Connect 2 Educate AAC and iPads in the classroom

Fiona Barron, Malkara Specialist School

Jane Farrall, Jane Farrall Consulting

#AGOSCI2013

¤  #AGOSCI2013 is the conference hashtag

¤  We’d love to see some live tweeting J

Malkara Specialist School

¤  Malkara is a specialist school in the ACT;

¤  Over 100 students, from early childhood through to Yr 6;

¤  The majority of students attending Malkara have complex communication needs;

¤  Historically, AAC systems have not been well used/supported in the school;

¤  Additionally, not every student has been provided with an AAC system.

Proloquo2Go Group 2011

¤  A Proloquo2Go group was run in Term 2, 2011 by Cathy Hurman from Therapy ACT with 7 students from Yrs 4 – 6;

¤  Most of the students in the group had an iPad with Proloquo2Go at home or school, but used it very little;

¤  It was felt the group had good outcomes, and an attempt was made to continue it in terms 3 & 4 but as students were from 3 different classrooms it only happened a few times.

Proloquo2Go Class 2012

In 2012, 6 students who had a recommendation to use an iPad with Proloquo2Go from a therapist were placed in the same classroom.

Proloquo2Go Class 2012

¤  All students were in Grade 5 or 6;

¤  iPads funded by Therapy ACT OR families OR Malkara;

¤  Initially Cathy Hurman from Therapy ACT provided great support with ideas in setting the communication pages up.

The Students 2012

¤  6 students with complex communication needs;

¤  1 student has a few words/vocalisations;

¤  3 students have more words but are very unclear even to familiar communication partners;

¤  1 student is an elective mute and doesn’t speak at school;

¤  1 student has a progressive neurological condition.

The Beginning: Programming iPads

Each iPad was programmed

individually with a Malkara home

page with common categories and

also individual information under

“about me” and “news”, based on

Proloquo2Go v1 page set.

Survey forms were sent home to get

information to program such as:

family members, pets, friends, usual

weekend activities, special activities,

favourite activities at home, some

usual dinners, usual breakfast foods,

favourite foods etc.

Morning Circle

First two weeks using just one iPad and used only in Morning Circle.

Used the iPad one at a time to answer questions. It was very structured and time consuming.

No apps other than Proloquo2Go.

Morning Circle

After two weeks the students moved to individual iPads;

We had to teach some polite conversation rules!

Morning circle was very repetitive but gave students (and staff) confidence and skills in navigating categories;

Students enjoyed asking and answering questions and telling news;

NB We aren’t recommending starting like this – just letting you know how it started!

Morning Circle

Expanding iPad use in Term 1

Literacy Term 1

¤  Questions for Guided Reading were programmed into the main

iPad. Students are given opportunities to answer questions or

comment about the book.

¤  The keyboard in Proloquo2Go was used for: ¤  Sound activities, such as ‘What’s a word that starts with m?”; ¤  Typing ‘word family’ words. For example, type ‘cat’, now type

‘mat’ etc; ¤  Learning to spell common words. For example ‘up’ and ‘is’; ¤  Typing words to search for books on Tar Heel Reader.

Other classroom uses

¤  Numeracy – especially what comes ‘before’ and ‘after’ numbers,

simple addition etc.;

¤  Drawing or colouring in – asking a friend for a different coloured texta;

¤  Mealtime – useful for one student in particular to ask for food to be cut

up etc.;

¤  Theme work – for example selecting the healthy foods from a page of

pictures of healthy and not so healthy foods;

¤  Choosing activities in free time.

Other uses

Using Proloquo2Go in the

canteen to buy items and

also to serve others when

we work there every second

week.

Plus others, such as using the

iPad for recreation for a

student who can’t go

outside at lunch

Successes with Proloquo2Go v1

Reduced challenging behaviour as students developed communication skills.

Successes with Proloquo2Go v1

Students saw themselves as communicators and initiated communication with others more frequently;

Improved social competence (Light, 1989);

More speech!

Issues with Proloquo2Go v1

¤  Phrase based communication wasn’t improving linguistic competence;

¤  Students mostly limited to communicating in situations that had scripts;

¤  Students were mostly responding rather than initiating (partly due to vocabulary and partly lack of modeling).

Proloquo2Go 2.0

¤  Just as we began to worry about providing more comprehensive vocabulary we heard about Proloquo2Go 2.0 and the Core Vocabulary page set;

¤  On the day it was released, we downloaded it, updated the iPads to it;

¤  The next day we started modeling!

¤  Fiona did some customisation for individual students.

Proloquo2Go 2.0 Core Vocabulary

¤  Page set with core (high frequency) words and fringe words that works across the day;

¤  Students can communicate initially with key words (if needed) and then transition to include little words;

¤  Can change number of rows and columns for different students language, access and vision requirements.

Modeling

¤  Or Aided Language Stimulation (Harris and Reichle, 2004);

¤  Connected iPad to interactive whiteboard to model to class;

¤  Extra iPads for staff to practice familiarising with vocabulary;

¤  Staff began participating in classroom using the Proloquo2Go as their communication system at times (no speech).

Expanding and Changing

Interacting

Term 3 2013

¤  Students began combining between 2 to 7 icons;

¤  Students initiating lots more;

¤  Wider school community began seeing students as more competent communicators.

Explicit instruction

During Term 4 began a range of activities aimed at increasing range of vocabulary for students;

Played barrier games, read books aloud, did lots of sabotage, increased our expectations;

Started using levels of cuing.

Levelled Readers

Toca Hair

Let’s Have a Go….

Ideas for supporting core vocabulary

¤  Lots of core vocabulary information at PraAACtical AAC, including a great post last week from Robin Parker http://praacticalaac.org/strategy/more-on-core-words/

¤  AAC Bootcamp poster from Lauren Enders (who also has awesome resources on Pinterest)https://www.dropbox.com/s/43i758fqjtfxzon/AAC%20BOOT%20CAMP%20POSTER%202.pdf

¤  AAC Core vocabulary Pinterest Board by Carolann Cormier http://pinterest.com/cmcormier/aac-core-vocabulary/

Challenges

¤  Difficulties with iPads owned by families – updating and other

content;

¤  Many of the early challenges have been resolved through iOS

updates, particularly Guided Access;

¤  Backups and voice downloads on school internet;

¤  Getting students (and staff) to ensure iPads are taken everywhere!

Have bought new cases for portability (e.g. iBackflip Somersault

Slim) and lanyards which have helped!

Successes with Proloquo2Go v2 (and aided language input)

¤  All students from the class now have a core vocabulary page set in Proloquo2Go that they can use in a range of situations and with different communication partners. They have moved from no AAC, to phrase/situation based, to real and flexible communication;

¤  Students initiate AND respond;

¤  All students showed improvements in linguistic competence, social competence, strategic competence and operational competence;

¤  All students can combine key words to be understood. Four of the students typically use between one and three words per utterance;

¤  One student is composing sentences with some little words, averaging 5 words per utterance;

¤  One student is composing grammatically correct sentences of up to 12 words.

2013

¤  Three students have gone to secondary school and taken iPads with Proloquo2Go with them;

¤  Three students have moved to another class at Malkara. Still using their devices throughout the day;

¤  AAC is the school focus for 2013 – so lots more happening everywhere through the school. This was partly inspired by the success of this project;

¤  Starting again with a new group of students but with a lot more experience and a stronger understanding of where we need to go!