 This will be available in archived on the ERLC website sometime following the presentation and so if you know others would like to see it, or if you'd like to watch it again, it will be there and as we get more information about that, this will be the first one we've ever sent to the ERLC website so we'll try to keep people abreast of where that will be located. I'm going to introduce Susan and she's going to just take a minute to talk very quickly about the PLC and welcome everybody. Hi, my name is Susan Gilbo and I'm one of the members of the low incidence for mental wide team. And I'm really excited to have Kathy, how are we presenting this webinar to you today. It is our first of our monthly professional learning community sessions that we are doing this year. And this project is something I have been working with Kathy on not as extensively as she has but I've been following her through her journey with it. And I think for the participants that are in the BVI, the blind visually impaired world, this will be new information for many of you and exciting information and the other folks who are joining us I'm sure you were going to get just as much out of it. So welcome everybody and we'll turn this over to Kathy. Great. So you can still hear me already. Sittling here. Yes. Yeah, we can hear it all. Hi, so. So, I've got to switch welcome everybody. I thought I would welcome you in a variety of different symbols. I think we're going to be talking about symbols today as Susan mentioned. This has been something that her and I have been thinking about playing at working on for a while and I'm really excited to be able to share this information with you about these 3D actual symbols. That have been developed by Karen Erickson and her folks at the Center for Literacy and Disability Studies and I'll tell you more about that in a bit. And also, just to have an opportunity to talk to both SLPs and teachers and teachers of the vision visually impaired together because I think this is a really neat opportunity to understand how much our world has applied for many of our kids because as all of you know, the thing about many is that there's some in multiples. So, Ross, there's some background noise that's loud. I don't know what that is, but anyways, I maybe. Kathy, I actually thought that was on your end. Not my sleeping puppy here. So thanks. Okay. All right. So here's some ideas that we're going to do because I want to sort of set the stage for why I'm so excited about these actual symbols. And I want to make sure that people have a little bit of background knowledge. I don't want to turn you all into communication consultants or SLPs, but I do want to make sure that we're from the same places. Linda, I wonder if that's your... There's somebody's mic. Anyway, we'll figure it out. Okay. So these are some of the big ideas that we're going to hit on today before I actually show you these symbols. For those of you who are familiar with the world of augmentative and alternative communication and have been around for a while like myself, you will know that there's lots of changing and emerging, I guess is the better way to say this. Understandings that we have in the field that certainly have impact for kids who have complex communication needs and vision needs. So back in the day when I first started working with kids with multiple challenges, there was a very strong idea that only some kids were going to be candidates or would benefit from AAC supports, had to demonstrate sensory motor level five, and I don't remember all the other things. Today, thankfully, we have recognized that there are no cognitive or behavioral or visual or whatever prerequisites for the use of augmentative and alternative communication that all kids communicate and all kids can gain more symbolic communication if we give them opportunities to do so. So in the old days, the candidacy model days, what happened? Oh, dear. Sorry. There. Okay. In the candidacy model days, the idea was that really for some kids, they were pretty well. You've lost your screen. You've lost my screen. Something clicked out here. I had a big, sorry, guys. Okay. I forgot to say the technology prayer. We will have to do that right now. Okay. And we're back, right? Yeah. Okay. All right. Hold on. There. Okay. So I'm going to there. All right. Yeah. Okay. Technology prayer. Everybody say it. All right. So, you know, people with blank will never be able to blank. Now we recognize that given the appropriate education tools, and then we have some more, I guess, some tools in our symbol toolkit as of today, supports and service that all kids can learn to use AAC to expand their communicative ability. So the idea around this is presumed competence. And any of you have heard me talk before or Karen Erickson or Linda Burkhart or Carol Muslite have all heard that really what we have to be doing is not assuming that kids can't or they're not ready or whatever that really we want to assume that it's our job to make sure that we give them every opportunity and that we believe that they can. And that they're sort of changing and standing in the world of AAC is that when we start AAC, what we really should be doing is focusing on choice making and requesting when and certainly my goodness, I used to have kids make choices between something they liked and a stinky sock, which is something, but I don't know if it's communication. But anyway, today we have a much better understanding that what we have to do is not put the child into responding, requesting mode, but actually talk with and to children and make sure that they have opportunities for all of the pragmatic functions of language, which is this is really important foundational stuff to how we're going to be talking about using these tactile symbols. The purposeful activity of sharing information across space and time with different people and it might have take many different forms. We all use lots of different ways to communicate. We use speech, we use our bodies, we use sometimes written communications. So the whole idea of having a mode other than speech to communicate is something that's real familiar to us, but certainly speech is our primary mode if we are able to do so. But communication doesn't start out purposeful and this is another really key understanding that we need to think about for our kids with really significant needs of any kind is that we don't expect babies to be talking to us for at least 12 months, probably two years. We talk to them incessantly, we bombard them with language, we repeat words, we focus on certain words and we expect that they will become speakers after that lovely, rich, repeated stimulation of language. The challenge for lots of our kids who use different kinds of language, so aided language, whether it be pictographic language for kids that perhaps can see or the kind of textual tools that we're going to be, textual symbols that we're going to be talking about today, is that for a typically developing child they get that spoken language in, coming in, coming in, and eventually a couple of years of being spoken to and spoken with and spoken about, spoken language comes out. For our kids, we tend to give spoken language in and expect them somehow to give us something back in their aided language system or with their different symbols. This of course comes from the work at Gale Porter and many of you will recognize these slides from other people who talk about Gale's work, particularly in the context of pod training. What we have to start thinking about for our kids is they not only need spoken language in if we're going to expect them to use aided language, but they also need to have access to the symbols as input or as receptive language and have lots and lots of access to those symbols as they're learning them so that they can start to use them as output just like typically developing kids do. In fact, because our kids need to speak much more exposure to symbols as input and as receptive language before we would ever be able to expect that they will start to use those symbols expressively, which I think is something we haven't done very well for a long time. Hello, Louise. Do you have a question? Maybe not. Okay. Maybe that was just an accident. Okay. Louise, you have your hand raised. Would you like to ask a question? Do you know how to unmute your microphone? Okay. I'm not sure. All right. I'm going to move along and if I see something come up in the future, I'll go ahead and do that. If you do want to ask a question, please do so. The other thing that is a challenge for kids with visual impairments who also have complex communication needs is the preponderance of symbols that we use in the AAC world are visual. So if you think that picture communication symbols, the picture sticks that are used in programs like ProLogo, they stick to visual impairments. They stick to visual impairments. They stick to visual images or visual representations of language, which of course, for our kids who have significant visual impairment, are very difficult. There are some folks now and more work is being done on providing high contrast visual symbols for kids that might have CDI or we will have some vision. I would say gap in terms of our resources to provide symbolic access to language for kids who have more significant visual challenges. Okay. The other sort of changing understanding and it definitely has been a changing understanding is this notion of that there isn't really a symbol hierarchy that we should be using. In fact, I still looked on some websites recently and getting ready for this. I still saw lots of websites that say you should start with real objects and go to photographs before we introduce symbols. And there's absolutely no research to support that. In fact, if you were going to do that, if you think about that logically, you wouldn't speak to a baby about their bottle or about their blanket until they could show you somehow that they understood what that was. All language is symbolic. That's, oh dear, I don't know why I'm having such trouble today. The primary characteristic of signs or symbols or words is that they are arbitrary and we don't have a direct relationship between the form and the meaning. Perhaps unless, as I'm reminded as my dog is barking here, there are a few words in the English language that have animatopeia, so they sound like what they mean, bark, meow, those kinds of words, but mostly there's completely no relationship between the form and the meaning. Yet somehow we have come to this idea that for our atypically developing CADs that they need to go through this multiple different kinds of learning. Recent research is actually showing that this is getting in the way of them understanding language because they have to learn things over and over and over. So we have lots of research to support that the whole notion of a symbol hierarchy is no longer what we think about as best practice. Some of the research actually is research that Karen Erickson has been doing and I'll talk a little bit about that along the way, but she's been doing and I'll talk specifically about it as we get to the end of this talk. She's been doing a bunch of work with kids with significant intellectual disabilities and CCN, and those kids are making significant progress and their understanding of various language forms and their use of various language forms, but they keep bumping up against this idea that people still believe that we have to start with concrete reference. There's really no evidence for that and a really exciting study recently by a snod, grass, stone or an angel had a nine-year-old child with multiple disabilities being able to use, not only understand, but use three conceptually referenced textual symbols, more done and new in his initial communication vocabulary. So the idea that we have to start with a concrete cup to represent cup-ness or that we have to start have them making choices about concrete things I think is being more and more disproven by the research, which is exciting. All right, I think I'm going back. So the idea now is rather than having these activity-based choice-making things that are very contextual dependent and that the words are nouns that you could actually point to or that you can represent by concrete reference, that the whole world of augmentative and alternative communication is really moving towards this idea of, I guess what I would say is expanding the use of and I'm searching for a word that's not obviously part of my core vocabulary, but making better use of core vocabulary. So what is this core vocabulary of what I speak? 85% of what we say is made up of only 200 words. These are referred to as core vocabulary and there's lots of research to support this that if you go with young children's speech, if you go with older people's speech, there are these sort of basic words that make up the most of what we talk about. We tend to do things and they're not nouns. They tend to be other kinds of words. They tend to be verbs and adjectives and pronouns. So we talk about it or that or this way more than we talk about the stapler or the book or the dog or this computer. We might say this computer, but we could point to the computer because it's in our environment. We can point to it. So these words are very powerful. This core is consistent across place and topic and also has found to be consistent in the research of cross-cognitive ability. So small, you can word that kind of said that already, they consist of some nouns, fewer nouns, mostly verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, things that give them a great deal of power in terms of talking about lots of different things across lots of different contexts and also great things that gave them a great deal of power for teaching because you have a few words that you can use in all kinds of teaching situations. So I'll give you an example and I'm going to say thanks. I'll leave that. Maybe I shouldn't jump over this. This is representation of core vocabularies in different kinds of AAC systems, but for the SLPs in the world, the whole idea of core vocabulary originally started with Minnspeak and the Minnspeak core vocabulary idea and recently has been taken up by just about every system that there is out there. So thanks. A shout out to Toby Scott who's in the audience who created the next couple of slides that we used at the Summer Symposium, but I know lots of the vision folks didn't get to get this background so I thought it would be important to do this. So core vocabulary is flexible. If you had the core vocabulary or the symbol for different, you could talk about wanting a different book. You could talk about that you're in art class or something. Oh, look, your picture is different than mine so you could point to that picture, that picture and say different. So you've got lots of contextual clues. Show your understanding of dissimilar. Unequal. That number is different than this. So you could talk about it in math class. The difference is five. Strange. He's acting different. Oh, what kind of different behavior is that? So that one word can go across lots of different contexts. Let's think about it again with the word turn and turn is actually one of the textuals that we have. You can turn the page of the book. So if you're reading, doing some shared reading with a child that has significant visual impairment and complex communication needs, we could use the symbol turn to talk about turning the pages in the context of a game or an activity. You could say your turn with a toy. I could turn the page. Turn the channel. Turn it up. Turn it down. Turn it off. Turn it on. Turn the corner. Turn away. So all of the rich meanings of the word turn, the symbol turn, can be learned across the context of the day. So you get multiple opportunities to use this core vocabulary in multiple activities. Rather than if you had a communication display with the activities, like a book, game, toy, TV, bath, person, you might get to talk about a book maybe twice in the day. You might be able to talk about the game during the activity time that you're doing the game. So the thing here is the vocabulary is flexible and there's lots of opportunity to practice repetition with variety, which I'll talk about a little bit more too. Karen Erickson's work, some of you, many of you, probably are familiar with Karen Erickson's work. What she did is she and her colleagues in North Carolina looked at all, not maybe, I don't know about all, many, many, many different studies that looked at core vocabulary lists and they from that discerned 40 words that they thought would be most useful in school situations. So this core vocabulary list might not be exactly the same core vocabulary list that you would be using with an infant or that you would be using with someone, an adult who's in a leisure situation, although I think they would work pretty well, but just to put some context around this, they were looking particularly at what would be most useful in the context of school or educational environments. Then interestingly, this is going to maybe confuse a few people, and say why there's only 36 now on Karen's pages when we get to the Project Core. What they did is they field tested it. They took those 40 words and they tried them with a variety of teachers and the research, Karen's doing research, all over the United States with teachers in classrooms where kids have significant disabilities, including deafness and blindness and called us communication aids. And based on that field testing, they found, the teachers said these 36, so they had to make some changes. These are the 36 words that we really find the most useful. They found some words that they didn't use a lot and they found other words that they were missing on the original. And I somewhere in my list know which those differences are, but I'm not going to worry about that today. This is the 36 core that they landed on. Now, I just want to say something about this. These core words and these displays of these core words are not meant to, in any way, shape or form, take the place of a more robust language system. If the child has a more robust language system, AAC system, do not put that aside and use the core vocabulary boards. This is meant to be a real introduction for kids that don't have any symbolic representation available to them of these very powerful core vocabulary words. But it's a starting place, not an ending point. And for those of you who are interested in that, maybe come and join us in the CCN PLC and we'll talk about that a little bit more. But anyway, the point of this is that they're powerful words. They can be used in lots of different contexts and they are to a larger extent field tested. Okay. So what about tactile symbols for our kids? One of the things and the way that I started on this journey was that I was trying to say, okay, we've got a nice set of lots of ways to produce and reproduce and consistently reproduce AAC symbols, visual symbols for kids with complex communication needs, kids that need augmentative and alternative communication systems. But what about our kids who are blind? Not the kids that have CVI that we can do the high contrast symbols, although I'm wondering about that now, but kids that really are blind and are, I don't know, Susan, can you be really blind? If I say something inappropriate for the vision world, you'll have to slap me on the wrist afterwards. I'm trying to learn that world too. For kids that have severe or significant visual impairment, how do we represent symbols to them? And many of you, I think, will know that there are tactile symbols that have been produced, some by the Texas School for the Blind, and those are the ones that I, actually they sent me a whole bunch of symbols based on one teacher's request for them, and I got quite excited about this, and Susan, look at this, we can start to actually reproduce symbols and give kids consistent symbols. And so I'm just going to take you to that website for a little minute if you haven't been there before. So they have lots of symbols, but if you look at their symbols, they're almost all nouns. So remember what I said about the power of core vocabulary? There are next to know core vocabulary words, representations of core vocabulary on this list. You have to go way... So we can do lots of labeling and lots of choice making and lots of scheduling, but to do talking and to do talking across lots of different contexts, like core vocabulary, not so much. And I'm going way down to Jim's symbols where they're miscellaneous. There's a few miscellaneous punctor words, and even these more and finished would be the only two that would be actually seen as core vocabulary. So huge gap, like while these are exciting and I think if one was going to use them maybe visual schedules or giving kids some information or not visual schedules, or factual schedules, that kind of information, they might be really useful. But otherwise, if we're thinking about words that have lots of power, sadly they're missing. The other set that I know that's available for I think $699 are from the American printing company. American printing house for the blind. And again, you can see from the look here lots and lots of nouns and not very many if any core vocabulary. So... Oh, and here's how you might want to use some of those, but still we're missing the powerful core vocabulary. So one day, and this is exactly how this happened, I was in the school where I was... We were thinking about introducing some of the symbols from the Texas School for the Blind. And I thought, hmm, I think I've heard Karen Harrison talk about this before, so I scripted her and she said, wait, Kathy, you should see what we're doing. We're doing this really new project, a really exciting new project, and we're trying to hit on some of the challenges around tactual symbols for kids, as well as trying to think about doing with our core. So there you go. Next thing... Oops, sorry. What is going on with this? My computer has got it there. So they had been developing and working on... They've had some funding for a big new project, which they call Project Core, and you can see it's out of the Center for Literacy and Disability Studies at Chapel Hill where Karen is. And the project is all about providing... Well, the project is bigger than Core. The project is about thinking about what are the core vocabulary items that need to be represented on every single system for kids. Then the next piece that they're going to be looking to move up is to what will be the... If you think about it kind of in the RTI model, these right now are the universal cores. They're going to be starting to look at what are the next set of really highly useful symbols and how do we represent them. And then finally, at the top of the cone of symbols, I guess, what are the really specific symbols? But these are the universal core symbols that they have been developing. And their project also, sorry, I should go back here, is based on some really lovely work by Mary Ann Ronsky and Rose Sethkicks from 2006. Some of you who know me will have heard me talking about... Or 19... That book, Breaking the Speech Barrier. And their work with kids who are in their middle school and had no communication systems whatsoever and had learned using M-cell, which is modeling of language to actually communicate. So the project core has taken those two things together and started this project. Now, if we get to the universal core systems, one of the beautiful things that they've done here for teachers, and because they're recognizing that, and Karen tells me in rural North Carolina, there are many schools that have... And many kids that have absolutely no communication systems and don't have board maker and don't have the lovely things that we have to reproduce these symbols in a consistent manner. A symbol is only a symbol if you can reproduce it in a consistent manner and understand it that consistently. So that was one of... So what they've done really generously is created lots of different ways for their universal core vocabulary to be represented and presented and shared. So you can get the 36 core board in a variety. You can get it as a PDF. If you don't have a board maker, you can get it... Board maker, if you have it, you can get it board maker with high contrast. So lots of different... So for those of you who are working in the world of CVI, it's important to note that they put the high contrast symbols here as well. So this board here would be for a child that could directly access and point with their fingers. As we know, many of our kids can't do this. This four-page... Four-on-a-page layout is for kids that could point, but not as clearly or not as consistently as to access all 36. Now, don't get confused by these four-by-four presentations here. You're still always giving all 36 symbols to every child. It's not that you're only giving four and then adding four and then adding four. You're always giving all 36. It's just the different ways that the child can access them. Partner-assisted. Again, they've got them with the regular, the way you see them there, and then the high contrast. This is for kids that would be using or who we would be providing an auditory scan. So I'm not going to go into that very much today, but perhaps some of the vision folks and SLPs on the meeting would like to actually learn about how to do an auditory scan. Basically, you go through the symbols like, want, not, go. Do you want one of those? And the child would have a way to indicate yes or no. And if they said yes, you'd go like, and then you'd wait for them to say yes or no, want, yes or no, not, yes or no, go. Yes, okay, let's go. And if it's none of those, then you move on to the next page. So really it's providing those 36 symbols, but you've got a different access method. Then finally, at the bottom of this page, I'll skip through some of the other ones, are what we were going to be talking about today, which are the computer generated 3D printed cactual symbols. Now you see there's not 36 there yet. There's only 13, but they're working on it. So they're trying to figure out how these symbols will all be represented. So let me go back now to what information I have from Karen and Lori Geist. Lori is the SLP on the team. So they have a current set that have go, like, not, do, don't as one symbol, finished, help, it, there's your pronoun, make, more, open, out, turn. The ones that are in red are verbs. The ones that are, now I'm going to go to the next thing, just a minute. So 3D, I'm getting ahead of myself. 3D cactual symbols, they're designed to fit in the hand of a small child. So Karen said, told me that they designed them with a four or five-year-old child in mind, and they each have a unique configuration of a raised element to indicate the particular meaning of that, the printed word in braille, and they also have handles built into them. All right. I'm going to show you them in a minute, but let's just talk about, well, maybe I'll show you now, and we'll talk about them in a minute. All right. So let's see if this works we're supposed to. Boom, boom, boom. I want to run that program. All right. So here they are. I have the symbol of like, and hopefully you can see that. You can see it's got the word like. It's a triangle because it's a verb. It's red, and verbs are also red. It has braille here. It has particular meaning on the outside. So all of the whole way it's set up has meaning and shares different elements of semantic meaning about what the symbol or the word like, how the word like is represented by this factual symbol. So that's like it. It is a pronoun. Pronouns are white. You can see the print is there. The print is there for us because we just, we need to understand what this is. The braille is there because they are presuming competence and presuming that now these kids may not be braille users yet, but the same way that you put print on the symbols for kids that need pictographic symbols, they have decided and as a logical and a, I should say a presumed competence decision that the braille will be there. And then the unique symbol for it is raised and available. So that's kind of what they look like. I can go through and show all of them to you if you want, but let's continue on a little bit. The benefits of these and why they're pretty exciting is that they are reproducible exactly. So again, I'm going to go back to that camera. How am I going to do this? So one of the things that I have worried about with the, you know, the Texas school for the blind symbols, they tell you how to make them and that's great. But maybe let's go back in the slide a little bit. So they tell you that this is finished and this is help and this is more. But for our kids, if they're not exactly the same, if that is not exactly the same question mark, there, will they necessarily represent it, have it understood as the same symbol? So with these tactical symbols, the ability to reproduce them exactly as they are over and over and over again is thrilling to me. So if I happen to lose the it symbol or maybe my dog chewed it, although they're pretty hard, I don't think anybody could do anything with this. Which is also good because our kids, you know, our kids put things to mouth. So we want them to not be something that they're going to be choking on or being able to bite a piece off of. This can be produced and reproduced over and over and over again using the files that are on, on the Project Core website. Okay, they're relatively easy to produce. And so I got these ones that I have printed at the, at the Edmonton Public Library. I also have found a printer that I can use at the university. Lots of people these days have 3D 3D printers. The cost of printing them all at the library was 30 bucks, which is pretty cheap considering if we're talking about getting these symbols for the other taxable symbols in the, in the cost of hundreds of dollars. And the thing is they, they, you know, the library was kind of confused by what I was asking. So we, if we did them in bulk, they would be less cost, you know, $30, like exactly. And I think, I don't know, I'm working on some other ways to think about where we can get this, but it's not going to be very long before 3D printers are as common as, as printers, I don't think. So low cost, relatively easy to produce. The other thing that's really kind of fun about them, not fun, important perhaps, is that they don't have to be this size and they will, they will maintain their integrity. Just like you can change the shape of a visual symbol for a child, you know, from really big to smaller. We could print these off at half size or a quarter size. Karen was telling me about a young lady that are a woman who's never been able to communicate with symbols before who has the tactuals now and is beginning to use them. And she has them sort of as a neck place around her neck in much smaller size. So, and actually, you know, look, I'm thinking, I want to get one of those. I'm going to get myself these symbols printed off in, I don't know, 10th of the size and make myself a neck place. But there she has them available. You know, of course the neck place is a lanyard. The lanyard can, we have to do all the safety things. But what a neat way for a young woman to carry around visual symbols, tactual symbols that she can use. And most importantly, that others can use with her because they go with her, they travel with her. So, if you can tell, I'm a little bit excited about these. So, as Lori was explaining the rules that she says are current rules, and she, Lori Geist is, as I said, the SLP on the team. And right now they are discerning different parts of speech with an adverb, which would be a circle. So, let me, let's see. I will show you this. Again, if I go back to my pivo. So, here we go. So, more or not want. So, you're an adverb, it's actually an oval. So, she's not quite got it right. But it has the bumps on the side. And it's, now this would be one, this would be the library didn't have yellow, whatever they plastic, when I asked them to do this. And because I wanted them to make sure that I had them soon, I said, okay, you can make them in gold, but I'm going to get another set printed out in the actual proper colors because as Karen said, you know, we don't know that kids can't see some color and we want to use every possibility of maybe they can. Why would we, why would we not have them have vision or have color as a potential marker as well. So, so far they've got five colors, five parts of speech. They have shapes that mark them and then the edges are certain. So, then they're going to be able to take these different components and put them together in new ways to add to the symbols beyond the current 13 that they have. Okay, so that's how they work. So how do you use them? I mean, you use them just the way you talk to, just the way you would talk to kids. You actively and repeatedly link the symbol to the action or the word when we talk to babies and we talk about a baby. And I thought one of the symbols that I didn't get printed out, but that they have is up. And I think about all the time in a day that I would talk to my daughter about up. Oh, you're getting up. It's time to get up. That's, I'll pick you up. You want to be picked up. Oh, let's put your arms up so that I can put on your shirt. So all of those repetitions with variety was, or is what I think Megan to talk. I don't know unless she's different from the rest of the world. So imagine if you are gold. So one example that they gave me in terms of a script is, and they call it a core sandwich. So they have some scripts. I'd be happy to share their scripts with you. I'm sure that they wouldn't mind. It's not anything very special. Actually, let's go to the script right now and I'll show you what it looks like. So to teach the script. I'm calling it a script. They call the sandwich is, you know, you first of all recognize that an activity is going to be represented with go that we're going to go somewhere that something's going to be involved going. You put the tactile symbol for go and the students right hand. Now this is very scripted because they're doing research, which is great. And following a script is always good when you're doing research into implementation with fidelity. Then they also, and I didn't get to this in the slide. They also it's signed in the students other hand. The sign for that that word if the student has it and to give again the same way that we want to give multiple means of representation to our typically developing language learners. We want to give kids lots of different ways to understand what this means. Then once you get the go thing in the hands, you go and you start going and then after a minute or so you stop and then you remove the go symbol and then you anyway. So you see how you see how they've got it all scripted and again that got some of these if you want them. Student important. We're not expecting the student to ask to go. That's not the point here. The point here is just like you're talking to your child about going, going, going and all the times you use the word go before you expect them to say go back to you is the same way that we're going to be using and using and using and teaching these symbols to our kids with visual impairment and seeing complex communication needs. So the idea with go how many times repetition with variety. Those of you who've heard Karen and also then to talk about this gives us lots of chance to do this. So Karen was saying a little bit how they came to the their research right now with their research right now they focused on first three words to start with some students with this and part of that is also I think words to start with the adults in the room so they can get lots of I will definitely share the sandwiches you bet and I think I'll share some sandwiches kind of as a template as well as the specific ones that they shared. So here's Karen's rationale for these three words you can use go not like to refuse to obtain engaging social interactions to seek and share information. And she puts in bold letters just those three so to refuse go away but you don't have to say away you can say go away but you just say go not not like to obtain something like want is there but you don't have to have it like social oh I like that social go social not go not like sharing information I like that thing that you just did I not like it so three you know I really hope they get all the 36 core very soon but even to start talking and to focusing on introducing the concepts of these sexual symbols they've chosen these three words and excitingly enough they also shared with me so this is Lori this is Lori telling how they did it so this is one student she has her own generic sign across her chest for like and she doesn't really do a standard sign for ten years she hasn't been able to use to learn to use that gesture for like but at the end of the school year she did it when the team put the like symbol in her hand paired with something they knew she liked so not only did she understand the meaning of that symbol she also then was able to just again think about our typical developing kids receptive language first expressive language comes so we're thinking about really using these modeling using these receptively for a long time anyway so so oh and I should read you the rest I'm going to read you the rest from the email sorry I was going to do that sneakily but I won't be able to do it sneakily because you'll let me see I hopefully I have Lori's email up still here where did she send all this okay yeah yeah yeah so so no that's yeah okay so the sequence went like this recognize your pleasure put the 3d like symbol in her hand is the hand hand underhand not hand over hand again something that I hope lots of you have heard that we don't put kids through things we help them to do things sign we distance in discontinued the pleasure experience waited 30 seconds repeat on the third cycle she's not she signed like when Karen put the symbol in her hand and everyone cheered now what an exciting opportunity this is a kid who has not done this anything like this for 10 years so I'm pretty no wonder they all cheered so pretty pretty exciting day and Karen told me many more of these anecdotal stories the trick of course is that they're still in the middle of their research so they haven't published this yet but I think it will be exciting again for gesture for gold mover hand forward so they did the go symbol and go is one that I often really encourage people to think about for kids because you like like up you can use go a gazillion times a day because you're always going somewhere or not going or go faster so alright so that's in a guess in a nutshell the core vocabulary and the 3D symbols that are available Lori asked me to eyes that this is a work in progress pretty early days in this research and this development but I for one am pretty darn impressed with the possibilities for some of our most complicated kids and the possibility of the way that we can start to reshape and reimagine how we're engaging with them so I've got about 10 minutes left that's kind of hard to know I can show you all the symbols if you want or if there's some comments or questions I'd be happy to take them now so Susan where would you like me to go or anyone else I think showing a few more of the symbols because they are pretty it is such a new concept sure okay but other people I've seen them a lot so other people might have other ideas okay how expensive they are in some places oh why would they be that expensive in some places grand prairie somebody just said that they spent $211 for 13 symbols oh they shouldn't have so you know let's let's try and figure out some places then did you in grand prairie did you print these symbols off these particular ones from that site I don't know she's on the chat window the grand prairie person wants to respond to that that would be really helpful please and if not maybe send either Susan and I an email because that that should not be the case we can certainly I mean oh okay they were quoted the price okay so you know let's I mean that can be a follow-up from this as we try and find some places as I said I know for sure the Edmonton public library does it I know for sure Cameron library at the University of Alberta does it so we will make sure that nobody's pain that would that would hurt Karen's heart and that would take away some of the powerful thing about this yeah Kelsey do that say yeah never mind that's too expensive we can get them done somewhere else for sure you could have them done at Edmonton public library and have them shipped to grand prairie that's a lot less than that so yeah okay so here's the symbol for open and remember at the other piece I want to say it doesn't matter I mean it could be it could be anything it does like it makes sense okay open it makes sense to us that have symbolic representation and have language that it would be like that but remember that we're teaching kids symbols not expecting that they know them from the beginning which is I and the whole AAC world is really important I wouldn't expect my child to know the word I well first of all the word open has nothing to do with an open space it's just a word so these symbols are just a word but they have put some things I guess to make people kind of be more open to them open so this is what open looks like this the Braille which means nothing to me but there it is the word in print which means something to me and then I would come to understand or know that this symbol represents the word open the concept open so out this is another one in the game probably to to make most people happy they made it look like we would represent out but anyway so this is what it looks like you can see that it's it's square green it goes and I'm already forgetting all of their different little markers but okay and finished which is I am finished this it is an adjective think yeah adjective goodness I should know these things anyway so adjectives are hearts the blue the print is there are the Braille is there the print is there and then this is the the tact tool marker that will indicate to the child what that symbol is more there it is okay and not so not more I would like more I would like more of it so there's the symbol for it we looked at that earlier make which is same thing it's a verb there's the Braille there's the word there's the little meaning marker on the top to make them understand that this is the symbol for make do don't so that's kind of related okay and turn turn my turn your turn turn it on turn it up turn it over turn it around so I am missing one I think I'm missing more and I don't know why I don't know if I miss it or if I might have lost it already so but I'm going to get a few more sets printed so we have some to show so other questions comments okay Chris I can let me see I saw that you had something in the tech chat I think the you would that's part of what's in the script but remembering that they have lots more I think there is a way you know there's an up to them I think but remember that you're putting them in the hands of the child gets the whole whole thing things or are you saying presented so the kids could start to make choices after they understood them and actually express things yeah and I think we have to think about that so that would be I would suggest probably thinking something like a core board but again that would have to depend on how the child can actually question what's great to you and people are asking if you could repeat the question oh okay sorry okay yeah so so so Chris Christ are asked any discussion around positioning concerns so if they were using it to be used in expressive communication tool which hopefully the long-term they would be that's not our first primary concern we would want them to be able to be found I think so he's consistently presented and I think I think that we would want them to be stored in a consistent manner so if the kids have them on a lanyard around them we'd want them to always be in that same order the same way that the 40 core that Karen talks about are always in the same order if we sort them perhaps on a I'm sort of imagining for some kids they might they might could be stored on a display kind of so that they'd always be consistently there sort of like a bigger version if you get this symbol smaller a version of the the way the 40 core displayed so I think we're about you know I agree with your point Chris is that we want to not just have them randomly flying in and flying out we want them to be presented in the same order or the same way all the time just like they are in the in the other core vocabulary and Judy yeah the students that don't wish to hold them I think what you do is you know just hold their hands over them I think you know this is going to be one of the things that we we have to play with is new days how can for kids who are touch tactile defensive what are we going to do about that maybe they don't want to even touch them we're going to have to think about some of that problem solving around those individual kids and I think you and I are going to be doing some of that together so that'll be fun but they they don't have to hold them they only have to get you know contact with them enough to eventually get what they represent the word that they represent so they don't have to hold them but I hear you what you're concerned is as well for sure well any other questions because I want to be cognizant of time cap I think what I'm going to do is I'm going to stop there and I know Susan wants to say something real quick okay thank you so much Kathy this is really I think the beginning of an exciting new way to look at communication for some of our really challenged students who are blind and visually impaired and hopefully we'll continue to work on this project and be able to report more work back to the PLC members so thank you so much for today and for sharing this information with us and you did a lot of talking you did a great job thank you oh I can talk season you know that everyone that this was recorded and it will be up on somewhere in the ERL C archives hopefully within about a week or so it's just like I said some of the logistical stuff we need to figure out with that I'm going to yeah there's a question about the protocol the new the core board that I took granted symposium from assistive where so I contacted assistive where and they will be making that core board available for printing lots of people aren't going to know what this means but I will I will send out information to the the PLC about this the trick is it's not going to be able to be purchased about lovely laminate way that I showed you but at least it will be available for a download and printing so thanks for that and I will make sure to send that out to everyone in the CCN world anyway so thanks yeah perfect thank you so much so