I love to people watch.  My favorite place to watch people is in the airport.  Over the past few years, I’ve started to notice that most people are constantly connected to technology, and I think it’s pretty cool.  I sit and watch people use their phones, DVD players, computers, music players, etc.   Technology has definitely become a status symbol.  Not necessary status of wealth, but status of cool.

Adults aren’t the only ones who constantly have access to technology.  Kids have technology that helps them with their homework.  Kids use technology to stay connected with their friends or to entertain themselves when they are bored. They even have cool backpacks with special pockets to hold their cool technology.  It has become such an integral part of our everyday lives that it is sometimes difficult to remember what life was like before computers and cell phones.

When I think about AAC technology of days past, I think of large, clunky, time-consuming, and difficult to program devices.  I think of paper communication boards that never ever had enough words.  I think of robotic sounding voices.  I think of all the time spent with the photocopier, symbol books (in the days before Boardmaker), laminators and coloring pencils. This was as far away from cool as we could possibly get.  We’ve come a long way, baby!

With advancements in technology, students with complex communication needs can have access to the world.  Not only do they have access to a variety of robust language systems that both support language and literacy learning, but they also have access to multi-media pieces (ex. photographs, sounds and video) that allows them to really show their personality and increase communication partner interest in what they have to say.  In my mind, this increases the cool factor for AAC devices exponentially!

Supporting the social development for students with significant speech and language disabilities can be a challenging task.  As a Speech-Language Pathologist, I was concerned not only with the linguistic development of my students, but also their social development.  I was constantly looking for ways to increase peer interaction and social opportunities.  The ability to add photographs to AAC devices is really cool.  Since everyone loves to look at pictures, I have found this to be a great way to encourage social interaction.  By programming a story behind each photo, I can now give students the ability to initiate a conversation (ex., “Hey, wanna see my pictures from Disney World?”), share personal information with others (ex., “I had breakfast with Mickey Mouse.”) and build relationships with their peers (ex., Tell me about something cool you’ve done lately.”).  Even kids who have limited interest in communicating in social situations are excited to share information through photographs.

The use of video has many applications for sharing information from AAC devices.  Video can be used to share personal information in social context (ex., “Check out this video of me playing soccer!”) as well as in medical/health contexts (ex., “Could you please watch this video to see how I like to be placed in my wheelchair?”).  Sound clips can be downloaded to devices and used to show one’s sense of humor (ex., a funny laugh) or during play activities (ex., car horn).

So, in addition to addressing language, literacy and participation in the classroom – don’t forget that AAC technology also allows you to address cool.