Using AT for People with Autism Part 3

This is Part 3 of the Using Assistive Technology for People with Autism webinar archive.
This presentation explores various low-, mid-, and high-tech tools that can facilitate organization, information presentation, and communication for people with Autism.
Presenter: Jennifer McDonald-Peltier

No, I have a picture in here somewhere but I'm not remembering where it is. So, of PixWriter.

But that gives you an idea. So, since we're back here, any preference?

We could do more visual aids, communication aids or some tools in action?

Does anyone have a preference where they would like to go?

[Karen] And while people are writing a question or raising their hand, you've got a question from Lorrie Redmond.

She says can you copy the symbolated text into an email?

[Jen] Absolutely. That's my understanding. My understanding is that you should be able to save it

depending on the program as either a PDF, which saves it. Or as HTML, in case of Clicker it saves things as HTML.

In both of those cases you can then attach them into an email if you're not able to directly copy and paste.

I believe you can in both of those programs. If you can't then those are two work arounds.

[Karen] And you've got two requests for tools in action Jen.

[Jen] Alright. Tools in action.

These are different kinds of activities that I have made or people I have worked with have made.

Does anyone have any place they would like to go?

What I'll be doing with these will be mostly pulling up different files that I've created either with a student

or for a student.

Your choices are color coding, symbolated text, word. Really.

[Karen] We've got a request for choice making. We've got a request. Yep. Process. Another request for process.

[Jen] Great. Let's do process first and then we'll do choice making. Process.

Tools that I use for these are the tools that I have. So I'm not using exciting tools.

This is Microsoft Word. What I did is, the student wanted to cook, so we had this form for this student to do.

It's very clear. First, look at the recipe. What ingredients are listed in the recipe?

They write those ingredients down. Two, what tools do you need. Circle all that you need.

We have a whole bunch of tools here. So some of them like measuring cups and measuring spoons are obvious.

Some of them, like oven mitts are not so obvious and that takes a little bit of discussion.

If something is going in the oven, we need oven mitts.

Three, now look at these two lists.

What ingredients do you already have, because we were in his kitchen, and what ingredients do you need to buy?

So he would do a search of his cupboard for the ingredients he listed above.

And then next, what tools do you already have? And what tools do you need to buy?

So, that was the process. And then of course this led to a shopping list and then we went out and went shopping.

And then we came back and made the recipe.

On this one is one that we did to plan an outing. And I have a couple different trip planners, but this was one.

Where are you going? What is the address? What are you going to do, see or buy there?

This student could process that text. Some students can't. And you'll notice that this student is very text oriented.

How will you get there? Circle one and then fill out the information. Walk? Drive?

BART is our lightrail system here in the Bay Area. And Bus. And each one has it's own set of questions.

So for example. For bus, what bus will you take? Where will you get on the bus? Where will you get off the bus?

What time does the bus to get there leave? What time does the bus to come home leave?

How much will round trip bus fare cost? So this was his sheet to help plan out an outing.

This was a sheet that we did for him during an outing.

We went to a science museum called the Chabot Space and Science Center.

So we went online beforehand and got pictures from the website from all the different exhibits currently happening.

Then we made this scavenger hunt. What is it? What exhibit is it in? And just write four words about it.

This particular student was not as comfortable with word based, with linguistic expression.

And so, these two you can copy down. Because there will be a sign by what is it and there will be a sign for the exhibit.

They just need to copy those. Expressing their own words is a little more difficult.

So that's why this one has write only four words about it. This we printed out and took with us when we went.

That was some examples of process. And choice making.

This was a reward for a student. What do you want to do today? Cement slide? Ice skating? Bowling?

Or an arcade? This student really responded to the pictures.

The pictures resonated far more than the words for this student.

But it was still important for us to include the words.

This one I use Safari which is a Mac based web browser. Safari has this great view.

We set this up with the websites that he enjoys. These are two National Geographic websites for videos, for games.

This is a museum website for the Legion of Honor and the de Young Museum in San Francisco

because he likes to go and look through the online galleries. This one I don't remember what it is.

This one is a zoo. This one is a Monterey Bay Aquarium. This one is another zoo. This is the San Diego Zoo.

This is the Oakland Zoo. This is his Facebook page. These are games that he did.

Beer caps is a great game because its basically matching but it looks like a grown up game.

So this client by the time I was working with him doing this he could go and do this, a matching game, which he loved,

but it was completely age appropriate because it was beer caps matching.

Any other requests? Where people would like to go?

Ok. Then I'm going to go to worksheets because I like some of these examples.

Some of these use this software program that I'm using now just in different ways and they are very educational.

This was coil, today I, yesterday I and I am. And the same for these four verbs.

So was to help this student work with producing the correct verb tense.

This one was a rating sheet for rating technology.

I often work with students and I need to figure out which technology tools work for them and I want their input.

But for somebody with Autism it can be difficult to find a medium that allows them to give me input.

So I found that this rating sheet. They did not read this independently.

I read this to them. How do you like writing on paper? And then this they filled out independently. I had it in hard copy.

They were able to clearly give me their preference. Thumbs down and thumbs up are very readily understood icons.

They really could, this student could really let me know which he liked better.

How do you like writing on paper? How do you like typing on the computer? How do you like reading on paper?

How do you like reading on the computer with the fast computer voice?

How do you like reading on the computer with the slow computer voice?

And he was able to give me feedback for all these. He did not put comments.

I asked him if he had anything he wanted to tell me but since expressive production was difficult for him as it is for many

people with Autism, he couldn't give me that. But he could very easily give me his rating.

So that was very helpful for me.

And this one is a math one that is just to give you an idea of the ways you can use inspiration.

Each of these is a certain amount of cost and you have to figure out how much change you are going to get

by copying and pasting another one of these and then moving it in.

One other one that I would like to do here is the matching and the sorting. No.

I'd rather do the brainstorm and the dialogue. I wanted to show you a process that a student and I went through.

I'd like to show you this one to you because I can not include this one in the files since it includes pictures.

I can share it with you here but I cannot distribute it.

This student had gone to Las Vegas.

I wanted to find out how it went for him, but of course for him expressing and telling me how his trip went was very dfficult.

I took all of his digital pictures and put them all up here.

Yes, they are all very small and that did not matter to him. He knew what was in these pictures.

So then I broke down first, second, third, fourth and fifth.

And I had him drag down the things that he did, first, second, third, fourth and fifth during his trip.

Based on those activities, seeing the pictures and putting them in order.

That gave me enough of a hook to start a dialogue with him that resulted through some collaborative writing,

resulted in all of this.

Then we took those sentences and made a paragraph out of them.

Yes, this was supported writing, but the ideas came from him and it was great that he was able to express himself

through this process. This writing would not have happened, I would not have known what to ask him,

what prompts to give him had he not gone through this process to give me enough information to help him

express in words what he has experienced.

Any other requests for things from there? We have about 15 minutes left and so I can show you more of these

or I can go show some communication aids or more visual aids. Any preferences?

No. I'm going to do communication aids since we haven't touched on it.

There are three different areas of communication aids. Low is a really important one for me.

Especially if you are in a public service arena, like in a library and you do not have access to cool pieces of

software where you could whip up some kind of visual display because you don't even know what they are

going to be asking. I find that just having a paper and pencil, having white board and markers is very helpful.

I often take paper and pencil and just put squares and choices to say what is it that you want to do next?

What is it that you need from me? So to go through those processes of eliciting information

I find that when I work with most people with Autism they are far more adept at choosing from a bank of choices

then producing a choice independently.