January 26, 2013 Day 2

The day began with another discussion about communication. When trying to set up a device for a non-verbal child it is important to have all the people in the child's life there. This reminded me of Glynis and Lynne, our two profs from the Introduction to Inclusive Education.  We are educating the whole child. Parents should be included in the planning, they usually know their children better than we do.  I also reflected on Barb's advice on where to start when planning to provide a student with asstsive technology.  She said to begin with the child and not the device.  If a student is going to use the device, they have to like it and want to use it. This always brings me back to Universal Design for Learning.  If their device looks like all the others they will be more likely to use it.  No child wants to be different from their peers.  We also need to be thinking in terms of what device will yield the best results for a student, not what device we prefer. 

One option we explored for helping a non-verbal child with communication was Proloquo2Go.  It is an Apple app that can be used with an iPhone, iPad, iPad mini and an iPod touch.  Very common devices used by children. 

 

 

We began an assignment using Proloquo2Go.  We were given a description of a student and asked to design boards that could be used at school, at home and in his community.  I thought it would be very easy to design the boards.  Put a bunch of button s on the board, the more the better in case the user finds themselves in a new situation, then the button they need will be there.  There is so much preparation that goes into creating a board that is right for the user. The user shouldn't have to fit the device, the device needs to fit the user.  When creating the board for our user, we had to consider his capabilities and limitations. Any buttons we wanted to include either had symbols within the program or we could search the internet or even personalize more by using pictures we took. I enjoyed creating the communication boards.  It really made me stop and think what a non-verbal person student would need to make him or herself understood.

The two following videos show Proloquo2Go in action.  The first one is how it will assist non-verbal children. The second is a clip of a child actually using the app.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Using Proloquo2Go with an Apple product such as an iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch has, in my opinion, a few key advantages. The first is financial. I checked our iPad mini and Proloquo2Go is available for this device. An iPad mini can be purchased for $329.00, and the app is under $200.00.  That is significantly cheaper than other text to speech devices.  As already mentioned, children will be happier using a device that is the same as their peer group rather than a device that will make them stand out from the crowd.