
🔑  Judith works part time on the Assistive Technology Outcomes & Benefits journal, ATIA’s open-access, online, annual publication of peer-reviewed papers. Sign up for this free journal at https://www.atia.org/home/at-resources/atob/
 
 
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Recast: AAC Modeling Roundtable

In this “Recast” episode of Talking with Tech, we share a remastered episode that was previously aired on the podcast. This episode, Chris Bugaj, Rachel Madel, and Lucas Stuber have a roundtable discussion about the key components of aided language stimulation, i.e. modeling. This means that the the communication partner uses the same communication system as the AAC user to model communication exchanges.
 
Key ideas this week:
 
🔑 AAC is a visual language, and we can’t expect an AAC user to understand when and how to use AAC if they can’t watch someone else use it first. As Rachel says, “You want to create an AAC world, and go live in it.”
 
🔑 Research indicates that aided-language stimulation helps an AAC user to increase the length of their utterances, improve their vocabulary, and increase their use of grammatical endings. Samuel C. Sennott, Janice C. Light, and David McNaughton -102 Research and Practice for Persons with Severe Disabilities 41(2)
 
🔑 Just like when we talk to babies without expecting them to talk back, we need to provide AAC users with a lot of modeling opportunities without expecting a response. Even if we think an AAC user isn’t listening to us, we should continue to model to them without expectation.
 
🔑 Descriptive teaching of AAC is a strategy where the communication partner teaches concepts behind context-specific fringe words using high frequency core words. For example, rather than teaching an AAC user about photosynthesis using lots of scientific words, you can use core words to teach the concept (e.g., “The sun goes on the plant and the plant makes food.”)
 
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Recast: Chris Klein: The Importance of Motor Planning

In this “Recast” episode of Talking with Tech, we share a remastered episode that was previously aired on the podcast. This episode includes Chris Bugaj’s interview with Chris Klein, a full time AAC user, disability advocate, and mentor. They discuss Chris Klein’s presentation at ATIA about motor planning and the “external lexicon” of AAC users. 
 
Before the interview, Chris Bugaj, Rachel Madel, and Lucas Steuber discuss some of their thoughts about motor planning and what they have seen in their practice that supports the need for motor planning in robust AAC systems.
 
Key ideas this episode:
 
🔑 Chris Klein advocates for the largest vocabulary possible at the start to begin developing a motor plan with their AAC as soon as possible. It is important to consider a user’s motor plan long term. If you give them 8 buttons to start, you will need to keep expanding the page, which changes the motor plan around. It’s better to start AAC users on a larger grid size at the start so we aren’t constantly changing the buttons around.
 
🔑 Chris Klein shares that people who use AAC have both an internal lexicon (words in their head) and an external lexicon (whatever AAC device a user has in front of them). An AAC user’s layout must be well thought out in advance, because if there is no motor plan and looking for a button takes too long, the aac user may forget what they wanted to say or will otherwise limit their utterances. This could potentially slow down language development overall. 
 
🔑 For the most part, Chris Klein believes that goals for AAC users are set too low. The goal should be learning to use language spontaneously, not just communicating basic needs and wants. 
 
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Recast: Shaun Pearson & Chris Chicoskikelly: The AAC Agreements

In this “Recast” episode of Talking with Tech, we share a remastered episode that was previously aired on the podcast. This episode includes Chris Bugaj’s interview with Shaun Pearson and Chris Chichoskikelly about the AAC Agreements, a set of “better” practices around AAC that were crowd sourced from stakeholders in the area of AAC at the ATIA conference in 2016 and 2018. You can learn more about the AAC Agreements here!
 
Before the interview, Chris Bugaj, Rachel Madel, and Lucas Steuber discuss some of the key beliefs that they have around AAC and how they try and follow these guidelines within their own practices.
 
During the interview, Chris, Chris, and Shaun discuss the following "AAC Agreements":
 
1. The student should have access to their communication system even while engaging in academic or leisure activities.
2. Everyone is a multi-modal communicator. A communication system should include multiple modalities.
3. There should always be a light tech option as part of an AAC system.
4. Motor planning is an important consideration of an organizational structure of an AAC system.
5. The communication system should allow for multiple pragmatic functions.
6. Core vocabulary should be taught.
7. Modeling (aided language stimulation) all day, every day is desired in AAC, with no requirement of a response.
8. Modeling should allow for growth in the individual's communication.
9. Modeling should be used to facilitate growth in communication.
10. Accept any mode of communication as valid, as long as your communication partner understands what it means. Don't require individuals to repeat themselves in another modality. Do model the response in the modality you are trying to teach.
11. The AAC system should always be immediately accessible to the user.
12. The AAC system should never be removed for disciplinary reasons.
 
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Recast: Core Words Roundtable

In this “Recast” episode of Talking with Tech, we share a remastered episode that was previously aired on the podcast. This episode is a “roundtable” discussion between previous co-host Lucas Steuber, Christopher Bugaj, and Rachel Madel. They discuss core words, a relatively small set of high-frequency words, often between 100-300, which make up 80% of what we say every day. Teaching core words to AAC users can give the biggest “bang for your buck” compared to teaching many nouns.
 
Key ideas this week:
 
🔑 Core words are versatile and can be used to express a wide range of ideas, needs, and wants. Users can combine core words in different ways to create diverse sentences and convey complex messages.
 
🔑 By focusing on core words, AAC users have the opportunity to learn critical grammar and syntax, including prepositions and pronouns, which can help facilitate overall language development. Nouns are often heavily taught but only make up 20% of what we say.
 
🔑 Core words are not tied to specific contexts or activities, unlike fringe vocabulary, which includes more specialized or topic-specific words. As a result, core words are useful across different situations and environments, enhancing the user's ability to communicate effectively in various settings.
 
🔑 There are “personal” core words that are fringe words normally, but may be a core word for that user. For example, the name of the family dog might be a word that one particular AAC user would use frequently.
 
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Jordyn Zimmerman: Overcoming Limiting Beliefs in the Education System

This week, Chris and Rachel interview Jordyn Zimmerman, an autistic nonspeaking adult who was featured in the documentary “This is Not About Me.” This is Not About Me covers Jordyn’s journey trying to be included in school and to get access to robust AAC. Jordyn shares about the challenges with an education system that can segregate disabled students without giving them equal opportunities, the problems with “gatekeepers” withholding robust AAC from students, the impact of limiting beliefs, and more!
 
Before the interview, Chris and Rachel connect with Michaela Ball, the Audio Engineer of Talking with Tech. Michaela shares about how she got connected with the podcast and why she reached out to help several years ago. Chris, Rachel, and Michaela discuss some of their thoughts about Jordan Zimmerman’s documentary, This is Not About Me https://thisisnotaboutme.film/ and talk about the importance of giving AAC users the time they need to finish communicating.  Chris and Rachel challenge listeners to wait for Jordyn to respond in this episode rather than fast forwarding as a way to practice giving an AAC user the wait time they need.
 
Key Ideas this Week:
 
🔑 Jordyn shares that, in the education system, when students have disabilities, they are put on a path of segregation rather than being given the tools they need to communicate. This is especially true if the student does not use speech to communicate. Once segregated, the opportunities for students within the school and broader community are often limited. 
 
🔑 There remains a big issue with with schools and professionals “gatekeeping,” i.e., requiring that a person meet certain criteria before being given robust AAC. Often, this includes a requirement that a person shows “communicative intent” before they are given robust AAC. Jordyn notes that, as a student, she was asked to demonstrate communicative intent without being given meaningful access to AAC or training on how to use it.  For Jordyn, her school believed she would never meaningfully communicate because she had “challenging” behaviors after years without access to communication.
 
🔑 Jordyn says that she learned a lot of language as a child from listening to her older brother, her parents, and Sesame Street, as well as living in a print-rich environment.  Jordyn was learning about language from her home environment long before she had access to robust AAC.
 
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Rebecca Gettings: A Parent’s Journey Supporting AAC, Language, & Literacy

This week, Rachel and Chris interview Rebecca Gettings, a parent of an AAC user in Arizona. Her son, Carter, has complex communication needs and uses eye tracking. Rachel shares about her journey from learning about AAC to supporting Carter’s literacy, as well as some of her AAC and inclusion advocacy in Yuma, Arizona.
 
Before the interview, Chris and Rachel discuss some ways that Rachel has used AI in her practice, including using the Canva AI image creator to create visuals and characters for an original story. Rachel also shares about a client family that has negative feelings about AI, and her realization that she may need to have more conversations with families before using AI in therapy. Chris notes that AI is not “binary” - its not all bad or all good.
 
Key ideas this week:
 
🔑 When Rachel is using Chat GPT in therapy and gets an answer that is difficult for her client to understand, Rachel will model writing “Can you simplify that” into to help them get an easier to understand response.
 
🔑 Turnover has been a big problem for Rebecca and Carter - she frequently teaches Carter’s teachers and SLPs to be good communication partners, only for them to be replaced. When an AAC user’s family learns how to use AAC and become good communication partners, it establishes a consistent source of knowledge and expertise that won’t change as often.
 
🔑 Rebecca says that the main advice she would give to parents is to “get started learning as soon as possible,” even if it seems overwhelming at first. “Once you understand AAC,” she says, “its super easy, but it’s about making that jump.”
 
🔑 If you are training parents, don’t worry about training them on things they can search on YouTube, like how to add or remove a button. Focus on getting them comfortable with modeling and identifying activities in their daily routine that are starting points for implementation.
 
 
Link from this week’s episode:
 
SSA’s Spotlight on ABLE Tax Free Savings Accounts for Disabled Individuals: https://www.ssa.gov/ssi/spotlights/spot-able.html 
 
Inspire HI Project - https://www.facebook.com/InspireHIproject/ 
 
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Sydney Elcan Birchfield: Assistive Technology Q&A with Chris Bugaj

This week, we share Chris’s interview with Sydney Elcan Birchfield, an OT Assistant working in the schools and a graduate student in Assistive Technology at George Mason University! Sydney interviews Chris about his career and approach to assistive technology, including what Chris’s focus on inclusive design, including more AT in the IEP, the need for AT considerations vs AT assessments, free AT professional learning resources, and more! 
 
Before the interview, Rachel and Chris discuss one of Rachel’s clients who, prior to working with Rachel, was not making much progress using his AAC device. Rachel shares that, when an AAC user comes to her who hasn’t made progress, their system is often not set up for success - too few buttons, scrolling home page, etc. Rachel recommended a new AAC layout for her client with more language, but everyone in this client’s family was worried about moving to the new layout. They started with progressive vocabulary masking some words, and after 7 months, he is using the full layout successfully!
 
Key Ideas This Week:
 
🔑 Considerations are better than “assessment” because the time it takes to do an assessment can become a barrier - a team approach can be faster and more thorough.
 
🔑 The word “trialing” can be misleading when it comes to AT/AAC, because it sounds like a scientific trial. However, scientific trials control for all the variables before measuring change, but we can’t control for a large number of variables when exposing a student to different AT/AAC options. Even the choice of which option to put in front of a student first can change the user’s responsiveness to each option.
 
🔑 Inviting students into the considerations/assessment process helps us know what is motivating for them and if there are any roadblocks to AT (e.g. the student thinks using word prediction makes them look different) that can be discussed ahead of time.
 
🔑 We should remove the word “assistive” from assistive technology and just say “inclusive technology” or even just “technology”. It should be something that isn’t just for people with disabilities and special education, but technology can be used to redesign the experience for every student. 
 
Resources From This Episode:
 
QIAT Listserv - https://qiat.org/qiat-list/
 
#ATchat Wedesdays at 8pm Eastern on Twitter - To follow the discussion, search “#ATchat” on Twitter, and to participate, include #ATchat in your tweet.

Coaching Call with Sarah Seiger: AAC at a Nonpublic/Nonprofit School

This week, we share Chris’s coaching call with Sarah Seiger! Sarah is an SLP at a nonpublic/nonprofit school in Cleveland, OH that supports students with complex needs from multiple local school districts. Sarah is trying to develop more processes for her school’s efforts to get more students AAC, including questions about trialing, collaboration with teachers, modeling, and more!
 
Before the interview, Rachel and Chris have a lively chat about Rachel’s social media following, and why Rachel’s analytics indicate that posts  supporting literacy for AAC users often do not get as much engagement as posts that don’t talk about literacy. Chris notes that literacy may be something that not every SLP thinks of as “their job”, and maybe Rachel should consider combining literacy with other concepts to bring more people in.
 
Key ideas this week:
 
🔑 During AAC selection, we want to consider motor planning for every student we are assessing. There is no AAC user, regardless of their familiarity with AAC, that is going to perform better with the same word in different locations all across the device. 
 
🔑 Selecting an AAC device for a student that matches what their peers are using in the same classroom/school is not something that should be avoided as a general rule - it’s OK to consider the environment that a device will be used in.  That shouldn’t be the only consideration, but it can be an important one. 
 
🔑 While it may feel respectful to put different AAC devices in front of a potential user to finding out what they “gravitate” toward when we are “trialing” AAC systems. However, it is difficult to know why an AAC user appears more interested in one app than the others - it may be the first one they saw, might have a picture that caught their eye, might be impacted by how tired the student is, etc. Instead, we can figure out what system we believe will work, based on the available factors, and choose that to start implementing right away.
 
🔑 If you are trying to advocate for a position related to AAC within your organization, consider highlighting something measurable, like modeling, and advocating for an AAC coaching role to make those improvements. You can also look at descriptive teaching and least-to-most prompting for other measurables. 
 
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Small Talks VII: Darla Ashton, Hank Poore, Sean Sweeney, Shelley Anderson, & Tami Altschuler

This week, we share another episode of Small Talks, where we share small interviews with previous guests. This week, we share Small Talks with Darla Ashton, Hank Poore, Sean Sweeney, Shelley Anderson, and Tami Altschuler!
 
Before the interviews, Chris and Rachel talk about the CRAAP test. This test provides a list of questions to ask yourself when deciding whether or not a source is reliable and credible enough. CRAAP stands for Currency, Relevance, Authority, Accuracy, and Purpose.
 
Small Talks this week:
 
First, Darla Ashton shares about creating visual schedules with resources like Lesson Pix and the Choiceworks App (https://apps.apple.com/us/app/choiceworks/id486210964). Chris notes that we can also consider “amorphous” visual schedules, a type of schedule where the pieces are dynamic and move around as necessary if there need to be changes to he schedule. These can help kids who are learning to be more flexible thinkers.
 
Second, Hank Poore and Chris discuss the pros and cons of turning off the feature where a word is played aloud when each button is touched. Chris talks about that Bruce Baker advising him to have the word read after each time a button is pressed; this can help keep communication partners engaged by giving them a auditory prompt to keep waiting for the message, but it likely comes down to personal preference.
 
Third, Sean Sweeney talks about JamBoard and a recent experience he had adapting a role playing game for play in et students to help participate in a shared space, more than google slides. Found a free RPG called Movie Night. Having the students design characters and use JamBoard for everyone’s character. Also uses slides on JamBoard to explain the game in a way that is easier to understand. Kind of like a virtual white board. Julia Dweck has links to a bunch of jam boards at https://linktr.ee/GiftedTawk
 
Fourth, Shelley Anderson shares her strategy of working with a student’s preferred toy/instrument to elicit more language production. Shelley takes a gathering drum and a wooden frog that makes a croaking sound  and teaches language and prepositions to a student who loves the frog (e.g. “The frog is under the drum”).
 
Finally, Tami Altschuler wishes that there could be more care and communication between school-based and hospital-based SLPs before surgeries occur. If an AAC user is going to stay in the hospital, Tami would love for SLPs to contact her for better transferring care between the hospital and the school setting. 
 
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