Day 3 : All day, All Proloquo!

Day three went by extremely fast! I didn't think we would need the entire class to set up our activity and organize our boards with Proloquo. Boy was I mistaken. This process is so much more involved that I had ever thought. There are a lot of different things you need to consider and so many little things that we forget. I really tried to put myself in a nonverbal persons shoes. How would I communicate via Proloquo? What words would I be looking for? Is my board easy to navigate or does it not make sense? Even within the folders, which order of words makes the most sense? I feel that I have left this activity with more questions than answers.

Something that I did appreciate within the app is all the folders and icons that are already created. We soon discovered that we were able to link to the 'storage' pretty easily which saved us a lot of time. The task seemed pretty daunting in the beginning thinking that we would have to create every single vocabulary word we would need. But there are a lot of things already created that we can use and modify to suit our needs. Initially I thought that it would take a lot of time as a teacher to set up these activities for our students, especially since we took three hours today and have not yet completed our activity. But once you get to know the program, I can see the relative ease of creating activities in a timely manner.  

My stress and excitement level from yesterday has decreased, but I am still looking forward to completing the activity and seeing what the other groups have come up with!

At the beginning of class we talked about myths of AAC. I found that I recognized my past self in some of these myths - thinking the same way - and now, after 2 classes, I have completely changed my mindset and attitude towards AT. The myth that you need to start low tech before heading to high tech is one of the ones that I feel was what I expected. You should start simple before going to something more complex. For AT, this is a totally false. We need to remember that students are much more capable and adaptable than we give them credit.



My three main takeaways today:

1. We need to remember that as teachers our primary goal is not to pass down knowledge, but to prepare students to become independent, productive, community members.

2. Proloquo is a fantastic and user friendly tool that can greatly improve the student's life.

3. It is important to debunk myths surround students AT. People (school communities, and outside) need to understand the benefits of AT for people with needs and people without needs.