Talking With Tech AAC Podcast

Emma Fischer - Preparing for a New Career in Assistive Technology

This week, Chris interviews Emma Fischer, a special education teacher in Culpeper County, Virginia who supports students in an adapted curriculum program. She enjoys supporting her student’s use of robust AAC, and she wanted to ask Chris about next steps in moving to a career in assistive technology, including possible Master’s Degree options and possible job roles!
 
Before the interview, Chris and Rachel share an incredible Q&A session with a special guest who has a lot to say about on putting together a good presentation on coaching and AAC!
 
Key Ideas This Week:
 
🔑 If you want to transition into an assistive technology role, you may want to consider moving to another area of the country if a job opens up. Typically, there is limited turnover in most AT roles, and it is possible you could go get a Master’s Degree in Assistive Technology and not have a position open in your area.
 
🔑 Consider Educational Technology as an alternative to assistive technology. There are more Ed Tech jobs than assistive technology jobs overall, and as an educational technology coach you can support all students, including students who have learning needs but are not in special education.
 
🔑 School administrators can have a really big impact with students, especially if you come from a place of knowledge about AAC and inclusion. Many people say the issue with their admin is their admin’s mindset, not an issue related to mine. Having an admin that understands disability advocacy could be really good. Big trade off is you don’t get to work directly with students as much with.
 
🔑 There is an artificial line with assistive technology and educational technology where someone has to be in special education to get assistive technology in many cases. As an educational technology coach, you can work with all the students, including people in special education and students who have unidentified learning problems.
 
Visit talkingwithtech.org to access previous episodes, resources, and CEU credits that you can earn for listening to TWT episodes!
 
Help us develop new content and keep the podcast going strong! Support our podcast at patreon.com/talkingwithtech!

Otto Lana: Autistic Advocate, Writer, Actor, and AAC User

This week, Chris and Rachel interview Otto Lana (@otto_types), an autistic advocate who uses multiple modalities, including AAC, to communicate. Otto is also an intern at Kindred Communication (gokindred.com), which specializes in providing speech, language, and AAC coaching services. Otto shares about his AAC journey, why he believes literacy and typing skills need to be more emphasized for AAC users, his preference for positive instead of neutral or negative terms (i.e. nonspeaking) to refer to people with complex communication needs, and more!
 
Before the interview, Chris and Rachel banter (in the same room!) about how they try to keep an open mind when dealing with information that doesn’t agree with what they have heard before, and how that approach helps them stay current with many of the changes in the field over the years.
 
Key ideas this week:
 
🔑 If a person requires a wheelchair, are they called non walking? If a person has prosthetics, are they called non legged? Otto prefers “individuals with complex communication needs” or “multi-modality communicators.” Otto says the prefix “non” is negative. He wants to focus on positive or neutral terms, because “using deficit terms is derogatory and degrading.”
 
🔑 Otto believes that AAC systems that do not include a keyboard are “electronic PECS” because they are typically used to request and the words are predetermined by the adults in the room.
 
🔑 Otto says “Communication is a basic human right, and freedom of expression is a First Amendment right, but teaching civil rights or constitutional rights to special ed students doesn’t happen. If it did, there would be a whole new level of protesting” about how these students are treated.
 
🔑 Otto says to AAC users everywhere, “Don’t give up, it is hard work. Find friends who also use AAC. Be patient, be positive, trust in the process - you can do it!”
 
Links from this week’s episode:
 
Otto’s website - ottosmottos.com
 
Kindred Communication - gokindred.com
 
Recent article about Otto: https://canvasrebel.com/meet-otto-lana/ 

Rémi Morin - Creating the Canadian-French Version of LAMP:WFL as a Parent

This week, we share Chris and Rachel’s interview with Rémi Morin, father of a daughter who uses AAC user full time, a daughter who uses AAC part time, and a daughter who does not use AAC. He shares some of his many insights gained as the parent of an AAC user, including how he came across AAC as an option of this daughters, and, when he couldn’t find a Canadian French version of LAMP Words for Life, he created his own!
 
Before the interview, Chris shares about a recent experience he had as moderator for a panel of students to talk about their disabilities for the State Educational Technology Director’s Association, including the standing ovation at the end for the students!
 
Sometimes, Rémi’s daughter who uses AAC full time needs a lot of modeling of a word before she will use it, and she often needs to see it in multiple contexts. Rémi says he must be “tenacious” when teaching her words.
 
Key ideas this week:
 
🔑 If you go out in the world looking for a language resource and you can’t find it, that is a sign that you could potentially make that resource to help yourself and, in the future, share it with everyone else who may need the same resource.
 
🔑 They will be rolling out Rémi’s French translation of LAMP to everyone in French Canada, with a possible rollout to other countries in the future!
 
🔑 Rémi’s perfect AAC software would be web based, and would work with all the Android and iOS devices they use in the home, including phones.
 
🔑 When we say someone’s “AAC system”, that should be the sum of the different means of communication for a person, not just one AAC app. A person’s system could include multiple high tech apps, low tech solutions like core boards, pen and paper, and more!
 
Link’s from this week’s episode:
 
CAST.org - the group that came up with universal design for learning and, more recently, worked with Chris to create his student-led panel.
 
PRC Article on Rémi’s Canadian French LAMP Words for Life
 
Visit talkingwithtech.org to access previous episodes, resources, and CEU credits that you can earn for listening to TWT episodes!
 
Help us develop new content and keep the podcast going strong! Support our podcast at patreon.com/talkingwithtech!

Emily Macklin, Neha Sharma, & Amber Skerry: Supporting Communication for Deafblind Students

This week, we share Chris’s interview with Emily Macklin, Neha Sharma, Amber Skerry, three SLPs working with the deafblind population at Perkins School for the Blind! They share a wealth of information about working with deafblind students, including how sensory impairment influences their incidental learning, the importance of trial and error in teaching language, the different ways deafblind students use AAC, and more!
 
Before the episode, Rachel shares about a client who uses Read & Write for Chrome. Some school team members felt assistive technology was a “crutch”. until Rachel and the client made a story together using the Read & Write that convinced them was an important tool!
 
Key ideas this week:
 
🔑 Deafblindness doesn’t mean completely deaf and blind - it usually involves varying degrees of loss in both senses.
 
🔑 Teachers of deaf blind children design learning experiences to teach students about things on a deeper, more experiential level, such as teaching about apples by climbing an apple tree, cutting an apple, and planting the seeds.
 
🔑 You don’t want to be a “fairly godmother” for a deafblind student, where objects appear and disappear as you give them items and take them away. There needs to be a connection for the student between the object, where you get the item, and where you put it when done, e.g. a “finished” bucket.
 
🔑 Some deafblind students use a ProxTalker midtech device that allows a user to place any photo, symbol, or object on a sound tag card. Users place the sound tag card on any one of the buttons and push to trigger voice output!
 
Links from this episode:
 
Project Core - 3D Symbols https://www.project-core.com/3d-symbols/
 
Tactile Connections: Symbols for Communication
https://www.aph.org/product/tactile-connections-symbols-for-communication/
 
Tactile Symbol Library: https://www.tsbvi.edu/campus-resources/accessibility/tactile-symbols-library
 
DeafBlind International: https://www.deafblindinternational.org/
 
Active Learning Space: https://activelearningspace.org/
 
Guest Email addresses: emily.macklin@perkins.org, amber.skerry@perkins.org, and neha.sharma@perkins.org 

McKinzee Steve, Danielle Welge, & Kendra Everette (Part 2): Providing High-Tech AAC as a Tier 2 Early Childhood Intervention

This week, we share Part 2 of Chris’s interview with McKinzee Steve, Danielle (Dani) Welge, and Kendra Everette, three members of the AAC Team for a large school district in Texas! In the second half of this interview, they talk about interactive trainings they have created for their district; ideas for getting admin support for AAC programs, and their new project, a series of tier 2 supports for their self-contained early childhood special ed classrooms that includes AAC apps and iPads for every student and teacher!
 
Before the interview, Chris shares a fantastic AI tool that will determine what the overall consensus view on a particular research question - consensus.app. It’s an AI search engine for research that allows you to ask a question and it will provide the academic field’s consensus siting research on that topic. This can be great resource for AAC myth busting!
 
Key ideas this week:
 
🔑 If you are creating an AAC newsletter, consider turning it into a blog post! This can make looking at previous newsletters more interesting, and is also a great way to catalog previous articles in a searchable way!
 
🔑 The Texas AAC team has “collaboration tickets” for their SLPs where they go out to campuses and help the SLPs there build their skills. Their focus is on empowering the SLP to implement while the AAC team acts in a supportive role.
 
🔑 Even though are AAC apps and iPads for every student in their self-contained early childhood classrooms, if a student looks like they are utilizing the AAC supports more often, that is a flag for the teacher and SLP to consider sending the student home with a dedicated device.
 
Links from this episode:
 
Consensus.app, an AI search engine for research that provides the academic research consensus on a question in understandable language.
 
Continuum of Language Expression (COLE), a systematic tool for educators to assess language development that Chris helped develop! bit.ly/colegooglesheets
 
Visit talkingwithtech.org to access previous episodes, resources, and CEU credits that you can earn for listening to TWT episodes!
 
Help us develop new content and keep the podcast going strong! Support our podcast at patreon.com/talkingwithtech!

McKinzee Steve, Danielle Welge, & Kendra Everette (Part 1): Providing District-Led 1:1 AAC Training to Parents

This week, we share Part 1 of Chris’s interview with McKinzee Steve, Danielle (Dani) Welge, and Kendra Everette, three members of the AAC Team for a large school district in Texas! In this half of the interview,  McKinzee, Dani, and Kendra share about two projects they have been working on lately: 1:1 caregiver training sessions for parents and caregivers (with the help of grad students), and an "AAC Book Club" literacy enrichment program for AAC users!
 
Before the interview, Rachel shares with Chris about one of her recent success stories with a client! Rachel talks this student's profile, and how he started making significant gains once he moved to a “core word of the month”. In this strategy, it that starts with explicit instruction about that month’s word, followed by lots of modeling from communication partners throughout the month!
 
Key ideas this week:
 
🔑 If an emergent AAC user is not making progress despite lots of high-quality modeling from communication partners, ask yourself - is there a need for more explicit instruction, (e.g., teaching what the words mean)? Sometimes a student immersed in AAC will pick up how to use a device right away, while other students may require exposure for longer periods combined with explicit instruction.
 
🔑 Part of the services that McKinzee, Dani, and Kendra provide to parents and caregivers includes 1:1 training sessions with the help of local grad students over Zoom. Caregivers get six weeks of training with the grad students (with supervision). Afterward, parents and caregivers reported feeling more confident and capable of supporting their student’s use of the AAC device.
 
🔑 Another service McKinzee, Dani, and Kendra provide is an AAC Book Club. They have created "bins" that can be checked out by SLPs for six weeks that correspond to a particular book and include a variety of materials and activities that are extensions of the book. These lessons are based on the PRC Literacy Planner series.
 
Visit talkingwithtech.org to access previous episodes, resources, and CEU credits that you can earn for listening to TWT episodes!
 
Help us develop new content and keep the podcast going strong! Support our podcast at patreon.com/talkingwithtech!

Emily Taylor: Using Social Media to Promote Your AAC Resources

This week, Rachel interviews Emily Taylor (@emily.the.speechie)! Emily is a speech-language pathologist who supports AAC users in New Zealand and Fiji. Emily shares about Fiji, a country that has limited access to AAC support, and why she was inspired to help AAC users there. Then, Rachel shares some great social media tips to help Emily promote her upcoming AAC resources!
 
Before the interview, Chris shares a heartwarming story about setting up an experience for a kindergarten class to use iPads and learn about AAC. In addition, Rachel shares about using an AI background tool (Skybox by Block Labs) to help create a story for one of her students!
 
Key ideas this week:
 
🔑 Many of the families Emily worked with in Fiji had limited financial resources, and she found it more effective to primarily focus on light tech AAC. Light tech AAC won’t break, doesn’t need electricity, is inexpensive, and (relatively) easy to produce, which were often important considerations for the families Emily was supporting. 
 
🔑 Emily found that primary school in Fiji was very heavy on rote memorization. When students had difficulty with sitting and learning in that way, they were sent to the special school. Families of students at the special school were really excited when she told them that their child could grow up, work, and be a positive member of the village.
 
🔑 When evaluating your social media presence, understanding who your followers are (and who you want them to be) is really important, as well as being able to pivot if you find out that you have a different follower group than previously thought.
 
🔑 When you’re choosing which social media platform to post on most, choose the one that you know the best and already use, if possible.
 
Visit talkingwithtech.org to access previous episodes, resources, and CEU credits that you can earn for listening to TWT episodes!
 
Help us develop new content and keep the podcast going strong! Support our podcast at patreon.com/talkingwithtech!

April Wallace & Christina Stader - Specific Language System First Approach Q&A

Join Chris and Rachel for an Interactive Pre-Conference Session at ATIA 2024! 
 
This week, we share Chris’s interview with April Wallace & Christina Stader! They are school-based SLPs and AAC Specialists with Aiken County Public Schools who are considering moving their district to a Specific Language System First Approach (SLSFA). They discuss the merit of pilot programs, whether starting with just preschool, research that supports the principles of the SLFSA, and more!
 
Before the interview, Chris and Rachel discuss a listener question about a high school student only hovers over words and refuses to touch the device after using it to communicate for multiple years. Chris and Rachel share some strategies for teaching him it’s OK to touch the device, and how, in their experience, it may stem from a compliance-based element creating anxiety about choosing the “right” word.
 
Key ideas this week:
 
🔑 If you want to roll out a new program like SLFSA in your district, consider starting in a few classrooms first as a pilot. Then, you can measure their improvement to demonstrate your success to the rest of the district.
 
🔑 In Chris’s district, they give teachers 6 coaching sessions that records teachers and measures how much modeling happens. Teachers watch the videos and reflect on how they could do better, and the AAC team uses this data to measure success.
 
🔑 If you are moving to a SLSFA, there will be some students who received good implementation on a different system; often, these students should remain on those systems. If there wasn’t much success and/or implementation on the previous AAC app, it might be worth trying out the new AAC app.
 
Visit talkingwithtech.org to access previous episodes, resources, and CEU credits that you can earn for listening to TWT episodes!
 
Help us develop new content and keep the podcast going strong! Support our podcast at patreon.com/talkingwithtech!

Dr. Barry Prizant (Part 2): Is ”Spelling to Communicate” Authentic Communication?

This week, we share part 2 of Chris and Rachel’s interview with Dr. Barry Prizant! Dr. Prizant shares more about his thinking on the term "neurodivergent" and some of his experiences working on his podcast (uniquelyhuman.com) with an autistic adult co-host. Dr. Prizant also shares some of his perspectives on Spelling to Communicate, including why he believes it is an authentic communication method for some individuals.
 
Key Ideas this Week:
 
🔑 When considering whether the term “neurodivergent” is an accurate way to describe a person, we need to be cognizant of asking people how they identify with those terms. It is often better if we let people decide for themselves how we talk about them.
 
🔑 Some autistic people have said that the way an autistic person talks and acts is part of autistic culture, and should not be seen as a deficiency or rudeness.
 
🔑 Dr. Prizant believes that Spelling to Communicate is authentic communication for some individuals and a real phenomenon. He shares why he believes ASHA’s position statement against Spelling to Communicate is incorrect, and why Spelling to Communicate should not be looped in with Rapid Prompting Method.
 
Visit talkingwithtech.org to access previous episodes, resources, and CEU credits that you can earn for listening to TWT episodes!
 
Help us develop new content and keep the podcast going strong! Support our podcast at patreon.com/talkingwithtech!

Dr. Barry Prizant (Part 1): Echolalia and Gestalt Language Processing

This week, we share an amazing interview with Dr. Barry Prizant! Dr. Prizant is well-known for his work related to autism and echolalia, including research that was heavily cited by Marge Blanc and the Natural Language Acquisition framework behind gestalt language processing. Dr. Prizant discusses how he came to learn about echolalia and the confluence of research that suggested that echolalia had a communicative function (which he studied during his doctoral research). He also shares about the research behind gestalt language processing, how we can tell if someone has a gestalt or an analytical language learning bias, the true meaning of evidence-based practice, and more! 
 
Key Ideas this Week:
 
🔑 We can learn about someone’s gestalt vs analytic language learning bias by looking at their reaction to modeling - what are they picking up on? Good language modeling, in the context of every day activities, can include combining words into utterances as well as functional gestalt phrases - it doesn’t have to be just "gestalt" or "analytical". 
 
🔑 Some autistic people have not only intact, but exceptional memories. If you approach language from the perspective of “I have a great memory but don’t have the ability to construct generative language easily” then you would presumably learn to speak by listening to people and memorizing exactly what they are saying. 
 
🔑 Some people with echolalia faithfully reproduce foreign accents and sounds in their environment. It goes beyond verbal speech - some people are echolalic in sign language and some people with echopraxia copy people’s actions.
 
🔑 When we are trying something that is an emerging practice, we can try it with kids and see how it works (provided it doesn’t cause harm). Sources of evidence include clinical experience and expertise as well as research. In many cases, it is difficult to apply what we know from studying a small group of people (e.g. 30) to the larger population, especially when talking about something that is unique to each person, like autism.
 
Visit talkingwithtech.org to access previous episodes, resources, and CEU credits that you can earn for listening to TWT episodes!
 
Help us develop new content and keep the podcast going strong! Support our podcast at patreon.com/talkingwithtech!