I Can - share my stuff with you!

In our busy lives, the days fly by too quickly and leave us little time to get to everything on our "to do" list. We have great ideas about resources that we want to develop, communication boards we want to make, visual schedules that could be helpful. We all too frequently hear ourselves saying "When am I going to get that done?". We could all use a little help. The good news is that there are lots of resources out there that may work for our students. The trick is knowing where to find them. 

Here are just a few places to start: some you may know,

others may be a new "find".

Host a "show and share"
If you belong to a parent group or have regular staff meetings at school, take a little time to share your ideas or to demonstrate what you have developed. Often getting your hands on what someone else has created will spark an idea. Hearing about what has worked well may provide some inspiration to try something different. For example, trying to describe how an encoded eye gaze system works is very different to seeing it in action. 

Plan a "make it and take it" day / morning / hour!
Take turns with colleagues or friends to organize a time when you can come together to create resources. Find a time that you can meet, with all the items that you are going to need (e.g. Boardmaker, printer, cardstock, scissors, laminator...) and share those great ideas for creating items for a student or a whole class. If you need help, contact your Communicative Disorders Assistant, Speech Language Pathologist or Occupational Therapist to see if they can join the group. Sometimes having a scheduled time set aside can make these things happen. 

I Can Share My Time
Wish you could spend more with your students who use AAC, showing them where their new messages are located? 
Wish you could give them lots of chances to use their messages over and over again (practice makes perfect)? 
Wish you had more time to make individualized activities?
Wish you could get those news messages recorded everyday? 
If you have buddies who like to come down to the classroom and spend time with your students, make the most of their time and show them how to do some of the things that you wish you had more time to do!!! They will get value out of the opportunity to help and make a difference, your load will be lightened, and your student who uses AAC will be further ahead too!

Find the communication board that you need for that upcoming activity:
These days it is so much easier to create personalized communication boards for our students to use during classroom activities. But creating boards still takes time. There are lots of places on the internet where people now share their boards, and many are related to common classroom activities. Check out some of the following:

Praactical AAC shared some great ideas this week for making language visible and available to everyone. Simply stated: "To teach AAC, be a speaker of AAC".

Sharing on the Smart Board:
Need a core board that everyone in the classroom can share? Talk to your AAC clinician about how to display a core board on your Smartboard.  Students are highly motivated to come up and use the symbols on the Smartboard. What a great opportunity for everyone to be communicating the same way!


Speaking of Speech - an interactive online forum for speech language pathologists and teachers who are interested in helping students improve their communication skills. The site has a wonderful Materials Exchange section, where free materials are available, organized by topic. Here you will find communication displays for singing about Itsy Bitsy Spider,  printable Yes/No cards, Topic Setting Boards and much, much more. And that's just in the AAC section! Lots of boards, all ready to use. 

Boardmaker Community
Create an account (free!) to get started, then browse through the thousands of activities that are available for downloading. For example, searching for "The Gingerbread Man" brings up almost 300 results so chances are, if your class is reading this book, there will be something you can use here.

 
If you have created something in Boardmaker that has worked well for your student, someone else might find it helpful too. Consider uploading your activity so that others will benefit from your efforts. 

SET-BC boards - this link has visual supports and communication displays for a variety of categories. Print out a PDF board that will work for you, or browse the topics to get some ideas for your own boards. There's also a searchable database where you can find, download and further customize technology-based content.  It also has a collection of free, teacher created accessible books in a variety of formats such as Clicker 6, Writing with Symbols, PDF, Powerpoint and Boardmaker. 

Looking for a classroom activity that will be fun for your students who use AAC strategies? Check out Remarkable Ideas on the Ablenet website. 


SymbolWorld is a customizable symbol-based website (Widgit symbols only) created for symbol users. It has material for all ages and includes news, personal contributions, stories and learning materials. If you create an account (free) you can print out a PDF of the symbol articles.

 

Take advantage of what others have shared to get things started for one of your students.  Check out these websites for some ready made page sets for high tech devices:

• Page Set Central is an exchange site for Communicator 4, Communicator 5, Compass, Snap Core First and SymbolMate page sets. 
  

• Find and Share resources for the Grid 2 and Grid 3 at Online Grids.
  

Simplified Technology for Communication, Living and Learning - Linda Burkhart shares her expertise in her dozens of posted handouts. Here you'll find tons of practical ideas that include no-tech, light-tech and high tech setups.

The wonderful world of PVC!!!  Polyvinyl chloride is a fabulous material for making inexpensive mounts and stands so that we don't need 3 sets of hands to get the job done! There are so many things that you can use PVC for and some creative minds have put them all together in Practical, Versatile, Cheap Assistive Technology Supports. This booklet includes a suggested 'toolkit' of different tools and PVC parts that are useful to have on hand for your creations, instructions on how to work with the material, and designs/templates for many different setups. 

Resources:
Many Children's Treatment Centres and other organizations have their own links to helpful resources. Check their websites and look at the information listed for each AAC department. You can find the TVCC handouts here and online training modules here.  Another great example is the KidsAbility in Ontario. Their Augmentative Communication Service has a link to resources which are well worth checking out.