Program Planning

Today was a great surprise. When my cohort leader came to visit me at placement in the school, I asked him to take a look at the Dynavox and see what he thought. In the past, Dr. Wills has programmed Dynavox before and has a great background for helping with this project. We ended up working on the machine for over an hour and a half straight. We made a plan for how to format the Dynavox to best suit the student, and the teacher agrees with the decisions we made. I am going to make a model and plan for the symbols and vocabulary that we want to use. The problem with the technology right now is that it is too advanced for the student at such a young age. I am going to have to reprogram and reroute the already existing pages. I will also add my own pages to be customized for the student to have available without having an overwhelming amount of choices. This will help the teacher and parents not to feel so overwhelmed by the technology, too. I am studying up on how to link pages from manuals and tutorials so that I can continue to work on the Dynavox and create a profile that will work for the student's actual needs at this time. It is also very important to me that the student has personal photos as symbols, so the meanings are clear and applicable for the student. The sections I have decided on are Needs, Social, School, Home, Outside, and Extra. The next step will be to decide what six symbols are the most necessary and useful to represent each category. Too much choice at this point for the student would be detrimental to the project. The best would be to only have four symbols, but that is not an option with the machine. I enjoyed setting up the basic content like sounds, voice, and backgrounds today. The machine was a lot more challenging to change users, settings, and controls than I ever thought it would be. I understand that this is because it has so much possibility for the student as he or she gets older. The initial frustration and fear would be hard to overcome for someone who is not interested, technologically inclined, or determined to make the technology work. The belief in its potential to achieve success is vital to working with the technology. I was very encouraged by the work and progress with the technology today. Dr. Wills is also going to come with me to the parent meeting next week to help legitimize the scholarship, my personal background, and what I want to do with this project.
(2 hrs, 15 min)