In the Real World

Wow. Today was an incredibly busy and productive day. This was my first day of field placement. A woman walked up to me and asked about service projects, and I explained to her what I was working on with this project. It turns out that she is the Technology person at the prek school where I am student teaching. She was incredibly interested and is willing to send home surveys to parents, hold a forum, a workshop, or anything else this project might need in the future. This connection will be nice to have for the future. This conversation led to my host teacher asking about the project. Then she told me that two of her three students have assistive technology. Well, having been with the students all morning, there was no sign of the technology. I am not at all blaming the teacher because she is doing a great job. A few minutes later, she pulled out a DynaVox and set it in front of me! She said that the parents had brought it in because they only used it to play games on it and was hopeful that the school could use the technology better than they were in the home. This item of technology is worth $8420! It is hidden in the classroom because no one knows what to do with it or has the time to learn the technology, implement it, or teach the family and child to use the product. I loved the opportunity to mess with the technology and get used to how it works and see all of the parts that make it up. I also had a chance to read the Manuel and learn some of how to work the product. I then asked to take the Manuel home and learn more in order to teach the teacher, parents, and student. Even if the student cannot be one of my cases because of certain situations, I love the chance to learn the technology, how it can be used, what all it can do, and how to help this family. I do not want such an precious tool that could give this child such independence not to be used for the child's benefit. I am very excited to see a real live situation were I could make a difference and see the need for this project that is not a statistic on paper!!! Even if this does not work out with this child, today greatly encouraged me on this project.

When I got home, I called my favorite Special education educator and resource person who helps teachers fix their classroom problems. She knows the PEC and DynaVox systems quite well and gave me some tips.
Take pictures using the DynaVox to allow for personal situations. This also allows the child to tell who he or she wants to play with or work with specifically. Even as detailed as asking for the "purple crayon".
If the student is in higher levels of study, the technology can be categorized by subject content to give specific answers to classroom questions.
She also encouraged me to look into an item called a Big Mac.
I signed up for an online catalog for Speech pathologists at her suggestion called SuperDuper. Their website was quite impressive which I explored this afternoon.
I was encouraged to talk to a speech pathologist to find out what is on the cutting edge with technology in speech communication.
I also found a "Go talk 9+" for $199 which is much simpler and basic technology.

I also downloaded all of the prices for all DynaVox technology and extras to buy with it. I do realize that this is the top of the line, but I needed to know what was the most expensive in the area of AT.

Augmentative and Alternative Communication is what these types of devices are called.

(2 hrs, 30 min)