Explore and "build" your own model village

Bekonscot Model Village and Railway in the UK has a great visual and interactive website that allows you to take a photo tour of their modeled towns and then create your own.

Language Lens:
Discussing and creating a small town is a great way to target a variety of language skills and concepts, among them the categories of buildings, businesses, and other places in your neighborhood/city, spatial concepts, and storytelling skills.

Voice Cards App

Voice Cards is an iPhone/iPod/iPad app you can use to create stacks of "flash" cards with auditory rather than written information. The app is currently priced at $.99- very reasonable for such a versatile therapy resource.

Voice Cards is really easy to use and has many applications for SLPs- it would be motivating to use with students' vocabulary lists. Presenting information auditorily will give students an opportunity to work on that modality. I also really wish that this app were available when I was in grad school, particularly to get me through Neuroanatomy- and comps!

Check out the app- if you want to tweet @Buddy_Apps, they told me some promo codes are still available!

Black Friday on Moms With Apps

Hope all of you (U.S. Folks) had a wonderful Thankgiving.  Moms with Apps has arranged a Black Friday event with a number of apps relevant to SLPs at FREE or reduced prices today.

Let's Bead Friends allows you to make and share a beaded bracelet and provides an opportunity to develop categories such as colors and shapes, as well as skills such as description, sequencing and patterning.  It is also the type of app that would make a good context for a barrier game, with one student designing a bracelet for another.

GeoWalk is an exploratory app in which you can navigate and zoom about the globe and discover facts (categorized into places, flora and fauna) about geographic locations.  This app is sort of a Google Earth Jr, though the descriptions will be a bit lengthy for some students (but a good context for interactive read-aloud).  It will be great to have on hand for younger students who are studying world geography, and its categorical organization is also helpful.

Also on sale today is ChorePad, an app that helps parents organize and reinforce completion of chores by kids in a visually appealing way.  If you do any consultation with parents on organizational skills at home, or the importance of kids contributing to the home in order to develop social thinking skills, this app would be good to demonstrate to parents.

I am sure all the hardcore Black Friday shoppers are home by now, but we can continue shopping thanks to Moms with Apps!

Understanding the Online World

Note: I actually had written this post some time ago and kept scheduling it forward, and after attending Chris Bugaj and Beth Poss' timely and terrific presentation at ASHA, this definitely seemed a good time to publish it!

If you are here, you are already taking steps toward taking advantage of the Internet for your professional development and practice. Kudos. I know this world can be a bit confusing and jargon-y, and found Sue Waters' Glossary of the Online World to be an excellent explanation of some of the most common terms.

Putting some of these words in context for you as a SpeechTechie faithful reader:

• You can see my little avatar over there in the right sidebar, a photo of me, and a different avatar on my twitter page.
• This webpage is itself a blog, hosted on the Blogger platform. Comments (as Sue mentions) are extremely welcome (I live for them!), and you can see some of my pages in the top menu bar (e.g. What is SpeechTechie).
• Cloud computing (saving it to "the cloud" meaning out on the Internet) has been featured here when I have made a document available to you from Google Docs (the tracking sheet).
• I hope that SpeechTechie becomes just one stop for you in your Personal Learning Network (PLN), including other blogs, Facebook pages, or Twitter contacts. To learn more about PLNs, check out this post from The Innovative Educator blog, or my own on ASHAsphere.
• Using RSS is something I have encouraged before by subscribing to this blog using a service such as Google Reader, or using the email subscription. RSS stands for "Really Simple Syndication" and it allows you to save time and be aware of new posts without having to visit all your blogs.
• Social bookmarking is a great practice- and it's really how I find/organize most of my links on diigo and delicious (you can just pick one)!
• Social networking is what you do if you access this site through Facebook or Twitter.
• Web 2.0 sites (though this term is falling out of favor, and "social web" seems to be replacing it) are what you use anytime you save something to the web. Kerpoof is a good example.
• Wikis are a bit free-form for me, but I started out all these online endeavors by creating a wiki, and find some to be great references.
• Tags are used here on this blog (called "Labels" by Blogger, at the bottom of each post) to put posts into categories such as "cause-effect" or "curriculum connections." Clicking on labels lets you see ALL posts in that category.

I am sure new tech words will keep on comin'- it's hard to keep up!

Resources from ASHA Convention

It takes one a lot of time to consolidate all we learn at a conference like the ASHA Convention.  Unfortunately some years we never fully do consolidate the information, because we are thrown back into the busy schedule and, well, it's HARD to integrate new practices.  I think it's helpful to have realistic expectations of ourselves and consider a conference successful if we have a few new ideas that we implement.

ASHA's practice of putting handouts on the internet and keeping them there is, I think, a really open and useful one.  I first of all wanted to post links to mine:

Narrative Rubrics to Support Evaluation and Eligibility in School Settings is a poster I presented with Laura Goehner and developed also by my colleagues who could not attend, Katy Fleming and Christine LaFleur.  The presentation can be downloaded here and the rubrics themselves here.  You might find the packets interesting as what they are intended to be- the story of one particular department's study of a problem, and creation of a working solution.  The rubrics are something you might consider trying as a supplement to standardized testing.

My Links to Language presentation can be downloaded here.  This is an overview of the FIVES criteria, with links that serve as examples (in the weblist.me link), and a discussion of how to find technology resources on our own- blogs, twitter, social bookmarking, focused searches.

I feel like I might be overstepping a boundary if I link directly to too many others' handouts, but I'll just point you in the direction of the handouts site and tell you a few of the ones I think make interesting reading even if you weren't there (you can search session # and author on the site).  Please don't read too much into my choices- these are just a sampling of sessions I made it to and found interesting for my own personal and clinical interests.

1068- Just a Box of Games: excellent task analysis of games not necessarily intended for SLPs

0970- Developing Individualized Social Stories: presented an advanced form of social stories to use with older students.

1593- The Secret Language of Stories: the Hero's Journey as an alternate story grammar for older students- great idea!

1599- Functional Tx Strategies to Improve Executive Function Skills in Students: GREAT presentation by Sarah Ward, these are indeed very functional suggestions and we are so lucky to have her in the Boston area.

1483- Michelle Garcia Winner/Stephanie Madrigal's presentation on Superflex: gives a good intro to social thinking and that program.

2011- I don't think Chris and Beth will mind if I link directly to their awesome presentation on social media and SLPs.  Thanks again so much guys, for including me directly in your presentation.

Hope you all enjoy browsing these and many other great resources at the handouts site!!

ASHA Philly Wrap-up

This was my fifth ASHA experience- I have been fortunate enough to make it to Miami, Chicago, Boston, New Orleans and Philly. I know that it can be overwhelming at first, and I usually get so discombobulated that I commit some kind of major faux pas. I recall back in Chicago, I saw a gentleman walking toward the escalator, spied his last name on his badge, and thought I knew him from Boston University. As I got on the escalator behind him, I said, "Hey, Jerry!" and flummoxed him (he was not Jerry) so much that he actually TIPPED OVER. Ohhhhhhh, Sorry. Tipping over was also involved in the Philly convention. After Laura and I hastily pinned up our poster Thursday morning for our session that afternoon, we rushed to get to the first talk we wanted to see (two SLPs, and neither of us could figure out that Marr Salon G meant the session was in the Marriott, and we had to ask for assistance). Coffee/breakfast lines are always an ordeal at the convention, and I still hadn't eaten my bagel or finished my iced coffee. As we navigated the packed conference room and into some seats, late, I did this whole lose-my-balance/fall kind of thing when I was unhinged by the heaviness of my laptop bag and the narrowness of the row. Luckily the two SLPs I almost fell onto were totally cool and had a good laugh. Also, luckily I had not stuck the "presenter" tag on my badge yet, though the fact that I was one of perhaps three men in the room might have made me stand out a little. I did decide NOT to eat my bagel at that point, as I had already broken like three unwritten rules: coming in late, with a big drink, and falling.

Things got much better after that. ASHA is always a great time to reconnect with old friends and colleagues, and this time I "knew" (virtually at least) a lot more people, and they knew SpeechTechie! Maggie McGarry, ASHA's social media director, held a "tweet-up" and I got to meet her (@maggielmcg) as well as a bunch of Twitter #slpeeps @palspeech, @geekslp, @speechalicia, and @pediastaff. Follow these guys on twitter! Maggie also had set up a twitter hashtag (a phrase starting with "#" that helps you find all tweets on a particular topic), and that was very helpful! I also finally got to meet Alyssa Banoti, my editor for my posts on the ADVANCE blog, and it was great to put a face to all the virtual communication.

Thanks, Maggie, also, for the special tweeting tag!

We actually had a terrific timeslot for our poster, so this experience was much better than my last (when no one showed up for it). The feedback was great and everyone was interested in getting our handouts. Thanks, Laura (and Katy and Christine) for all the hard work!

Then, Friday at 11 was my timeslot for my seminar. I was only vaguely nervous all morning and made it to a few good sessions. Imagine my surprise, though, when I got to my conference room and saw this:

All those people were waiting (30 min prior) to get into my session! It was wonderful to see that so many SLPs are interested in using technology in their work, and the response to my talk was really overwhelming, in a good way. Thanks so much to everyone who came.

I'll be posting again tomorrow with some of my favorite resources from the convention.

Another Thanksgiving Lesson

I am going to be posting a bit about my great experience at ASHA (just got back and I am soooo tired, and still have laryngitis), but this is time-sensitive. SpeechTechie pal Katy Fleming, whom I work with at Bigelow Middle School, sent me this resource via email. She is right-on in noting that video can be used as a great way to engage students to discuss expected and unexpected behaviors, in this case the ones that we call "table manners." Katy also refers here to one of my favorite tools, The Incredible 5-point Scale, a variety of useful versions of which appear in Autism Asperger Publishing Company's The Social Times series, also by Kari Dunn Baron. Thanks, Katy!!

With Thanksgiving next week, I've been using my groups to talk about "table manners" and rude behavior. I found this video on youtube (kinda gross) and we used the Manners Social Times issue ... absolutely LOVED the "Rude Behavior 5 point scale".

5 being Extremely Rude

4 Offensive

3 Unsettling/Disturbing

2 Small Issue

1 Polite ....

You will love to hear that we discussed "farting loudly" and the "unplanned fart" for about 15 minutes.

Other behaviors discussed were: racist jokes, yawning loudly and then blowing your breath on others, unwanted topics of discussion, etc.

If you are looking for other lessons regarding the Thanksgiving holiday, there are some great specific social thinking ones in Michelle Garcia Winner's Worksheets book.

Have a great Thanksgiving!

Tables Around The World

Click the link below to see the essay

Check out Time Magazine's excellent photo essay, What the World Eats, Part I, which features 16 families from around the globe, a visually stimulating photo (look for things your family eats too!) of their week's groceries, and the cost of feeding their family. This site will give kids- who probably never asked their parents how much it costs to feed them- some healthy perspective in this Thanksgiving season.

Language Lens

In addition to being a perspective-taking activity, this can be used to target food categories or geographic locations. Try visiting each of the families' hometowns using Google Earth. A good extension would be to have students draw or write (or assemble Google Images) about what it would look like if their table were laid out with all the food their family eats during the week.

Thanks to pal Amanda Warren for pointing out this link on Facebook.

Qwicki

Qwiki is a brand new site that has great potential for use by SLPs. Enter a search term into Qwiki (right now, the available terms are limited), and a wall of images and video-like a dynamic slide show-results, along with audio providing information about the topic. This is why the site is called "The Information Experience."

Right now, Qwiki is in Alpha, which means it is in the very early stages of testing. You can try a sample Qwiki here, or request to join their alpha at the site, which gives you access to search.

Language Lens:

Qwiki would be a great context to develop information organization or auditory comprehension strategies. Try using a graphic organizer, Inspiration/Kidspiration, or key word generation task after watching a Qwiki result.

Thanks to iLearn Technology for featuring this resource

Make a Virtual Turkey

The Make a Stuffed Turkey game at Primary Games is a fun way to work on sequencing and helping kids understand all that goes into a Turkey Dinner.  The click-and-drag activity prompts each step in "making" a  stuffed turkey, and is great fun (though the music is annoying).

Language Lens

• Consider a predictive pre-activity- brainstorm ingredients that go into making a turkey!
• The activity also is a good context for building categories such as food groups and kitchen tools.