Visuals Engine

Visuals Engine from Connectability in Canada joins a number of excellent free visual support and communication board making programs.   Visuals Engine offers a step-by-step online app to make schedule or communication boards with up to 16 squares.  It includes photographs and a limited selection of Mayer-Johnson Picture Communication Symbols. The rest of the site is also worth looking through, with games, information on safety, a resume builder for people with disabilities and more.

Overseas Products I Wish I Could Find In the USA

• V-Pen 


• The V-Pen is a mid tech AAC solution
• It uses special coding to allow the V-Pen to speak messages that correspond with paper
• You can use a variety of pre-made manual boards or make your own with special software
• Recordable Bar
• with six buttons and ten seconds of recording per button this would make a perfect visual schedule at $25.00
• Look2Talk Complete
• a complete set of materials and guides to creating, teaching and using low tech eye gaze communication boards
• The Talk Time Range 
• A variety of products that allow recording a voice and hearing it played back
• Includes a talking block (to use as a dice), switches and dry erase boards (Mayer-Johnson does carry a couple of these items.

• StoryBoards
• a set of pictures and story telling boards to allow students to "write" and tell a story
• reinforces time concepts as it is used

• Eyegaze Frame with Picture Print Software
• a transparent eye gaze frame and specialized software to print symbols for it

Show Before You Go

One of the things our classroom is working very hard on is integrating use of our visual schedules or calendar boxes. We are trying to adopt the motto of, "Show Before You Go." Since all of our students are dependent, on some level, for mobility within and outside the classroom, we decided that the adult who physically assists the student in moving from one activity to the next is the person who is responsible for carrying out the use of the visual schedule or calendar box.

This seems like a minor point, which adult should demonstrate the visual schedule/calendar box during the transition, but it is not. Our classroom staff works well as a team and we are generally able to move from one activity to the next and incorporate all of the little "between activity" things that need to happen (like removing leg braces, reclining a wheelchair or toileting) without much discussion; yet that was creating as one staff put it a, "too many cooks spoils the soup" situation. We never knew if, when or who had enacted the system. Now that we are clear that who ever physically assists the student to the next area is in charge this is simplified.

What small, but infinitely important things have you and your staff implemented to help in making the day go more smoothly?

Timed Visual Schedules

I have a student with an IEP objective to get ready to go home independently at the end of the day in under fifteen minutes. He made minimal progress on the objective last year in spite of a variety of interventions.

Today I tried something new and he was ready to go in eight minutes. I used a "Mark My Time" bookmark (available at department and bookstores or the website above), print outs of the steps in the routine and velcro to made a timed visual schedule. Then I told him we were having a race and that he had to do all of the steps before for the timer rang to "win". He was asked to remove each step he finished and velcro it to the back of the book mark. The last step was to sit and wait quietly, which he has never done before. He motored like he never has before and then pulled out his chair and sat down saying, "I did it!"

I would imagine that this intervention would work with any timed sequence. You can use just text or picture symbols, number of steps you can fit will depend on size of the font or symbol. I think it would be a neat idea for general education teachers to use these as hall passes for students who get distracted and don't come right back to class.

My number one tip is not to throw away the directions for the timer!