AAC Workshop- I know how to make people communicate with u
Last year, UKM had invited the AAC experts- The Nika Project
team from United state to give us a workshop on AAC. I have met Dan & Mary
(SLT) and a technician. They provide us an overview of the AAC development
nowadays and teach us how to use some of the apps such as Pictello, Bitsboard
and Communication matrix. Frankly say, we seldom apply AAC in the therapy and
so, we actually forgotten the significant and prodigious aspect of
Communication in the child’s development. So, the first person who propound the
idea of applying AAC in speech therapy is a genius!!!!
For
those of you who are lost, AAC is an acronym for Augmentative and Alternative Communication
which is the use of alternative method including assistive technology, gesture
(sign language) and other mode to permit the communication of individual that
unable to write or provide speech due to physical confinement (ex. individual
with Cerebral Palsy, non-verbal children ). In short, we basically bestow the
communication ability to those children.
Talking
back to the AAC workshop, not only I am pleased to met the team, but to work
with them. In the following days, only 12 students are allowed to participate
in the hands-on session with the team in a secondary school. Luckily I didn’t
miss the boat as I am one of them.
As a
Speech-Language-Therapist to be, I have learnt that we need to be flexible and
critically integrate the environment in learning with the aid of assistive
technology such as Ipad as there are actually plenty of learning opportunity
around us that should not be squandered.
I can
still recall what Dan told me during the hands-on : “If we ourselves don’t
enjoy playing and using the teaching materials, what will the kids feel?’.
Thus, we should never act like a badworkman who blame his tools but we should
instead upgrade our tools in order to
fix the problem efficiently.
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