Disclaimer: I really am not a static display device fan. Seriously not a fan, as in I groan audibly when one of my new patients tells me he uses a static display device at school for his communication.  I hate for children who really need a comprehensive communication system to be given 20 buttons and sent on their way. It makes me clinically insane. If the static display device is part of the AAC system, okay, but if it is THE communication system, ugh.  So you can imagine GoTalks haven't been on the top of my go to communication device list.

This app has all the tools of a comprehensive communication app in a build it yourself version.  The content that is available is in an early stage of development, but the potential, ENDLESS.

So with this app you have the ability to create a page of 25 buttons and with a few clicks drop it down to a 2 button page. You can access a quick message popup on every page. You can turn on a message window. It's simple to add a photo symbol to a button from your library or camera. Don't have your own photo? A couple of taps and you can search the internet and drop an image on your button.  Multiple images can be placed on a single button. Buttons can speak a synthesized message or you can record your own. Not only can you make grids for communication, you can easily make scenes for context based messages. And it SCANS. Craziness!  It's an amateur AAC page developers dream. Easy to use, easy to customize with a ton of great features.

There are several options to get started with the GoTalk Now App:
GoTalk Now Free- one book with 3 pages, Free
GoTalk Start-  one book with 5 pages, $19.99
GoTalk Now- unlimited books and pages, voices, templates, backup and restore, and sharing via wifi, $80
GoTalk Now Plus- all of use above plus Symbolstix library, Ready, Set, Communicate book and Acapela voices, $150

This app is one to have in every classroom and is also a great simple app to trial AAC with your child.  It has potential to help teachers and therapists introduce vocabulary symbols, especially for activity based boards. I believe it has potential to give students an ability to participate in their environment, learn new symbols or to practice more advanced syntax and morphology in a low distraction environment.  For my purposes, it has become an exceptional evaluation tool.  If you took the time to build it, you could create a communication app with absolutely everything you could possibly need for a 25 location comprehensive communication system.

A real disclaimer: I was given an evaluation version of this app to test out. Then again, I'm given a lot of apps. I only talk about the good ones :)

Vicki Clarke

When I first meet a child for therapy, I always ask parents to tell me what their child likes to do.  What characters, what toys, what games, what videos, what books....  So many times parents of children with severe speech and physical impairment look at me like I'm a little crazy when I ask about board games.  "Well, she would probably like them but she can't do it."  Since that sounds like a challenge, I have been adapting board games for many years. (Plus, I like games and my own kids are getting too old to play Candyland with me anymore!)  

The first step is to make sure your child has a means to communicate general control messages within the game:  gestures/hand signs, communication device pages specific to the game ("my turn," "you go," "draw a card," "go fish," "oh no..." or core words to say "go," "me," "like," "I," "you," "want," "turn..."

The next step is to make sure the child has some way to indicate their choices specific to the game. For games that include color or number choices, that's a usually simply a matter of using their communication device to indicate a choice.  If your game has very specific choices, like this Shrek Memory Game...

...you can just add numbers (or colors, or letters) to the playing pieces so your child can use his/her device to make a selection.  For this game, Alli uses her communication device to pick 2 numbers to guess where the two halves of Gingerbread Man are hiding.

The next step is to make sure the game is as visually and physically accessible as possible.  Here's a Candyland Game I adapted to help kids with fine motor difficulty move and place their pieces without sliding and falling. We tap out each move so our kids with visual challenges can hear how far the players pieces are moving.

I know, I know, it's a PECS system...but actually it's a LOT more.  As I may have mentioned before, I'm really a high tech kind of person so I walked past the Proxtalker booth many times over the past few years.  A quick glance told me all I needed to know- it's a PECS system with a bunch of little cards that would make me and my kids crazy.  Okay, so I was wrong.  Today we had  the pleasure of having Glen Dobbs come out to our office to meet us and show us his Proxtalker and ProxPAD.  We have recently reconsidered the Proxtalker and ProxPAD as we began working with more children with visual impairments.  The possibility of putting tactile symbols on a voice output system is intriguing.  After seeing both the Proxtalker and ProxPAD in action, I agree that it's pretty powerful for these folks, but I was pleasantly surprised at the other features these devices offered for many of our other patients. 

What I Liked:  

• As much as I like speed, the rate of communication on our high tech devices can be overwhelming to some of our patients just beginning to communicate.  It is ever so easy to tap away at a screen and change pages at a dizzying pace. It all works fine when there is a knowledgeable partner to facilitate but can be difficult for initial independence. The physical act of selecting and moving a symbol may decrease the rate of communication long enough to give our friends a chance to process the symbol and voice output.
• For our patients who are just beginning the process of sentence building, PECS can be helpful. The ProxTalker lets users experience the process of carefully combining words with a voice output. They can physically manipulate the words as they learn to put them together.  I can see the possibility of this allowing people to begin sentence building earlier in their communication learning journey.  We are considering that this may be a good option to serve as a teaching tool, even with our patients who have high tech communication devices (or iPads).
• For patients with visual impairment, we finally have a viable option for displaying tactile (and object) symbols.  Pretty much you just have to attach the cards to the object and press the object on a button to have it magically speak aloud.  (There are some engineering tricks here, I'm told, but it looked like magic to me.)  If you have the ProxPAD you don't even have to touch a button, you just have to have the object come in proximity of the pad to start the speech.  You can also hide the pad under a table, or lap tray, and move the object symbol over it. It sees through surfaces! Craziness!  
• There is a "light touch" device which is identical to the ProxTalker but requires a very light touch to activate.
• The storage of symbols is easily managed by having color coded pages for different categories or locations.  Glen showed us how the pages can use matching pictures to help users put symbols back where they belong, which lets our friends use motor memory to access their favorite messages.
• Color coded pages can help users begin to learn the organization of their symbols- a handy technique which transfers to dynamic display devices for later use.
• Insanely durable, again Glen gave us a great detailed explanation about how the doohickey suspends the whatchamacallit with supports on the whoozit to keep it durable and liquid resistant. Just watch the truck in the video drive over it. 'Nuff said!

Wish List: (What we would love to see)

• ummmmm...nothing really,  I think they've figured this one out!

Here's a video where you can see the Proxtalker in action, hear Glen's explanation and watch them drive it over with a truck!

Enjoy!
Vicki