How can we speed up the playing stage and do more communicating?

renacahill

This discussion was created from comments split from: Hi I'm Kim, an Assistive Technologist working with disabled children and young adults.

renacahill

Hello.  My grandson is 7 and has severe cerebral palsy.  He can use his thumb on the iPad, although we get lots of finger trailing.   We have bought him proloquo2go and set it up for him with 35 buttons.  (The advice is not to use too few as this loses interest for the child).  It is only Elliot's poor motor skills which prevent him using it better.  

The speech therapist at school has banned his device because he is still in the process of getting used to the app and it looks like he is playing with it whereas he is more likely to be exploring it.  He's only had it a few weeks.  The app is locked so he can only explore the app.  So time at home is limited, but we keep it available to him all the time.  

We don't want to go down the igaze route as the equipment is less portable and it is quite tiring.  

He has 2 iPads, one to play with and one exclusively for the AAC. 

How can we speed up the playing stage and do more communicating (he uses 3 word sentences with prompting) and is there any equipment or advice you can give to improve accuracy?  

Kim_AssistiveTech

Hello Renacahill, 

First of all in terms of finger trailing, you can buy a key guard for the iPad from Logan Technologies (the price is a little ridiculous in my opinion though)! It is made specifically for Proloquo2Go.

It's somewhat difficult for me to recommend much as I don't know the plan your speech and language therapist has for Elliot and I wouldn't want to step on their toes as it were. 

I can however give you an example of what myself and the speech and language therapists have found helpful when getting our younger years to engage with their communication aids. It may help you at home when trying to improve his accuracy. 

We work with the students to find out their favorite things to communicate about, one example is telling jokes in school to the other students. They really respond to the feedback they get from peers and staff. 

By giving the student the opportunity to communicate in a instantly gratifying way (receiving laughter) this teaches them that using this little device can actually be a lot of fun! 

I hope that example helps, let me know if you think that would work for Elliot and please get back in touch if you would like to try something different as there are many ways in which you can aid Elliot in using his iPad for communication.

Thanks for your question.

renacahill

Brilliant.   Elliot is a very giggly boy so will enjoy telling jokes!  There are lots of jokes built into one of the vocabularies on proloquo2go so I will direct Elliot to them and make them easily accessible, and ask his TA to let him loose on his friends.    Good idea, it's motivating which is always the problem.  

We we have a keyguard and yes the price is ridiculous!  We manage with this and a glove with the thumb cut out although it's fiddly.  He is getting better with the two in place

Kim_AssistiveTech

Excellent, well I hope his jokes go down well! I also had an after thought, perhaps school could implement his use of the iPad during breaks so he is able to choose his own activity/food/drink - but he only gets that reward once he has communicated his request through the iPad?

I'll have a look to see if there's anything that may help with his finger trailing other than the guard and let you know if I see anything.

Kim_AssistiveTech

Hello Renacahill, 

First of all in terms of finger trailing, you can buy a key guard for the iPad from Logan Technologies (the price is a little ridiculous in my opinion though)! It is made specifically for Proloquo2Go.

It's somewhat difficult for me to recommend much as I don't know the plan your speech and language therapist has for Elliot and I wouldn't want to step on their toes as it were. 

I can however give you an example of what myself and the speech and language therapists have found helpful when getting our younger years to engage with their communication aids. It may help you at home when trying to improve his accuracy. 

We work with the students to find out their favorite things to communicate about, one example is telling jokes in school to the other students. They really respond to the feedback they get from peers and staff. 

By giving the student the opportunity to communicate in a instantly gratifying way (receiving laughter in return) this teaches them that using this little device can actually be a lot of fun! 

I hope that example helps, let me know if you think that would work for Elliot and please get back in touch if you would like to try something different as there are many ways in which you can aid Elliot in using his iPad for communication.

Thanks for your question.