Thursday, August 22, 2019

Modeling...

Hey Tek-ninjas! Summer is winding down, even though it was 100 degrees yesterday. As we get ready for school all over the US, I thought I’d share this quote from SLP Jane Korston. Many of you have likely seen it, but I feel it’s a good reminder of the importance of modeling, modeling, and more modeling.

“The average 18-month-old child has been exposed to 4,380 hours of oral language at the rate of 8 hours/day from birth. A child who has a communication system and receives speech/language therapy two times per week for 20-30 minute sessions will reach this same amount of language exposure in 84 years.”


We’ve got a lot of work to do!

Tuesday, August 13, 2019

More learning opportunities with Tobii Dynavox

Hey Tek-ninjas! Here are a number of terrific learning opportunities, which also include ASHA CEU's. I blogged about the Tobii Dynavox Learning Hub awhile back. Well, here are a variety of free Tobii Dynavox on-demand trainings that enable learners to also earn ASHA CEUs.

The current courses include:


Tobii Dynavox will be adding new courses regularly so keep checking back. 

Thursday, August 1, 2019

Bank that Voice Friends!

Hey Tek-Ninjas! So, recently I had the chance to show some colleagues how well Message Banking works. It is really a pretty amazing tool for folks who are wanting to capture their voice, or that of a loved one and use that voice in their speech generating device.

I was aware that banked messages can than be downloaded and installed into Communicator 5 software, and grouped into categories. What I did not know was that users can also import their banked messages with categories into Grid 3 as well. This was brought to my attention by Chicago Tobii-Dynavox Solutions Consultant, McKenzie Mok.

Boston's Children Hospital (BCH) teamed up with Tobii Dynavox to create this free tool. For clarification, BCH defines "Message Banking as: Digitally recording and storing words, phrases, sentences, personally meaningful sounds using one’s natural voice, inflection and intonation. These messages are catalogued as .wav files and may then be linked to messages in a variety of augmentative communication technologies or sound storage files. This will allow you to ‘retrieve’ a message and speak it in your own voice but does not allow you to create novel messages by spelling."

Message Banking can be performed with a free mytobiidynavox account, the Message Banking service is also free.

It is easy to record your voice, and categorize the phrases as you deem appropriate. I did not make this video, it was made by the SLP John Costello of BCH, and I think it demonstrates the process really well.
 So the next steps are to upload the web files into your communication software. In the following video I demonstrate how to do this in both Communicator 5 and Grid 3. 


Happy Therapy!