AAC Awareness Month

There are many options to participate in AAC Awareness Month.  The easiest is to download a sign or post and hang in a visible location.  Another is using AAC in public.  What a great motivation for some community based instruction!  Maybe even have a "AAC Sit In" and gather a large group of AAC users in a public space to communicate together (I have visions of the food court being taken over at the mall).  Even better if you do so in front of a live web cam.  The AAC Visibility and Awareness Campaign has ideas and a list of web cams all over the world if you are interested.

There is also a Read-a-Thon could be more aptly called an  "Online AAC Open Mic" where AAC users log into Skype and share their writings and thoughts about AAC.   Today my high tech AAC users tried to participate in the AAC Awareness Read-a-Thon, but we have issues with Skype and neither the blog nor the Facebook page really made up for that, thus we ended up watching some AAC Related Videos (embedded below) and posting to the Facebook page about our participation.

It was one of those great teacher moments to watch my students watching "If I had A VOCA" and "1 Voice".  One student was so enthralled that his eyes never left the monitor, with his entire torso leaning out of his wheelchair towards the screen.  The other student kept saying, "Cool!" and "Awesome!" with her AAC device.  Over the next few weeks I think we will start writing about AAC with our AAC devices.  

Would could be a more important part of AAC Awareness than AAC users being aware that there are others who communicate just like them all over the world!