Talking With Tech AAC Podcast

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!

Kimberly Neely: The Trauma-Informed SLP

This week, we share Rachel’s interview with "The Trauma-Informed SLP", Kimberly Neely! Kim and Rachel have a fascinating discussion about some of the neurological and physiological changes caused by traumatic experiences. They also cover the difference between repeated vs chronic trauma, why some people with chronic trauma have trouble with interoception (i.e.. identifying how they feel), the importance of feeling safe, and more!
 
Before the interview, Rachel shares about deciding to create some new materials about self advocacy, including social stories that discuss body parts using core language. She also relates this week’s interview  to a previous episode with Chloe Rothschild about interoception and autism!
 
Key Ideas this Week:
 
🔑 Trauma is a physiological shift that occurs in someone that changes how they perceive the world and how they function. The things that heal trauma are the things that promote resiliency: a sense of safety; having a space to feel whatever emotions you are feeling; processing your emotions; and connecting those feelings back to your body.
 
🔑 Resilient people, communities, and families have a process they go through when there is loss, grief, or adversity - they usually gather to comfort each other and allow a safe place for everyone to feel what they feel.
 
🔑 Chronic trauma comes from being “saturated” in an unsafe, traumatic environment. This type of trauma wears down resiliency the most. 
 
🔑 Alexithymia is a general deficit of interception, i.e. the inability to recognize their own emotions and the emotions in others. People with alexithymia might be able to notice their body feels a certain way, but they typically relate those feelings to things like hunger or fatigue rather than being caused by an emotion. 
 
Links from this episode:
 
The Trauma Informed SLP Podcast
 
The Trauma-Informed SLP website
 
Chloe Rothschild TWT Episode
 
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!

Barbara Gruber & Ashley Grady: Supporting Accessibility and Inclusion at the Smithsonian Institution

This week, we share Chris’s interview with Barbara Gruber and Ashley Grady! Barb is the Assistant Director for Education for the National Air & Space Museum, and Ashley is the Senior Program Manager for Access Smithsonian (access.si.edu), the accessibility office for all 21 Smithsonian museums.  Barb and Ashley discuss their work in the area of inclusion, the ways the Smithsonian is incorporating feedback from the disability community, free leveled teacher resources from the National Air & Space Museum, and more!
 
Before the interview, Chris and Rachel finish up chatting about Chris’s recent visit to the International Society of Technology and Education (ISTE) conference. Chris talks about Jordyn Zimmerman’s presentation with Apple, shares the only AAC-focused vendor at ISTE 2023, and challenges everyone to learn about new resources and ideas by  attending conferences like ISTE and following Ed Tech specialists on social media.
 
Key Ideas This Week:
 
🔑 Twenty-one percent of people with disabilities have employment. This is an increase from 2008, but not enough - we need to continue to support more pathways to employment for people with disabilities!
 
🔑 Access Smithsonian brings in “user experts” who are members of different communities, including communities in the disability space, who are paid to share their feedback about current, and future, exhibits and learning materials.
 
🔑 The My Flight, My Space portal can be used to access content from the National Air & Space Museum that can be filtered and adjusted for things like reading level, length, and topics. This helps to make their digital experience more accessible and interesting to visitors.  https://nasm.infiniteach.com/ 
 
🔑 The National Air & Space museum has a Learning Resource page for teachers that is aligned to standards and put into categories to search things like grade level and age. https://airandspace.si.edu/learn/learning-resources
 
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!

Tiffanie Zaugg: Creating an AAC Facilitator’s Guide for a School District

This week, Chris interviews Tiffanie Zaugg, a PhD Graduate student and former AAC Coordinator for a school district in Iowa. Tiffanie shares about the “AAC Facilitator’s Guide” that she created in her former school district, a staff resource they could go to with descriptions of many of the concepts she was frequently describing to SLPs and teachers on a regular basis, e.g. core vocabulary, modeling, importance of having a light backup. Tiffanie shares about making this handbook, the SMART Partner strategy, her current work teaching pre-service teachers, and more!
 
Before the interview, Chris shares some ISTE takeaways with Rachel, including seeing more sessions where inclusion was embedded in the learning, going to an AI “Demo Slam” (i.e. demonstrations of tools), and a session about using role playing games (e.g., Dungeons & Dragons) to develop story telling skills! 
 
Key ideas this week:
 
🔑 In a table top role playing game, the players must describe what they want to do, and the Dungeon Master has to describe what happens as a result. This activity works on a student’s narrative skills, imagination, descriptive skills, and problem solving - all in a format that is highly motivating for learners!
 
🔑  In her AAC Facilitators Guide, Tiffanie included the “SMART Partner Strategy,” which stands for: Stop interruptions; Model; Avoid asking excessive questions; be Responsive; & wait Time. 
 
🔑 When teaching descriptive teaching, consider having students describe a common object (e.g. strawberries) in an AI text-to-picture generator and seeing if the AI makes a picture of that item!
 
🔑 Tiffanie’s AAC Facilitator’s Guide includes a Communication Partner Work book with a gesture dictionary. This gesture dictionary is a space to note the meaning of any gestures that are unique to that student that will travel with them as they progress in their education.
 
Links from this Episode:
 
D&D In Schools: Communal Storytelling in Classrooms by Matthew Winters and Dan Ryder - https://www.teacherwinters.net/istelive-2023/dndinclassrooms
 
Rewordify.com - Simplifies difficult English and more.
 
TextCompactor.com - Free online automatic text summarization.
 
Skybox by Blockade Labs: Free background/scene generator.
 
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!