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AAC Chicks

The DYnamic Therapy Associates Blog

Tue, Jun 24, 2014

6/24/2014

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After hearing a little buzz about Therapy Box's new AAC app, Chatable, I was excited to get a chance to try it out this month. It has some nifty features that give it a lot of potential for our AAC users.

Features I like:

  • There is an integration of grid based pages and scene based pages. You can choose one or the other or make a hybrid page with both. I found the modification to be easy and user friendly.
  • Users can create messages and share these by speaking, posting to text messages, Facebook, Twitter or through email. I love that this company gets the importance of these social options!
  • Multimedia options include the ability to add your own photos, link to your own videos, link to YouTube videos, link to websites or play your own music within the app.
  • Scanning features: touch anywhere or switch scanning; auditory cues; scan color options
  • Text to Speech or Handwriting Input- an unusual input method that gives users who can write the ability to speak outloud
  • Navigation by folders, hotspot selection on scenes or by left-right swiping.
  • Schedule the appearance of boards by setting a time to have the board open- a nice feature to cue AAC users and assist in navigation
  • Set a specific page to open when the AAC user arrives at a designated place (recognized by GPS).

Wish List:

  • An organized set of vocabulary and messaging options to help families get started
  • Customizable auditory cues and linear scanning options for scanning
  • Qwerty keyboard option
  • Slightly larger navigation buttons to the keyboard and back for ease of access
  • An option to automatically open scheduled pages without requiring a yes/no response

All in all Chatable is an AAC app with robust options. A great place to start with AAC and, with the help of an SLP to develop a relevant vocabulary set, a system which can meet the needs of many beginning communicators.

I was given a copy of Chatable to review. We are given access to many AAC apps but only discuss ones we believe have therapeutic value for our families.

Features video from Therapy Box

http://youtu.be/kNSGQHlJp0w

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How to Not Allow AAC Users To Get Help: The Impact of NCCI Edits On Our Children

6/8/2014

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I'm writing this in hopes that someone at ASHA is paying attention. I'm writing in the hopes that our voices together may add some sense to a situation which is hurting children.

When the government's NCCI (National "Correct" Coding Initiative) edits came out in 2011 they only allowed us to do SGD services on the same day as speech/language services IF we billed the codes with a modifier. Our state Medicaid program didn't restrict these two codes together and didn't give us the ability to add the modifier when we billed. Now the state Medicaid program is coming back and asking for their money back saying we shouldn't have billed the codes together without a modifier, despite the fact that their provider manual stated we could bill the codes together and, the fact that they didn't have a way for us to put a modifier into our billing with them. We are an AAC specialty clinic so this impacts 100s of thousands of dollars of payment. So far they asked for $50,000. They gave us a way to go back on EACH claim and add the modifier. There are thousands of claims. They will graciously pay us once these are done. In the meantime they won't pay their bill with us. This week they decided that they are going to review every claim since January 2011.

There are so many things wrong with this situation. Most importantly , what sense does it make that a therapist with an AAC user would NOT also need to work on receptive language? Anyone working with an AAC user knows that they are at a very high risk for receptive language delays and oral motor/feeding and speech needs. The vast majority of these children need to be seen for receptive/expressive language, speech generating device modification/treatment, oral-motor/feeding and behavioral intervention. Why in the world would we force these already overworked parents to drive to therapy 2-3 times a week simply to have these services on a different day? What is the empirical evidence that providing these service on different days benefits the patient? On the contrary, we have patients traveling up to 1 1/2 hours to see us. Making them come twice places an undue burden on their physical health and their emotional well being. To say that this is the "same service" shows ignorance about the distinction between receptive language and expressive modes of communication. To ask these already incredibly challenged patients to learn all that they need to learn in a 30 minute session is beyond ludicrous. I cannot fathom that anyone with any real experience working with AAC patients had any input into the decision to disallow this code pairing.

The NCCI edits are just incorrect in not allowing these codes to be billed together. The only purpose this is serving is to give insurance and a Medicaid/Medicare an excuse to deny services that these children really need. I hope that the purpose of the NCCI edits is not to simply save government money on the backs of handicapped children. It is utterly wrong.

I have no confidence that our voices here in our clinic in Georgia will be heard by the NCCI editors but I would hope ASHA and our community of AAC families and professionals has the ability to add some reason into this terrible oversight that is hurting ACTUAL handicapped children.

At the same time, I sincerely hope that the service we are providing these children in our private practice can continue.

Thanks for any input you can offer or in helping us spread the word about the effect the NCCI edits are having on our children.

Vicki

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App Combos- Mixing Up Some Favorite Apps to Meet Language Goals

6/2/2014

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I have been fortunate enough over the years to have had access to wonderful software from a variety of manufacturers.  Although I have my favorite products, they never have everything I want for my therapy goals so I find myself mixing and matching components of my activities to make them just right!  I think it is great fun to throw all the different developers ideas into one sandbox where they can all happily play together (at least in my world!).  I love to slap one developer's symbols into another developer's software and throw it all on another developer's device.  I'm positive they LOVE that too. The good ones, anyway!

iPads are wonderful and the amazing array of apps is dizzying.  Nonetheless, apps are significantly less robust than full blown software.  So, here we are, back in the sandbox, pulling in the best ideas from one app to supplement the fabulous ideas of another.  A little enthusiasm and app switching savvy and we have therapy activities that are more meaningful and motivating than if we only used one app at a time the way nature (or the developer) intended.  Something like this  bunny dog who will sit on command and go for walks with you but doesn't bark or bite.  And must be potty trained. The best of all worlds.

Why combine apps?
  • Increase motivation! Some of our apps are simply fun to play. Once a child loves a particular app, just adding the images of the app into another more, eh hem, educational app, makes the app more motivating.  All you have to do to get a screen shot is click your Home Button and the Power Button on top of the iPad at the same time and it will snap an image of whatever is on the screen.  Like these...
Peek-A-Boo Barn has a bouncing barn with animals that knock on the doors to come out. Adorable!  We practice our greetings when the animals pop out. Clicker Sentences let's us write about our activity, include a picture and print to take home.
Balloonimals  let's kids blow  up balloons and wiggle them into silly animated characters.  Kids can take a photo and see the animals in different locales.  Abitalk Sentence Builder let's you create sentences from your own images so we can write about our animals.   (These are from my former intern, Katie Millican).
  • Slow down the images so that you and the child have more time to talk specifically about the picture without the app charging ahead to the next action/picture/direction.  There are some really nice images in apps that deserve a second or so to process and discuss before moving on to the next "clickable" option.  At times, as quick as we therapists are, we're not faster than those little student fingers.   Kids are great at changing pages before the pesky SLP can, good grief, talk about it.
First Phrases (Hamaguchi) is one of our "go-to" apps for teaching students verbs and simple phrase creation.  We watch the animation and when cued to repeat the phrase, our kids either verbally repeat OR use their speech generating devices to make their own 2 word phrase.  Super motivating and targets basic, common verbs.  This app very nicely doesn't charge ahead  until you activate an arrow but, as I mentioned before, kids are FAST!  After we play this game, we use our Speech Box app with screen shots of the First Phrases animation scenes so we can sort through a pile of pictures and decide which ones to talk about.  Speech Box is a great library of "boxes" of pictures.  It seems the developer was thinking of providing an easy access to sets of articulation cards (it comes with these) but it has a wonderful, broad set of photos AND allows you to add your own (screen shots of First Phrases in this case).

I use this concept for YouTube videos as well.  Those little jokers go by super fast and there are ALL of those "suggested" (and sometimes "suggestive") videos to grab attention.  Figure out what video is a favorite and just snap a few screen shots of it to drop into another app.
  • Reinforce a concept introduced in one app by elaborating on it with another app 
First Words International  is another fantastic Hamaguchi app that teaches early developing single noun vocabulary in categories (vehicles, animals etc).  It is truly a wonderful app that introduces multiple examples of the targeted word (5 different buses appear on-screen) and then presents the targeted word on a display with 4 random pictures distractors.  Students are asked to find the "bus" on the page.  Then students get to "spin the wheel" where, magically, a picture of the targeted word appears and they are asked to label it.  We label with our voices, signs or our AAC device.  Just to "cement" the concept in a little more firmly, we'll watch a video of the targeted word on our VideoTouch apps (animals, vehicles and instruments) or listen to it's sound effect on SoundTouch app.  These are great apps that give multiple example videos or photos & sound effects for common nouns.

I'm definitely not done with this idea.  I've been scanning all my older, but still amazing materials books onto my iPad , with the FasterScan HD app, coloring them in with HELLO Crayon app (thanks to suggestions from the Twitterverse) and saving them into Dropbox app so I can whip them out at a moments notice for therapy, to print out for homework or to share with my therapists.  So much you can do with that silly little iPad!
What are YOUR favorite apps to combine?  Leave us a note in our comments so we can learn from each other!
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AAC Goals and Implementation: Dynamic AAC Goals Grid-2 (DAGG-2)

6/2/2014

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In the spring of 2006 (I think, it's been so long I've forgotten) Holly Schneider and I met via phone to talk about a new presentation for the next year's upcoming AT conferences.  We talked about finding a solution to a problem that kept cropping up in our practice:  parents and professionals were contacting us to come up with AAC goals for their IEP meetings.  This was a tricky request since we usually didn't even know the students.  Not having a direction to go with AAC seemed to be the biggest problem we saw in the big wide AAC world.  We had so many fantastic techniques, tools and ideas floating around but families, therapists and teachers were still struggling to implement AAC.  There were many professionals and companies talking extensively about a continuum of skills (Janice Light and Patricia Dowden, in particular). Our devices were even beginning to be organized that way but, we couldn't find a comprehensive system of organizing goals based on Light and Dowden's work.  We started our own based on the InterAACT framework of the Dynavox devices.  InterAACT is the page set organization developed by the Dynavox Education Team that incorporates the research of Light and Dowden as well as a plethora of research from the field of AAC and more. We dug through research and products already on the market to compile a list of goals.  We pulled out our old handouts from presentations on implementation.  Nothing we did was original, it was all simply a compilation of the best ideas we could find in the field.  We revised, revised and revised. Dynavox marketing folks made it fancy, and then reworked it to make it fancier and then, finally, reworked it again to make it the fanciest. 


Finally the Dynamic AAC Goals Grid-2 is officially released, in its entirety.  I don't think anyone else cares quite as much as Holly and I do but WE are very excited to finally share our work.  Dynavox was key in the development of the DAGG-2 in their support for Holly's time, designing the finished product and their willingness to release it to the public for free. I did the work mostly because I'm an AAC nerd and, although this is Holly's job, she's pretty geeky herself.


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So here it is. The main goals Holly and I had over the years were a hope that the tool would be released for free, worked for all AAC users (not just Dynavox) and that it represented the most current research and practice in our field.  We hope that you will find it useful; that it will allow you to document the progress your AAC users are making and; that it will help you figure out a road map toward communicative competency. It's not perfect (hence all the revisions) but hopefully it's a start for some people.  If you like it, please share!  We'd love to hear from people who use the DAGG-2 so that we can continue to refine, polish and fancy it up to meet all of our needs better.  You can download it here: https://www.mydynavox.com/Resources/AACGoalWriting  If you don't already have a MyDynavox account, you can create one on the right side of the page.  You'll then be linked to a list of all the forms. These include forms to evaluate your AAC user's skills, select appropriate AAC goals, plan for implementing AAC into your daily life and to collect data.  Forms include the Dynamic AAC Goals Grid-2 (DAGG-2), DAGG-2 Data Sheets and DAGG-2 Schedule Analysis Tools.  All forms are writeable which means you can fill them out and save them on your computer without printing.  

Hope you like it!  
Vicki (and Holly)

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    About the Author: I am a SLP who has the distinct fortune of having a job that is also my passion. I have been an AAC Specialist for almost 25 years in schools and my private clinic. I currently own Dynamic Therapy with my husband, Chuck (also of 25 years) who is my business partner and enabler. We have a wonderful staff of SLPs & AAC Specialists who work with us to help our patients. I hope you find my blog helpful as you join me in our journey with our unique and amazing friends! Vicki Clarke, MS CCC-SLP
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​Dynamic Therapy Associates, Inc.
Suite 603/604, 3105 Creekside Village Dr NW, Kennesaw, GA 30144