AAC in Asia

Perhaps it is because I am an absolute geek, but I love looking at what other countries have to offer as far as special education is concerned. I particularly like exploring what other countries have to offer as far as AAC.

Using Google Translate I was able to explore most of a Korean Augcomm website that creates online communication boards to print out. Click on the pink box with the Korean characters on the left to go to a menu page, then use the drop down menus to choose boards to look at.

Unfortunately I was unable to find a way to translate one Thai AAC product page.

Again using Google Translate here is a special needs school in Japan to explore. From there we can find the website of Hearty Ladder a Japanese piece of scanning AAC software and Pad de Mouse, software that lets a joystick or gamepad replace a mouse. ATAC Kyoto was an AT and AAC conference held in Japan that is a fun site to visit. I also found a collection of picture symbols and photographic images along with instructions for the creation of a communication book and a picture symbol carrier for swimming. These Japanese picture symbols may appeal to students who really like Manga or Anime, while these might be nice for fans of Caillou.

Can you imagine how great it would be to be part of an international team of special educators exchanging ideas and information? At least the internet can bring us close to that.

End note: Some of Google's translations are quite amusing. Physical disabilities becomes "arms and legs inconvenience" and assistive technology becomes "welfare technology".

Virtual Fieldtrips and Tours

Although this isn't the post I had in mind for today, I stumbled upon the first site and thought I would share.

The Teacher's Guide Virtual Field Trip site has a listing of 70 plus online museums and tours you can access form your classroom. Unfortunately some of the links on the site are obsolete (but you can always Google the listing and find out where the virtual tour is now located).

Other listings of virtual tours and museums are available from e-Fieldtrips, Thinkport, Internet4Classrooms, and Oops (who give the great suggestion of creating a virtual trip planner and then sending virtual postcards). Not geared towards teachers or kids is Virtual Freesites, which has 300 links, but require you deal with pop-ups and ads.

Teaching Dressing Skills

If you have ever written a task analysis of putting on a blouse or tying shoes you know how difficult a skill dressing can be. Dressing is particularly difficult for student with fine or gross motor issues, visual impairment and/or cognitive challenges (particularly if they relate to sequencing, short term memory or problem solving).

Fortunately there are some free resources out there to teach dressing skills. CanChild at McMaster University in Canada has a free PDF download of a booklet to aid in teaching dressing using backwards chaining. Polyxo.com has a text based social story about dressing. University of Michigan offers tips for parents you can print and hand out.

Disabled Children's Village has a guide to teach dressing primarily for those working in third world countries, but interesting information for all. Texas schools has a four page guide book for teaching dressing to those who are deafblind. The Scottish government has put out a chart that lists seven stages of dressing, the skills needed to learn the next stage and suggested ways to teach those skills.

Higher functioning students may need to learn more about dressing for the weather and dressing appropriately for different situations. Integrating Minnesota has a lesson plan for dressing for the weather as does Exploring the Enviroment and Loundon Schools. Integrating Minnesota has another lesson plan for selecting outfits.

Dressing for the Weather is an online or free download game featuring Lecky the Alien and comes with a worksheet and lesson plan to match. BBC Wales also has a dress for the weather online game with the character Bobinogs from their children's television series.

Many of our students will need dressing aids such as those shown here at Rehabmart.

Pre-school and primary aged children may benefit from using teaching tools such as button boards, dress up doll and other toys designed to teach dressing. On PBS Kids children can dress Caillou for the Weather.

Older students can benefit from more age appropriate activities that teach dressing, including naturally occurring opportunities and activities like dressing a scarecrow for the fall festival or dressing a mannequin for a pre-vocational activity. You can pick up piles of old clothes with all sorts of fasteners at Goodwill, The Salvation Army and other thrift shops. These clothes can then be used to teach dressing in a more age appropriate way.

Montessori dressing frames are another option to teach some dressing skills in a discrete trial or direct instruction manner. (Note: dressing frame prices can range from ten to fifty dollars each.) On-line Montessori Albums has a task analysis, lesson plan and alternative activities for each kind of dressing frame and Montessori World as a more simplified version with photos.

Resources for Cooking in the Special Needs Classroom

Sorry about taking yesterday off. My goal was to post M-F, but we may all need to settle for posts on five out of seven days a week instead.

Most special needs classrooms find cooking to be a fun activity that teaches sensory integration, math, science, social skills, reading and communication. There are many easy-to-find resources online for cooking with children, but harder to find are resources for cooking in the classroom for learners with special needs.

One resource is actually a compilation of links from the page of another teacher of learners with special needs. While I encourage you all to check out all of the information on this site the links on Cooking in the Classroom are particularly excellent as well as the seven downloads of picture recipes.

Other sites with picture or photograph recipes include: Visual Recipes, Healthy Recipes, Nellie Edge and Great Recipes for Kids (scroll down).

Another website to check out is Savory Palette, with their free download of a cookbook for those with visual impairments.

E-parent has an interesting and unique article on using a bread maker with students who have disabilities that is well worth a read and may find you hitting up Craigslist or Freecycle for a bread maker.

The University of Illinois has a free online program to make and print any picture recipe you want called Custom Picture Recipes. You will need to play around a bit, but the site is very cool and extremely useful.

If you need photographic images of foods to use in making your own recipes I strongly recommend StockFood.

Device of the Day - Tango!

Having gathered quite a bit of attention on non-sped technology blogs, such as Engadget and Sci-Fi Tech, I thought it might be time for me to mention Tango! from Blink Twice.

The Tango is a handheld, dynamic display device with unique picture symbols (although you can import anything you want) and a built in camera for taking new photos to use as symbols. The symbols are arranged into talk topics for easy access (although you can program anything you want).

The Tango has spelling/typing options with word prediction and can be used as an adapted keyboard for documents, e-mails and more.

It runs on Windows CE, has about 8 hours battery life, built in scanning and switch ports. It only weights 2.5 pounds and has dimensions of 12.5" x 4.4" x 1.8. It is water resistant and has a tough wear resistant design. It also looks cool and was designed by some of the same people who made the X-box.

It costs about $7000.00 (gasp) and is distributed by Ablenet. The price would be its most obvious downfall. Others I can foresee without trying it out are non-standard symbols and a limited symbol set, not-yet-distributed desktop editing system and a maximum of six buttons per page,

Websites of the Day - Primary Resources and Teaching Ideas

Today I have for you two U.K. sites for primary level teachers, however much of the material is applicable or adaptable for use in the intensive special needs classroom.

The first site Primary Resources and the second is Teaching Ideas.

Turn a personal DVD player into an AAC device

From Frame Technologies (the folks who make one of my favorite medium tech, inexpensive VOCAs the Talk Pad) I share with you today instruction to make a $99.00 DVD player into a high tech communication device. This project seems a tad beyond my abilities, but I bet there are some techies out there who would love to give it a try.