Augie Nieto's Inspiring Story and Use of EyeMax on The Today Show

Augie Nieto, fitness entrepreneur, appeared on The Today Show yesterday (video below). Diagnosed with Lou Gherig's Disease several years ago, Augie has been raising money for research. He now uses a trackball to access the computer with his feet. He demonstrated the use of the EyeMax from Dynavox for communication and computer access. He is planning for additional access strategies early, as his body continues to deteriorate.
You will find this video inspiring and encouraging. The code to embed it here wouldn't copy, so I am linking it below...

Augie Nieto Video from The Today Show

Also: Dynavox site page with focus on Augie Nieto

Enjoy!
Lon



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AAC Featured on NBC's "The Today Show"

I received this email from Dynavox today on some AAC exposure on the NBC Today Show:

"Today, March 30, AAC solutions will be highlighted on NBC's Today Show. The segment features Augie Nieto, vice president and co-chairman of the ALS division of the MDA and founder of Augie's Quest, who was diagnosed with ALS almost four years ago. Augie will be communicating in the segment with a DynaVox EyeMax System. In addition, we expect the segment to discuss how AAC solutions can help people with many different conditions, including autism, Down syndrome, stroke, cerebral palsy, and traumatic brain injury. It will be a great introduction for anyone who knows an individual who is struggling with communication.

Augie's segment is scheduled to air between 8:30 - 9:00 AM. We hope that you will be able to watch it live or set your DVR to view it later.Later on Monday, you will find a page on the DynaVox web site with a link to the Today Show video and other information that will be of interest to those new to AAC. Please feel free to forward this on to any families, SLPs, teachers or others that might be interested. "

I will link to the video and more info when it comes out later today,

All the best to you!
Lon




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Spring Break and 5 Minutes for Special Needs This Week

Spring break is here and I am taking a week off with my family on vacation in Colorado. I plugged in my laptop this morning and got a blue screen of death. Fortunately I have my computer backed up, but I am using my wife's laptop to write this post tonight.
Once back to work next week, I can turn my computer in to our wonderful tech guy and get it checked, but for this week I am a little stranded. Maybe I am being told I need to take some time off!
Patrick Black has taken the AT Blog Carnival on for April and I already have my article posted and ready for 5 Minutes for Special Needs for this Thursday - check out a post there on Power of the Positive in Advocacy. I am in good shape...
I know quite a few of you were at CSUN and I hope you found some great new products and picked up some good tips and information.
We have a couple of talk radio shows in the works for April (don't want to release who or what yet) and I have been working on a matrix of pros and cons to free print disability tools that I am getting ready to share. I have some challenging projects in the works with different initiatives from an AAC project to switch activated launch pads for rockets in May - so many ideas and so little time!
If you have a spring vacation break this week, take some time and enjoy. I will be posting some this week - but will be taking a little time off in there as well.
All the best to you!
Lon

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"Teaching All Students" Hosts Upcoming AT Blog Carnival in April

Pack Your Bags! The Assistive Technology Blog Carnival is going on the road!

I have been hosting the carnival at the AT Blog Carnival Blog site for the past year and now Patrick Black has stepped up to the plate to host it from his blog, "Teaching All Students" for the April edition.

He has chosen the theme "Sabotage" and gives all the details on his AT Blog Carnival post. He welcomes all bloggers to send him their stories. It will go up on his blog April 9 and he is accepting submissions until April 6.

Check it out, write up a post and send him the link - you will get some new traffic and we get the benefit of your story and info - everyone wins!

The Carnival is ready to roll to your blog too!

If you are interested in hosting a future edition of the carnival on your blog, please let me know at: lonthornburg@nolimits2learning.com

All the best to you!

Lon

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Intellitools Classroom Suite and a SMART or Promethean Board:A Winning Combination!

Classroom Suite by Intellitools has some great activities and applications that come alive with a SMART Board or Promethean Board. I have been piloting 5 Classroom Suite ver. 4 licenses out in 5 different school resources rooms this year ranging from elementary to middle and high school. My goal has been to train and allow a classroom to learn how to publish activities, set up student folders and start doing remedial support with it.
One school (the one taking off the most with it) has been doing early literacy activities with Classroom Suite on a Promethean board, having students work with an assistant in pairs and use the talking word processor tool, Intellitalk, and a virtual keyboard on the board, to get kids writing, spelling and hearing what they write read back to them. They have also used the board and Classroom Suite activities for a student who is visually impaired and needs to see things enlarged and close up. He is dragging word, picture and symbol cards in the phonemic awareness activites and getting the opportunity to do math manipulatives with it too.
I have 2 schools really training and using it, 2 that are struggling to integrate it at all and 1 that is somewhere in between. I have been available for support and have been working with the schools that request me and place a priority on integration.
I like to support free tools as much as possible, and there are free talking word processors and on-screen keyboards that could be used, but there are also many wonderful pay software supports out there as well. I am trying to find ways to help schools trial them first to make sure they really see the benefit where we think they are appropriate.
I would recommend pairing up the Classroom Suite Version 4 with a SMART or Promethean Board - you will be surprised at what it can do. Intellitools has done all the hard work for you to build easily adapted and personalized remedial activities in reading and math. They have a free trial available for download. I will have to share the free alternatives with you for another post.

All the best to you!
Lon





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Great Idea from Assistivetek Blog: Using Google Docs and Text Readers

Sometimes great ideas just come to us as a burst of insight - we have solutions sitting right in front of us and they are just waiting for the right moment to come to life, for us to see how to use them. My friend and a valued mentor, Dr. Brian Friedlander, wrote a great post yesterday on his Assistive Technology Blog about using Google Docs to create accessible tests. Combining the Google Docs and a text reader, there are free versions out there, make this entire method free to you to use.
Brian shared his ideas with great examples and visuals here:
http://assistivetek.blogspot.com/2009/03/using-google-forms-for-making.html
This is a perfect example of pairing together software and online tools to create an accessibility solution. Perfect Pairings was our latest topic on the Assistive Technology Blog Carnival in February. If you like Dr. Friedlander's strategy, maybe you would enjoy exploring some more solutions and ideas on the A.T. Blog Carnival...

All the best to you!
Lon



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Edutopia Shares: Ideas to Get Classroom Supplies Free

I don't know about you, but budgets are growing thinner and thinner as we finish up the end of the school year here soon. In light of the economic struggles that are hitting all of our programs, Edutopia, from the George Lucas Foundation, has a great article that gives you ideas on how to get supplies for your classroom free. I extended it a little further by thinking that many of these strategies could help fund AT equipment for classrooms.
Why don't you check out the ideas and see what might help you...
"Free Classroom Supplies Through Funding and Donations"
All the best to you!
Lon



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Believe in the Impossible

I was greeted at the door by a short, happy woman with a green St. Patrick's Day T-Shirt and a green beaded necklace with beer glasses hanging off of it. She laughed and said she had a green wig to wear for the Early Intervention Specialist that I had followed there, but when she saw I was there too, she thought it might be too much and overwhelm me! (Her birthday is March 17, I later found out.)
So started an afternoon visit to gather with other team members to share ideas on how to help a girl with multiple disabilities who will start her kindergarten year next fall.
Tanya, we will call her, accidently fell in a horse trough at the babysitters and drowned about 3 years ago. She was revived but experienced traumatic brain injury and now has CVI, a swallowing disorder, is orthopedically impaired and uses a feeding tube. The wonderful caregiver is a foster parent who hopes to see Tanya make some progress.
"The doctors have never let us believe for a second that there is any hope. From the beginning they were straight with us that she will never progress," the foster mom explained. "My sister and I just give her lots of love."
I was amazed at this woman who is of a retirement age and could be kicking back and relaxing, but gets her enjoyment through being a caregiver. The place was spotless, comfortable and Tanya was very relaxed and loved her foster mom to cuddle and hold her.
A vision specialist and speech pathologist soon arrived as well to give us 4 people to contribute ideas. We discussed eye blink and eye gaze strategies, but because of the inconsistency with her gaze, we decided to put that on the back burner for now. The vision specialist did some visual tracking exercises to see where she looks and how she responded but there were no indications that were consistent enough to tell us much of anything.
Finding an access point for switch hits was of interest to me. She loves music, a TV show she "watches" and has a stuffed bunny she loves. We decided to try a universal mount and Big Mack switch linked to a Powerlink 3 and a tape player/radio. We are going to start out by seeing if she will respond to keep music playing by hitting a switch. We don't know what movement she has that could help her access a switch consistently (maybe she can't) but we will do some trials to see. If she is able to access the switch to start the music going again, we know we have a starting place.
I left the session with my head full of the different strategies and ideas we came up with to get something going for this girl. It was great to feel a part of a caring group of people who desire to see great things happen for this girl. The foster mom shared several stories of Tanya over-hearing conversations and having consistent emotions and facial expression as a response to those discussions. There could be a very clear mind inside this girl waiting for us to find the way to help her reach out and contact us and open her world. What an exciting possibility! Can you believe in what sounds like the impossible?
I can.

All the best to you!
Lon




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Assistive Technology Services Are Moving Mainstream - and it's About Time!

One of my biggest frustrations for several years has been that the assistive technology tools I have and know support ALL learners have been basically restricted to students on IEP's only because my funding doesn't cover my services for any students other than what is IDEA-related. Well, in Oregon, we are finally shifting our service model at my ESD and working hard on a "paradigm shift" that involves our educational service district's providing a wrap-around service model that will support academic achievement for all students.
For too long, therapist's strategies (OT, PT, etc.) have been denied students that are falling between the cracks but not qualifying for an IEP. When I first started looking at assistive technology tools for remediating learning outside of special education, I was met with resistance because my requests were unconventional. The trend to move assistive technology into the mainstream of education is a victory worth fighting for and a task that means swimming up-stream for many of us.
Have you experienced first-hand how notoriously slow education changes? Bringing new ideas and systemic change is scary to many who have "always done it the old way." The saying "If you keep doing what you have always done, you'll keep getting what you've always gotten," is true in this instance.
What we hope to accomplish in my region, is to augment instruction and remediation built on professional learning communities, positive behavior support and response to intervention work already begun in our districts. If these are new terms to you, check the above links accompanying them.
We are developing a pilot project that will include one of each of the following: an OT, PT, SLP, School Psychologist, Assessment and data specialist, Assistive Technology and Instructional Technology specialists, Alternative education specialist and Austism, Vision and Hearing . All these folks will be available as a support team to be involved and dedicated to one district for customized academic intervention strategies. Each student needing interventions and remediation will be given extra support from the team - not waiting until students show up with an IEP.
Just imagine what we could accomplish for kids with that kind of support. And the cost? Well...we are going to have to make our dollars stretch. Our pool of funds is shrinking by the month and we are looking to this new model as a possible way to think outside the box to provide service in a different way that might cut down on so much travel and utilize technology and video teleconferencing more, etc. as well as being in the schools locally as needed - being a part of a team. The hope is we can see a new model that will align itself better with the shrinking funds our districts have and still provide quality services - even better services than before, on a smaller budget. We still have more questions than answers, but we have started a PLC of sorts with our specialists and leaders involved in the project to build what it will look like over the next few months.
We are reading "Professional Learning Communities at Work" by Richard Dufour and Robert Eaker, available here. I would highly recommend this book for getting yourself to think outside the box and look at how to develop a strong, committed professional community. As things develop, I will share more about what we are creating and how it is going as it progresses. I am just relieved that I am going to be able to use what I know to see more students succeed. These are challenging, but exciting times.

All the best to you!
Lon



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Assistive Technology Social Networking Spaces Share Great Resources

Ning is a great place for folks to set up social networking spaces to share all about whatever their interest is. On the "Assistive Technology Blog Carnival", we received an invitation to explore "Electronic Assistive Technology webSIG" which has a lot of people joining and some interesting topics, videos, etc.
Another social networking space I have enjoyed is "Assistivetech." It was started by Brian Wojcik who operates the SEAT Center at Illinois State University. Karen Janowski of "Teaching Every Learner" has also been involved in starting the network. There are a lot of great leaders and thinkers sharing ideas.

Classroom 2.0 is my other pick to recommend for those of you wanting to jump in the sharing stream of a social network within technology, education and assistive technology. There are lots of discussions there on how to integrate Web 2.0 for accommodating learning styles and using online technology and networking innovation in the classroom. Last time I looked they had almost 4000 visits a day!

I have built some great connections and learned about new things that constantly spark my interest into different areas. Social networking for professional reasons can be a great thing.

All the best to you!
Lon



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"Guitar Hero" Motivates Middle School Use of Writing Support Tools

"How many ways does Guitar Hero help your brain work better?" I asked. I was working with a boy that needed writing support for some slow processing issues. He was easily distracted and couldn't spell worth a lick.

"Hand-eye coordination," he said. He was very confident, sharp and really knew the laptop we were using. He shared he had a touch-screen tablet laptop at home.

"Good one!" I shared. "What other things do you do that would strengthen your brain?"

"I don't know..." he looked around the room. He was interested but had a hard time staying focused. I prompted him a little and said "You are getting distracted - pull it back in!" with a smile.

And so we worked - but I got him when I had him open "FreeMind" a mind mapping software and we typed "Guitar Hero" in the main cell. He began to label new ones connected with Hand-eye coordination, patterns and memory.

After doing the web of our little writing activity with the mapping, I opened "DSpeech," a talking word processor, and we chose a cool young guy with long hair falling across his eyes for the voice. I showed our student how to shrink both application's windows so he could see his map and copy the words of the main ideas into sentences he typed on the DSpeech text window.

He struggled with the first sentence, and hit "speak" to hear what he had so far. He caught that he had missed a space between two words when he heard them run together and fixed them.

When we were done, he had written 3 sentences, combined his ideas and had correct spelling. He liked to say, "Let's hear everything we have so far" and play it back. There was a sense of progress being made everytime he heard a little more. When he was done and listened to the whole thing, it was ready to be published or converted into an Mp3 sound file for others to hear.

He loved that he could downloaded the Access Apps Suite on a jump drive for free and access them. He could also save his homework on the jump as well - and nothing had to be loaded on a computer. It could all go between school and home.

I shared with the teacher afterwards that we could use DSpeech to write some writing prompt directions and save them to open so he could hear what he was going to do, then open Freemind and have an assistant help him organize his thoughts, then use DSpeech or another tool like Natural Reader by Naturalsoft to write and proof read through text to speech. These are two free tools that can really support developing ideas and provide an order to writing so a student gets guidance through the process visually. I showed him "The Sage" a dictionary and thesaurus that gives him word ideas. If he can't spell a word we will work with a free spell checker tool and get that going for him too.

I had buy-in and interest today as I worked on teaching this student these tools. Using Guitar Hero, gave me instant appeal factor for the assignment as well! Why not try some popular theme ideas to get your students to learn support tools that will strengthen their writing and literacy - maybe you will make self-accommodators out of them in the process!

All the best to you,

Lon

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Sharing Assistive Technology in the Midst of Many Demands

I stopped mid-sentence on an email, to answer the phone, pull a file, set a calendar date on my on-screen calendar and print off an administrator approval for a laptop trial. I prepped the laptop I will deliver tomorrow to an OT an hour and a half away, set up a home visit for next week, finished converting a VCR video of a student trial to digital, burned it on a CD, helped an administrator set up Dragon in her office and then ran to get in the car and drive 30 minutes to a training of an assistant on Intellitools Classroom Suite.

After the training, which I made an effort to make interesting - having her set up a word wall for a writing activity and test it out on a Promethean board, I asked her if this would work for her to use with the student.

"Oh, I guess so..." sounding not too thrilled. Here we were using what I consider cutting edge technology and she was saying she "guessed" so?

"You don't sound like it is going to work too well." I said, just doing a check to see if I was on the right track.

"It's fine. I am just really tired today."

Wow. Tired...hmmmm. Who else knows the meaning of that word?

I got home at 7:30 tonight and it is now 10 PM. I am not complaining, it is just that I am doing my darndest to spread AT enthusiasm and cheer at job sites, schools and online with you too...

and I know one thing - most everybody reading this out there has many demands on them from morning til night. We are all tired if we let ourselves be tired! I am nothing special and I don't want you to feel sorry for me. That's not the point.

I just believe that sharing the incredible freedom that can come through assistive technology is an honor and joy for me. I sat this afternoon and watched a little kinder boy with CP grin from ear to ear as he accessed a laptop talking word processor with a word wall and images in Clicker 5. He was able to type and tell me about his parents, the weather and what he was learning at school using the symbols and word buttons.

Amazing. I am not tired when I see that!

So, if you find misspelled words in my posts I write at 11 PM before bed or I get some information wrong - or maybe don't get a radio interview in for awhile - just know I do more than sit at a desk and write blog posts for the day. Just like most of you, I am juggling a daily life of training, teaching, supporting, driving and then taking care of my own family at the end of the day. But for me, that is what makes this blog mean something - I am an AT professional using it daily in the field - not speculating on what it might do. I am learning what it CAN do. And those things give me ambition to start a new day.

I hope your day is filled with purpose and joy. Be encouraged, you are heroes and pioneers!

All the best to you!

Lon

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Adventures in Juice-making and Routine Building Using Assistive Technology

"This is HUGE!" exclaimed the parents of a middle school boy last Friday as we sat and watched a video of their son using a Big Red switch, Ablenet Powerlink 3 and and a juicer to make pear juice.

The SLP, assistants and myself have been working on getting this boy to be able to learn routines and he gets it! The motivating factor is that he can access practical activities that motivate him. We had to find out what would make him want to follow a routine or use a switch and the first experiment was with music. If you are a regular reader, you may recall my post a few months ago where we had hit a hot button for this boy when he made the connection to use the switch to control a radio and music.

Now after several months, he has learned how to wash hands, wash and dry fruit for a juicer, use a butter knife to cut up the fruit with hand over hand guidance from an adult. He then can put the pieces in the juicer top, press the switch to make the juicer run and push down the pestel pusher on the top of the juicer to feed the fruit through - all at the same time!

As we sat on chairs in front of the media cart in an alcove at the middle school, the parents watched the process. They were thrilled to see him make such progress over the past months. He is moving to a new residential community next month that is associated with a local university special ed program. He will receive top notch care and guided activities. The staff wants a video of his work and the tools we are using so they can continue building on this new skill set being developed. We are sending this student on into good hands!

It is so great when you feel that success of seeing AT and practical application take hold and make a difference for kids.

All the best to you!

Lon

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