Category: Uncategorized
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The Day You Raised Your Expectations
Have you heard about the rats? There’s a study that was done where Bob Rosenthal, a researcher, took a group of regular, every day, average rats. The rats were divided randomly into two groups. He put signs labeling one cage of rats as “maze bright” and the other as “maze dull.” Each group, with the signs…
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AAC: Speak For Yourself Selects Acapela Genuine Children Voices for Its Young Users!
AAC specialist Speak for Yourself adds Acapela children voices to its voice portfolio. The AAC application that turns the iPad into a communication device to give a voice to individuals who are not able to speak or are limited in their ability to express themselves verbally, has just enriched its voice offer with Acapela children…
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AAC Modeling Part 2: Layers of Modeling Engagement
Yesterday, I wrote about AAC Modeling and compared it to introducing broccoli to a child. I’ve also written about modeling here and here, if you’d like some additional information. If you are at all involved in the world of Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC), you probably hear a lot about modeling, also called Aided Language Input…
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AAC Modeling Part 1: A Piece of Cake and a Bite of Broccoli
If you are at all familiar with augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) implementation, you have likely heard of modeling, also referred to as aided language input and aided language stimulation. In my daily conversations, I get the feeling that dedicated teachers, parents, and therapists often have the misconception that they’re not doing enough for their…
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Does (AAC Button) Size Really Matter?
“Those buttons are so small!” In the almost 4 years that the Speak for Yourself Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) app has been on the market, this is the feedback that we receive most frequently. Yes, the buttons in Speak for Yourself are small and you can not change the button size. In case you’re thinking, “Well…
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Speech Segmentation and Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC)
We are often asked about the reason that words are spoken individually in the Speak for Yourself augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) app instead of allowing the user to compose their message and then speak the full sentence. The reason it is set up that way is so that the AAC user gets immediate auditory…
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Setting Goals: A Reach, A Stretch, and a Leap
When I was in second grade my grandmother told me to write down what I wanted to be when I grow up and put it somewhere so that I would see it every day. I took a small piece of paper and wrote, “When I grow up I want to be a teacher” and slid…
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Evidence-Based Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) Advocating
I know…it’s the middle of summer and I’m writing a post about advocating for AAC in IEP meetings. It may not be timely for most of you but maybe it’s something you can save in your “notes” and use it when/if you need it. Meetings are overwhelming. Hours of preparation leads to hours of professionals…
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The Ever-Evolving AAC Voice Options
When I was an undergraduate, pursuing my Bachelor’s degree in Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences, one of the required courses was Speech Science. It was the mid-late 90s and we sat in a small “speech science lab” and shared large desktop computers with “high tech” software. We studied formants and looked at sounds and words…