The Importance of Having a Voice

Communication is so important. The ability to communicate starts as soon as a child enters the world. I have a 13 month old little boy at home, and let me tell you, he sure has his ways of telling me what he wants. He only has 3 words that he uses right now, but through his gestures, tones, and behavior, he can communicate what his wants and needs are.

A question to consider: Is having the ability to communicate the same as having a voice? While my little boy can communicate what he wants and needs without having a voice (well, he can scream pretty well, but doesn't have many words), would he have his needs met more efficiently if he could speak? Can you learn better if you have a voice? I don't know the answer to this question, but a solution for students who are non-verbal is the Ipod/IPad app Proloquo2go. This program has the ability to give a child a voice.
Check out the following link which speaks to giving children a voice:
Proloquo2Go App Gives Children With Speech Impairments a Voice

Proloquo2go is an amazing IPad/IPod app. It is extremely user friendly and because of that, makes it very appealing. It is unbelievable what this program can do for the non-verbal learner. Below are some of the features of this program:

Screen shot of Proloquo2go:
This is a 6x6 grid

• full feature Augmentative and Alternative Communication Device 
• natural sounding Text to Speech voice
• 14 000 symbols
• advanced word prediction
• ability to fully customize vocabularies for varied abilities

Selection sets: When programming for a student using proloquo2go, creating an appropriate selection set is of utmost importance. You have to ensure that the communication device is efficient so the person accessing the device can communicate effectively. Some things to consider when creating a selection set are: 

physical abilities, sensory/perceptual abilities, linguistic abilities, and cognitive abilities. You must really know your student, so am important step in creating a set for your student is to have a meeting with the child's parents, all teachers and other support personal who know the students strengths and weaknesses.

We spent time creating a new profile for a fictional student on Saturday. We were given a profile of the student, and were asked to create a 4 category profile that would help her communicate effectively. We were working in a group of 3, and we found it difficult coming up with appropriate cells. The program itself is very easy to use, but the hard part was coming up with sentence starters and responses.  We had a hard time deciding on cells to create for use at home, so it would be important to include parents in the planning process. Also, all teachers should be involved so there could be cells that could be specific to class work. Administration should also be on board for the planning, and support personnel. It is important that the student will have an appropriate and effective way to communicate with anyone she may have to interact with in the run of a day.

For the creation of our students profile, here are some things we considered:

• Our student didn't have any visual impairments, so we took advantage of different colors to make the grid look more appealing. (We assumed her favorite colors were pink and purple, so we used those colors). 
• Also, our student primarily used one hand, so we suggested she should have access to an IPod rather than and IPad for ease of use. Also during transport, carrying the IPod and tapping the screen would be more efficient.
• She was used to working with a 20 grid, so we decided that a 3x3 format would work well for her
• There were some specific activities that she enjoyed, so we made specific buttons for those tasks
• She has emergent literacy skills, so we created buttons that were sentence starters

This program can be used for any student with any level of ability!