You are a Social Detective Beginner App Review

I am always on the look out for some decent social skill materials to use when working with students. So, when I was asked to review the "You Are a Social Detective Beginner App" by the same people who make the Think Social! curriculum (which I love and use all the time) I had to give it a try.

Of course, I agreed to do this review at the beginning of the IEP season. I'm afraid I am way late in making my review. However, its now summer, and even though I'm at a year round school, I have more time on my hands than I did back in May.

So, I have been fairly disenfranchised by speech therapy apps as of late. I feel like there is a lot of apps thrown together real quick to make a quick buck. The last few app purchases I've made I've been disappointed with. To be honest, at first I thought that was what I was getting into when I started to look at this app. However, I was pleasantly surprised.

The app was meant to go with the You are a Social Detective Book by Michelle Garcia Winner and Pamela Crooke. It emphasizes the use of social "smarts" at home, in school and everywhere else. If you are already familiar with the Think Social curriculum then you'll already be very familiar with the concepts that this app teaches.

This app has quizzes to test your students social skill "smarts". I especially like the videos of real kids. There has been a lot of research done on using video modeling to teach social skills to students on the Autism Spectrum. I been to several training's where they have emphasized this. Students with Autism and Asperger's respond well to watching social skill videos. The short little videos during the quizzes are fantastic. 

Now, I tried to use this during therapy with some kids with social skill goals on their IEPs. One problem is that you can't access all the sections unless you have unlocked it with a your "Avatar". It doesn't lend itself well to group therapy in my opinion. It would be great if you were working one-on-one with a student or as supplement practice for home. This is something that parents can do with their kids at home to further generalize the information from the "You Are a Social Detective" book. 

However, the app costs $24.99, which might be a difficult sale for parents. For therapists, it would be well worth the price at least for the video quizzes. 

These guys have also created the Social Skill Builder app which I haven't had a chance to look at yet, but would love to hear from any of you if you like it or not. 

So, how are you using technology for social skills? Have you found something helpful in assisting students or at least augmenting your lessons?

 

On the Flip Side

So, the other day I got a little nudge.

Kristin got her cousin to send me a hint. Where's the educational SLP? Isn't he suppose to post things as well? His he permanently stuck writing progress reports and IEPs?

Well, yes. He is.

So, I am going to blame the same things I always blame... parenthood and netflix. What can you do?

Anyway, I wanted to talk briefly about my experience on the flip side. What is it like to be a parent with a child who has special needs, at least from my perspective.

My son, Logan has always been a bit rambunctious and a little behind his sisters when it comes to many developmental milestones. Yet we didn't right away recognize that he might have special needs. Many people had told us that boys are more difficult than girls. We just assumed that they were very right. Once our little boy became mobile then he learned real quick how to get into just about everything. He also demonstrated many characteristics that were similar to students with ASD. At the time he was very echolalic, he wouldn't socialize with others, he couldn't handle any changes to his routine, and he got hyper-focused (obsessed) on particular items or topics.

Sometimes parents get a blindside to their own children which was definitely the case for us. It wasn't till our child was old enough to go to the children's class at our church when we began to realize that our child wasn't like the other children his age. He was the only kid who couldn't sit still during class. We had the "problem child", the kid that people tend to question what the parents are doing. Were the parents doing any discipline in the home at all? Don't get me wrong, most of the people at my church were very nice about it, trying their best to help Logan participate in primary
. Yet, we knew that something was wrong, or at least suspected.

I called up my sister-in-law and point blank asked her, "Do you think my son has a disability?"

She replied, "I would never say anything negative about your son. You know we all love him, but to be honest, none of my kids were ever that hard."

I felt like I was kicked in the stomach. What did I do wrong? I was suppose to know how to fix children who had problems. I was suppose to be a better father. Did we not give him enough attention? Were we not consistent enough in our disciple? What did we do wrong? My wife took it equally hard. She felt that everybody hated our son. She felt that people thought we were bad parents when he was melting down in public over one thing or another. My wife also has Special Education background. So, she also felt the double guilt that I was feeling. Not only were we bad parents in our minds, we were also bad professionals.

Its easy to tell parents that it isn't their fault that their child has special needs, but its difficult as parents to listen and believe that simple truth. That nagging feeling of "what if I just did this differently?" clings to our minds. It's difficult to shake off.

We had Logan tested. The local elementary school's preschool team gave him a variety of assessments including developmental, cognitive, expressive and receptive language, social, etc. We had to wait even longer for special Autism testing.

Several labels were thrown around willy nilly. I started to realize why first person speech was so important. We could tell who saw our son as a disability first and who saw him as a little boy first. It was a huge difference to us. Parents are a lot more perceptive than you might think. They can tell if you really care about their child or not. It makes a big difference to have people working who want the absolute best for your child, people who will look at their strengths as well as their weaknesses. I found also that I didn't care about the label; it seemed much more important to other people.

This experience has completely changed how I see my profession and how I interact with students and with parents.

There is much more I could write about this, but frankly I need to get back to my family.

App Review: Speech with Milo: Verbs

Hey there, this is Bob.

I'm not sure if you guys are ever know who's writing when you first start reading one of our blog posts. I guess the topic is often a dead give a way. You're never going to see me writing about swallowing or aphasia. If the post is about working with preschool or elementary kids you can almost be sure that its me, but the confusion might still be there. So, just in case... this is Bob.

Along with our iPhone/iPad app lists I wanted to do some app reviews, and I have some catching up to do.

I wanted to start with a nice little app called Speech with Milo: Verbs. It costs $2.99 on iTunes, one of the cheaper speech therapy apps on the market. It's a universal app that will work on both the iPhone and the iPad (dear app creators, we love universal apps, please do more!). Its geared for younger children, from toddlers to 1st grade. Yet, I've tried it with 4th graders and it was surprisingly well received.

The concept is simple, Milo (the mouse) demonstrates actions for the kids. There are short little animations for each action word. It's extremely easy for the child to navigate themselves, sometimes they switch to the next action word before you would like them to though. Milo ends each action with a "ta da", he's very proud of himself after all.

There are great ideas in the therapist and parent instructions. You can use this to help teach vocabulary or grammar. I love it for grammar, its easy to target different syntax components. If you are working on present progressive you ask, "What is Milo doing?". If you are working on past tense you can ask, "He's all done. What did Milo do?". You can pick and choose which words you would like to work on in the options. And you can turn the music off (I wasn't a big fan of the music).

 

The animations are engaging, they keep the kids attention much better than action cards do. I can keep preschoolers on task for a whole session with this app! I have also found that its hit with my students with autism. If you are doing any language therapy with you kids and you have an iPhone, iPodtouch, or iPad then this is a must buy, especially since the price is less than a value meal.

The creators of this app have recently released an app specifically for prepositions. I have yet to get my hands on that one, but if its anything like this app then its probably well worth it.

You can learn more about Speech with Milo at their webpage.

Are there any apps out there that you would like us to review? Email us at pathologicallyspeaking (at) gmail (dot) com.

Language Therapy using Dropbox

I think we’ve already gotten to the point that we can agree that the iphone and/or ipad can be useful in therapy. There are numerous apps that you can use with more coming everyday. If you don’t have one of the devices, I would strongly suggest you look into it. Yes, there are great in therapy, but there are other ways they can be useful as well. You can keep track of your schedule with them, set alarms, use voice recorders, etc, etc. There are endless possibilities.

What I wanted to write about today is about a nice little trick you can do with your iphone/ipad for therapy that might not have occurred to you.

I use my ipodtouch for articulation therapy all the time now, but not so much for language therapy. Well, there are language therapy apps out there. I love the kindergarten.com apps for vocabulary and conversation for my younger students. I also often times use precentally to help me keep track of data when I’m doing student directed play therapy, and I just need some place to keep data. That’s what I use on my device for language therapy, but I know there is a lot more out there available. I'm not going to get into listing them all in this post, but if you look up speech language therapy apps on google or in itunes you are going to find a lot of things you can sort through.

One of the problems with the language therapy apps out there is that they rarely do exactly what I would like. Recently, I had a thought as to how to make language therapy material on your iPhone or iPad very easily. And guess who much it will cost you. Nothing! It’s free! Can you believe it!

It’ll take some set up, but if it’s worth it to you to have therapy materials on you so you can use it on the fly, then its worth it. Now you have to still create the materials  or the ability  to make them. This is simple enough if you have Boardmaker, Writing with Symbols, or even a regular old word processor. Any software that you can program and insert pictures will do.

So, say you want to make a simple picture of an apple. I like to use google image search (but be careful how you word things, you never know what might come up).



Now you've found your perfect apple picture. In a word file I inserted the picture and labeled it.



At which point I then saved the word file to "My Documents" in my Dropbox folder (I'll get into dropbox a little more here in a second). Then I was able to pull this up on my iPodtouch (I'll get a picture of the iPad on here once I can get my hands on one).





















Okay, to get started with this plan you need to sign up for Drop Box (click here for a link to it). Don’t worry its free. Dropbox is an automatic backup software that syncs with whatever computer you’ve install it on. So, if I have dropbox on my work computer, I save some Boardmaker boards that I’ve been working on then it will automatically be saved on my home computer (where I also have drop box installed). The second I come home I can pull up the same file and continue to work. Any computer you have it installed will automatically sync those files. You could also have it on your lap top, and there is an app on the iPhone and iPad. Essentially, it’s like having a virtual flash drive with you on the computers you use. My wife and I use it all the time. It’s great for moving items over that wouldn’t fit in a standard email. You can also share folders with other individuals. We share a folder with my mother-in-law so that we can exchange pictures of our children with her. We just drop them in the dropbox folder and the automatically start uploading on my wife’s parents’ computer as well (in the shared folder).

You can get up to 2 gigabytes for free. They will try to sell you upgrades, but in my humble opinion, it’s not worth it.

When you save a file from your computer it will then be visible on your iPhone/iPad when you are connected to the internet whether that be via wi-fi or by 3G. Now, you can select a file as “favorite” and then you would be able to have access to that file while being off line, which is an important feature for those of us with iPads and iPodtouchs who don’t always have the luxury of having instant internet. Why the whole world doesn’t have wi-fi coverage everywhere, I just don’t know. Come on people, the internet is a basic human right! Well, maybe not.

Anyway, you cannot edit files that are on your iPad/iPhone, only view them. But that’s okay, that’s really all that I want anyhow. So, you have your friendly boardmaker file and/or your very nice word processor with access to google image searches. You can put a word list, a social skills story, sequencing pictures, basic concepts, or whatever you want. Now save these items to your drop box, go onto your iphone/ipad and selected the items as favorite. Now you can pull those up on your mobile device anyway you want. You now have your own custom made mobile therapy materials on your iphone/ipad. Not that you could have easily printed those pages out and carried them with you where ever you went, but I’m all about taking less therapy materials around with me if I can help it.

Some of the software out there save to a very specific format that dropbox can’t read in the iphone/ipad app (I’m looking at you boardmaker). There is a very easy solution. There are numerous PDF creators out there. PDF files are documents that adobe acrobat readers can read. It’s a pretty universal format that is used frequently, and dropbox does recognize it on their iphone app. The way most PDF file creator software works is simple, just print the document, but selected the PDF creator as your printer and instead of printing the file, you save it as a PDF file somewhere on your computer, preferably your dropbox. Click here for a list of software programs that can create PDF files.

Well, there you have it a cheap way of toting language therapy material around with you, actually this could work with any different types of therapy. You make specific word lists for articulation therapy. You could make fluency therapy material mobile so you could get out of your office to do generalization activities. You could make board games (if you bring your own dice) with you to the preschool room. Granted I think this would be more effective on the iPad than anything else. And, yes I still don’t have an iPad, but I got my headstart teacher on to this. I don’t really think she’s seen the full potential, but then she stays in one room unlike us speechies.

So, go ahead and try this and tell me what you think. Let me know if you have any questions about getting it all set up.

That nasty /r/ phoneme

Calling all pediatric SLPs!  This post is in regards to the bain of many SLPs' existences.  /R/.

My neighbors/friends asked if I would help them out. Their son is not saying his /r/'s correctly.  As you know, I work in the hospital with adults.  I am wanting to help them, but feeling like I might not be the best person for the job.  They are willing to try me anyway.

Their 12 year old has been in speech therapy for years.  He can produce /r/ correctly in structured tasks some/most of the time.  They do their speech homework. 

My questions to you are:

What are the cues you SLPs use to elicit the /r/?  (I know several of us use different cues.)

Do any of you take private clients at home, just informally?  Do I need to do any official paperwork??

Thanks guys!

Kristin

Newbie Advice for Educational SLPs

As quoted by Douglas Adams, the best advice for newbies is “Don’t Panic”. Very calm and comforting words which are easier said than done I’m sure. But you’ve been trained at a certified program, you are at least CFY ready (My professors always told me that their job was to at least get us CFY ready, if nothing else). So, trust your training and jump in head first.

(If you don’t know, CFY means clinical fellowship year, which is when you first start as an SLP working on supervision for the 36 weeks or so. It’s required to obtain your CCCs – Certificate of Clinical Competence, which you obtain from ASHA – American Speech Language Hearing Association. For more information go to ASHA’s website here. Of course if you are not in the United States, then your system is different and I haven’t a clue about your certification. I just wanted to add that for our international friends).

Now I’m a little slower than Kristin for getting blog posts out. I have 3 ½ very good reasons for being so and they range from 5 years old to still in the womb. So, I hope you are patient with me. Being a father of 3 comes with a lot of demands, but its also incredibly rewarding, but on with the blog post.

As for the job, being an SLP on the educational side, you’re in for a treat, but it won’t feel like it your first year. If you’re anything like me you’ll take a couple of hours in the beginning on each IEP (individual education plan). You’ll likely stay an extra 2-3 hours a day as well. There will be many times where you feel incompetent as a therapist, which is normal. (I still do much of the time).

So, relax, breathe and Don’t Panic. The nice thing about working in the schools is that you’re not going to hurt the kids if you make a big mistake. Its okay to be a newbie. Now I’m not telling you to go out and try to make as many big mistakes as you can, but you need to accept that you’ll make some at least. Speech Language Pathologists tend to be perfectionists, with a keen eye for detail. This is a great asset in our profession, but it makes the first year a little grueling. There’s a lot to learn and you’re not going to obtain perfection your first year (and probably not your second year… and probably… never). And that’s …. okay. Give yourself a little credit for what your accomplished and be a little self forgiving. And remember, there hasn’t been a single casualty from /r/ therapy in the history of speech therapy as far as I can recall.

Now as you get going you’re going to find your own way of doing things. There isn’t a wrong and a right way generally. For example, I’ve seen speech therapist do many many different approaches to making their schedule. Some like to have it out on paper, others like to have it on the computer. It really depends on your preference. In the beginning I like to write it out on paper with a pencil so it can easily be changed, then I start to put it into the computer. I had used an excel file to keep track of it, but now I use a private google calendar. I also have the dilemma of having to schedule 4 different tracks at a year round school (as well as a traditional school year preschool). This comes with a whole new host of issues that most SLPs don’t have to worry about. I’d say figure out what’s right for you. In a year or two you’ll have your own system down. I’d write more on this subject, but I think it deserves its own post altogether. Still the concept is important to know. Figure out what works for you.

There are many different things that you have to think about (scheduling, group therapy, IEP goals, homework, behavior system, etc, etc). And its easy for me to say “figure out what works for you”, but I know that wouldn’t have cut it for me when I was brand new. So, let me tell you something, idea thievery isn’t a crime as an SLP (unless you’re trying to make money off it, and that’s another matter altogether). Seriously, ask around what other SLPs are doing, then take what you like the most and try it yourself. You’ll find that SLPs love to share with other SLPs. Heck we just enjoy talking to each other, touching base with someone else who understands what we do. So, don’t be shy and call some of the other SLPs in the district. You might even ask if you can observe what they do maybe shadow them for half a day or something (this was the best thing for me, to watch veteran SLPs in action). Now there are probably several of you out there that don’t have much contact with other SLPs (the nature of our industry sometimes). I then suggest to do some professional networking. There are many networking sites out there such as facebook, twitter, linkedin, forums, etc. I personally like twitter the most (as you can read from this post), but the others I’m sure are just as good.

In the beginning I’d suggest to make friends with the faculty. You’ll likely have to compromise on several issues with the teachers and administration. Always put the students first, but remember that if there is a feud between you and the faculty of your school then you will really be miserable. I’ve only occasional had problems with teachers, never with the administration, but I’ve heard several horror stories. I really believe that they are the exception though, most often working in education means you get to work with great people who love working with children. To the most part you get to work with the cream of the crop. I love the staff that I work with.

You’ll find that you have to sometimes take work home with you, lesson plans, progress reports, goal writing, etc. That won’t completely ever go away, I don’t think. I know some speech therapists that don’t take anything home, but I’m not one of them. I’ve gotten a lot better in the last couple of years, but when it comes time to write progress reports it’s another story. I would suggest to try to keep that to a minimum if (and when) possible. I know you may be having a write an IEP the night before, or sometime you are desperately trying to get a lesson plan ready for a language group. I know, I’ve been there. However, if you are able to leave work at work as much as possible, your chances of burning out will drop significantly. I remember one of the courses that I was required to take in college for this degree was stress management. They taught us many stress relieving activities that can help you stay healthy and sane. Figure out you’re way to unwind, and do it frequently.

Now it's easy to let your focus on therapy slip. There will come a time when paperwork will try to take over, where you have too many IEPs to write with very little of time to do it (often times this comes in May & December where it seems like a lot of IEPs tend to land). You'll start your day feeling like your therapy time is getting in the way of other stuff. This is something you have to fight. Don’t worry, the IEPs will get easier to write. You’ll be an old pro in no time.

As Kristin has said, in the beginning you feel like a fraud. And the lingering feeling never quite leaves. I'm only now starting to feel somewhat competent as an educational SLP. I also agree that you need to appear confident (especially in IEP meetings). You really do know more than you think you do. Sometimes I doubt myself thinking "seriously anybody could do this therapy, how hard is artic therapy after all". But when I've spoken with teachers about doing some simple interventions with students I'm surprised with their reactions. They often are clueless about things I would assume were obvious. You really are your school’s expert in speech and language. No one there has the training you have had. Now don’t get a big head or anything, but remember – you are the expert.

I want to share one last thing that was suggested to me by my CF supervisor. Stay at your first school (if you can) only for a couple of years at most. The faculty in your first school (or schools) see you as new and inexperienced which is okay because you are at your first school, but once a person has established an impression of someone it's hard to change. If you go to a brand new school after a couple of years they'll just see you as a seasoned veteran instead of a newbie. Just an idea, it won’t be possible for everybody. It just so happens that my district is one of the largest in the country so we have a few schools. Its kind of nice to have a fresh start now that you’ve learned the ropes and have figured out the way you like to do things.

Remember it never hurts to ask questions. You still are a student in many ways, something that never really ends. You still need to further your education as much as you can, there is just too much to know in this field. Teachers and parents will ask you questions and will stump you from time to time (happens to me more often than not). Let them know if you don’t know an answer than you’ll do some research and figure it out.
It seems like my blog post has rambled off in my different directions. I just have so many thoughts in my head, but I’ve never been one to think in a linear fashion. I know the second I post this another good idea will pop in my head “Dohhh, I forgot to add that one thing.” If you have anything to add please do so. What were you’re big struggles your first year, or if you are in the middle of starting out, what are your struggles?

A Little Clarification

Just to clarify on some of the stuff I want to do with this blog. (What Kristin does is another matter).

I would like to write about educational speech therapy ideas, struggles, amusing anecdotes, and speech related ramblings. I'll also review therapy material and webpages from time to time as well as give little guides to parents with children with communication disorders. I'll admit right from the get go that I am not the most creative speech pathologist in the world and there are people that have a far greater expertise in different communication areas. Education speech language pathologists have to be a jack of all trades. We get to work with a little bit of everything. I'll attempt to point you in the right direction to get more information on any given topic that I write about. 

And I reserve the right to occasionally rant on a non-SLP related topic, but I'll try to keep it to a minimum.

Oh, and my attention span is short sometimes. I'm bad about proofreading. (Yeah, I don't know how I got through grad school either). I'm in the middle on an intervention, so bare with me.

Bob

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(¸.•´ (¸.•` (¸If at first you don’t succeed then, sky diving isn’t for you!