Have you ever vacationed in a foreign country and felt lost because you couldn't communicate your basic needs, wants because you didn't know the language? Imagine living that way everyday of your life because you know what you want to say but can't talk because you have autism and/or apraxia.
My students have autism and/or apraxia.
They struggle to speak everyday. Sign language is difficult to do with their fine motor delays and most people can't understand it. These children need a voice and the iPad and certain communication apps can be just what they need, but we need the resources so that we can begin training our kids and to begin training our teachers on these apps. We need to help our kids communicate. Parents need to be trained. Successful training and use of these apps could open up a world of difference for these children who have no means of communicating. Some of our children are over the age of 8 and are still nonverbal and are not beyond their grunting, grabbing. I would like to use these iPads to train other beginning speech therapists on the use of augmentative communication to help our nonverbal children communicate their basic wants and needs.
My Project
On the iPad, we can download an application called Proloquo2Go or TouchChat, and we can begin training our students to first learn to make requests for basic wants and needs and then expand it to be able to communicate and answer questions from the teacher. Many of our students display behavior problems simply because they can't communicate or get frustrated when we can't understand them. They will learn to communicate and have a voice powered by the iPad.
This projects is extremely important because our students have limited resources because of the area our district is in.
Many of our parents will be astonished when they see their child communicating in a way they have never before. Training other therapists in our district to begin using these methods will make such an impact. We need these iPads to use in our sessions with our kids and then we can hope that this will be the way to go with future technology purchases for our district.
More than three‑quarters of students from low‑income households
Data about students' economic need comes from the National Center for Education Statistics, via our partners at MDR Education. Learn more
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As a teacher-founded nonprofit, we're trusted by thousands of teachers and supporters across the country. This classroom request for funding was created by Mrs. Angela Rodrigues (speech) and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
