My name is Beth Leggitt and I am a Speech Pathologist and an administrator at The South Eastern Special Education Cooperative (SESE). One of my main responsibilities is to conduct evaluations, look at the needs of the student, and find the best way to support those needs. I was at the Closing The Gap Conference and saw the Clicker Communicator app for the first time. My director asked if we were using this app, but at the time it was new so we did not have it yet.
We scheduled a webinar after the conference so that we could show the rest of the SLP team the app. I watched the faces of the people in the room as we saw the webinar and I could see everything "click" for them. Clicker Communicator is so easy for the teachers to use and to program; it was clear that this was an important tool that we were missing from our toolbox. Sometimes a dedicated communication device is the essential component needed to help a child communicate, and other times it's not a good fit. This app strengthens the ability of the SLP to find what best meets each child's communication needs.
Clicker Communicator is such great value. It comes with great vocabulary and is intuitive when using. It is a great tool to have in your toolbox.
Once we got the app we used it with one little boy in particular. He was only using behaviors to communicate. We were using other tools with him, but we could not get him past responsive, object based vocabulary. He is about 5 years old and we really wanted him to initiate conversation and protest too. It is important at that age to be able to tell peers, "That's mine," or "I don't want that." We are currently using Core Set 1 with him and he is able to put together simple sentences. And he can do all this with the vocabulary that comes with the app! In the future we plan to take advantage of the free resources on LearningGrids or create our own Vocabulary Sets, but for now he is doing great with the core set. He is having such great success at school that we are planning to send the iPad back and forth between school and home. We want to expand his use of the app since we have seen success at school. Sending an iPad back and forth between school and home is much easier than sending a dedicated device. Everyone walks around with an iPad which means he does not look different from anyone else!
Clicker Communicator is such great value. It comes with great vocabulary and is intuitive when using. It is a great tool to have in your toolbox.