Assignment task: Read the information and answer the questions below to help you consider whether the assistive technology (AT) interventions were implemented as planned, how effective the interventions were, and how these results can be used to improve AT interventions in the future.
1. Ms. Mary reports that she is almost always making the communication boards available to Sophie and that Sophie is able to point to the pictures and symbols. Only on rare occasions does she forget to bring the board along for outside time. She also reports that she uses the modeling teaching strategy at least once during every routine of the day, but she's just not confident she is doing it correctly. What could the team do to more accurately assess if Ms. Mary is implementing the AT interventions as planned?
2. The team has determined that Ms. Mary is in fact implementing the AT interventions as planned, and Sophie has begun to use the communication boards at mealtime and during arts & crafts. However Sophie still shows little interest in the communication boards during story time and outside time. Holly, Sophie's mother, is concerned that the team did not consider Sophie's likes and dislikes enough in designing her communication system. Ms. Mary thinks that the picture symbols for story time may be too abstract. Sophie already has a voice output device that says body parts that her mother, Holly, uses to play the tickle game with her. Karen would like to try incorporating this voice output device into some of the other activities, since Sophie does well using it to choose body parts to be tickled.
Module 5: Assistive Technology