As a student in TC's Autism and Intellectual Disabilities Masters Program, augmentative and alternative communication is the technology I was most eager to learn about in this course, as many of my future students will be nonverbal. I have already had students who communicate with the high-tech devices Dynavox, Tango, ProLoQuo2Go, and with the low-tech Picture Exchange Communication. I am always fascinated by watching my students learn to use these devices, and love to sit on speech and language therapy sessions to see how the SLP's program the devices.
It has been my personal experience that once a child masters an AAC system, the quality of life and happiness of that child improves drastically, and the child's aggressive or noncompliant behaviors are dramatically reduced. It is such a joy to watch a child gain the ability to communicate, and the use of an AAC system can actually also lead to a child gaining more vocal verbal skills as well. I hope to learn more about how we, as teachers, can support the work of our SLP's in helping our students use their AAC systems and devices in all settings throughout the day in order to help their communication skills generalize and to improve their quality of life.
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