Five Ways to Play

Our speech therapist runs a fun group every Thursday and this week we played, "Where is it?" She had small containers filled with fun size candy bars. Students volunteered to hide a container while the other student hid their eyes. (All with assistance as needed, of course.) Then the other students asked the "hider" yes/no questions starting with "Is it..." using position words (under, next to, on top of) and items in the room (desk, shelves, refrigerator, stander). The "hider" then answered the questions until someone guessed the location. In the end everyone got to eat or at least "taste" some candy.

Five out of six of my students where in school today and below you will see images of how each of those five students participated.

From left to right: A Mercury communication device by ATI with a keyguard using direct selection, a Go Talk 20+ from Attainment, four picture custom made low tech eye gaze boards, a TechTalk by AMDi and textured Yes/No board and a Yellow Big Red switch by Ablenet attached to a Step by Step Sequential Switch (not pictured).

ELR Offers Free Trial

eLr or Extra Language Resources gives the following statement about itself on its website,

"eLr is a comprehensive collection of thousands of on-screen, targeted, therapy activities in the areas of phonology, phonemic awareness, reading and spelling, and semantics. The activities are designed to be used as the basis of an interactive session with client and clinician or helper. Each task is flexible in its delivery style, and the huge range of tasks means that there are activities appropriate to clients with developmental or acquired language disorders (paediatric & adult). Currently there is no sound or speech associated with the tasks, as the helper provides reinforcement appropriate to the client needs and cultural style."

The site uses online activities to remediate certain speech, language and reading deficits. Although the lack of sound/voice is by design I can certainly see how it could be a flaw in the program for some learners who need multi-sensory input to engage with software. In addition it only works in internet explorer, so if you use Safari or Firefox or Opera you have to switch to another browser (in Firefox you can use IE Tab. Advantages include that scope and sequence being laid out for you, if you wish. The program uses Mayer-Johnson picture communication symbols, so your students will not have to learn a new lexicon for activities. The site has over 9,000 activities to try.

There is a one month free logon and password at Mayer-Johnson, which can be extended to a year if you return a survey.

Update:
In an e-mail from eLr I was told about access for those in locations that are not "wired" and access via some AAC devices, "Because not all users have access to the web when/where they need it, we developed eLr-Offline, which is essentially a stand-alone (compiled) version of the web site. It needs no internet connection to run, and may be placed on a laptop, DynaVox V/Vmax, LAN, USB drive etc. We add new eLr materials each month and so also build a new version of eLr-Offline each month to contain these changes. Subscribers to eLr can download the current version of eLr-Offline free from the web site at any time.

Subscribers may optionally receive the current copy of eLr-Offline on CD at the start of each subscription, and then automatically every 6-months. But, since eLr-Offline is updated every month, their CD version goes progressively "out of date" so some of those subscribers also download it each month to do their own update."