Presentation at the AGOSCI 2013 Conference

1. Connect 2 Educate
AAC and iPads in the classroom
Fiona Barron, Malkara Specialist School
Jane Farrall, Jane Farrall Consulting

2. #AGOSCI2013
¤ #AGOSCI2013 is the conference hashtag
¤ We’d love to see some live tweeting J

3. Malkara Specialist School
¤ Malkara is a specialist school in the ACT;
¤ Over 100 students, from early childhood through to Yr 6;
¤ The majority of students attending Malkara have
complex communication needs;
¤ Historically, AAC systems have not been well used/
supported in the school;
¤ Additionally, not every student has been provided with
an AAC system.

4. Proloquo2Go Group 2011
¤ A Proloquo2Go group was run in Term 2, 2011 by Cathy
Hurman from Therapy ACT with 7 students from Yrs 4 – 6;
¤ Most of the students in the group had an iPad with
Proloquo2Go at home or school, but used it very little;
¤ It was felt the group had good outcomes, and an
attempt was made to continue it in terms 3 & 4 but as
students were from 3 different classrooms it only
happened a few times.

5. Proloquo2Go Class 2012
In 2012, 6 students who
had a recommendation to
use an iPad with
Proloquo2Go from a
therapist were placed in
the same classroom.

6. Proloquo2Go Class 2012
¤ All students were in Grade 5 or 6;
¤ iPads funded by Therapy ACT OR families OR Malkara;
¤ Initially Cathy Hurman from Therapy ACT provided great
support with ideas in setting the communication pages
up.

7. The Students 2012
¤ 6 students with complex communication needs;
¤ 1 student has a few words/vocalisations;
¤ 3 students have more words but are very unclear even to
familiar communication partners;
¤ 1 student is an elective mute and doesn’t speak at
school;
¤ 1 student has a progressive neurological condition.

8. The Beginning: Programming iPads
Each iPad was programmed
individually with a Malkara home
page with common categories and
also individual information under
“about me” and “news”, based on
Proloquo2Go v1 page set.
Survey forms were sent home to get
information to program such as:
family members, pets, friends, usual
weekend activities, special activities,
favourite activities at home, some
usual dinners, usual breakfast foods,
favourite foods etc.

9. Morning Circle
First two weeks using just
one iPad and used only in
Morning Circle.
Used the iPad one at a
time to answer questions. It
was very structured and
time consuming.
No apps other than
Proloquo2Go.

10. Morning Circle
After two weeks the students moved
to individual iPads;
We had to teach some polite
conversation rules!
Morning circle was very repetitive but
gave students (and staff) confidence
and skills in navigating categories;
Students enjoyed asking and
answering questions and telling news;
NB We aren’t recommending starting
like this – just letting you know how it
started!

11. Morning Circle

12. Expanding iPad use in Term 1

13. Literacy Term 1
¤ Questions for Guided Reading were programmed into the main
iPad. Students are given opportunities to answer questions or
comment about the book.
¤ The keyboard in Proloquo2Go was used for:
¤ Sound activities, such as ‘What’s a word that starts with m?”;
¤ Typing ‘word family’ words. For example, type ‘cat’, now type
‘mat’ etc;
¤ Learning to spell common words. For example ‘up’ and ‘is’;
¤ Typing words to search for books on Tar Heel Reader.

14. Other classroom uses
¤ Numeracy – especially what comes ‘before’ and ‘after’ numbers,
simple addition etc.;
¤ Drawing or colouring in – asking a friend for a different coloured texta;
¤ Mealtime – useful for one student in particular to ask for food to be cut
up etc.;
¤ Theme work – for example selecting the healthy foods from a page of
pictures of healthy and not so healthy foods;
¤ Choosing activities in free time.

15. Other uses
Using Proloquo2Go in the
canteen to buy items and
also to serve others when
we work there every second
week.
Plus others, such as using the
iPad for recreation for a
student who can’t go
outside at lunch

16. Successes with Proloquo2Go v1
Reduced challenging
behaviour as students
developed
communication skills.

17. Successes with Proloquo2Go v1
Students saw themselves
as communicators and
initiated communication
with others more
frequently;
Improved social
competence (Light, 1989);
More speech!

18. Issues with Proloquo2Go v1
¤ Phrase based communication wasn’t improving linguistic
competence;
¤ Students mostly limited to communicating in situations
that had scripts;
¤ Students were mostly responding rather than initiating
(partly due to vocabulary and partly lack of modeling).

19. Proloquo2Go 2.0
¤ Just as we began to worry about providing more
comprehensive vocabulary we heard about
Proloquo2Go 2.0 and the Core Vocabulary page set;
¤ On the day it was released, we downloaded it, updated
the iPads to it;
¤ The next day we started modeling!
¤ Fiona did some customisation for individual students.

20. Proloquo2Go 2.0 Core Vocabulary
¤ Page set with core (high frequency) words and fringe
words that works across the day;
¤ Students can communicate initially with key words (if
needed) and then transition to include little words;
¤ Can change number of rows and columns for different
students language, access and vision requirements.

21. Modeling
¤ Or Aided Language Stimulation (Harris and Reichle,
2004);
¤ Connected iPad to interactive whiteboard to model to
class;
¤ Extra iPads for staff to practice familiarising with
vocabulary;
¤ Staff began participating in classroom using the
Proloquo2Go as their communication system at times (no
speech).

22. Expanding and Changing

23. Interacting

24. Term 3 2013
¤ Students began combining between 2 to 7 icons;
¤ Students initiating lots more;
¤ Wider school community began seeing students as more
competent communicators.

25. Explicit instruction
During Term 4 began a
range of activities aimed
at increasing range of
vocabulary for students;
Played barrier games,
read books aloud, did lots
of sabotage, increased
our expectations;
Started using levels of
cuing.

26. Levelled Readers

27. Toca Hair

28. Let’s Have a Go….

29. Ideas for supporting core vocabulary
¤ Lots of core vocabulary information at PraAACtical AAC,
including a great post last week from Robin Parker
http://praacticalaac.org/strategy/more-on-core-words/
¤ AAC Bootcamp poster from Lauren Enders (who also has
awesome resources on Pinterest)
https://www.dropbox.com/s/43i758fqjtfxzon/AAC
%20BOOT%20CAMP%20POSTER%202.pdf
¤ AAC Core vocabulary Pinterest Board by Carolann
Cormier
http://pinterest.com/cmcormier/aac-core-vocabulary/

30. Challenges
¤ Difficulties with iPads owned by families – updating and other
content;
¤ Many of the early challenges have been resolved through iOS
updates, particularly Guided Access;
¤ Backups and voice downloads on school internet;
¤ Getting students (and staff) to ensure iPads are taken everywhere!
Have bought new cases for portability (e.g. iBackflip Somersault
Slim) and lanyards which have helped!

31. Successes with Proloquo2Go v2 (and
aided language input)
¤ All students from the class now have a core vocabulary page set in Proloquo2Go
that they can use in a range of situations and with different communication
partners. They have moved from no AAC, to phrase/situation based, to real and
flexible communication;
¤ Students initiate AND respond;
¤ All students showed improvements in linguistic competence, social competence,
strategic competence and operational competence;
¤ All students can combine key words to be understood. Four of the students
typically use between one and three words per utterance;
¤ One student is composing sentences with some little words, averaging 5 words per
utterance;
¤ One student is composing grammatically correct sentences of up to 12 words.

32. 2013
¤ Three students have gone to secondary school and
taken iPads with Proloquo2Go with them;
¤ Three students have moved to another class at Malkara.
Still using their devices throughout the day;
¤ AAC is the school focus for 2013 – so lots more happening
everywhere through the school. This was partly inspired
by the success of this project;
¤ Starting again with a new group of students but with a lot
more experience and a stronger understanding of where
we need to go!