About this activity
Twelve navigation tasks for an AAC user learning their device's structure: find more on the home page; go to the FOOD page and find apple; go to ACTIONS, find go, then come back home; two steps — home to SCHOOL to pencil; race, find all done in under ten seconds; build a message that needs two pages, I want juice. Navigation is the skill between having a vocabulary and using it.
How to use it in a session
Time some of them. Speed is the whole issue — a word that takes forty seconds to find will not be used in a conversation, however well the student knows where it is, and the race card makes that explicit and fun rather than pressuring. Work up from one-step to two-step tasks; the final card, building a message across two pages, is the real target and everything before it is preparation.
What to listen for
Watch the return trip. Getting to the FOOD page is usually learned first, and getting back to home is what students forget, which strands them mid-message. Notice which categories are guessed correctly — a student who looks for bathroom on the PEOPLE page has a reasonable model that does not match this device, and that is worth knowing before assuming the vocabulary is missing.
Carrying it home
Families can help by not navigating for the student. Taking the device and finding the word is faster and removes the practice; waiting through the search is what builds it.
Questions
- Does this practise my student's own device?
- It practises the skill rather than a specific layout. The categories here are common ones, but the motor path on the student's own system still has to be learned on that system.
- Do I need an account?
- No, all twelve tasks are free to use here.
- Why time the searches?
- Because conversation is timed by other people. A word the student can find eventually is not available in a real exchange, and speed is what turns known vocabulary into usable vocabulary.