All Together We Can

This post has a more personal flavor.

Last week, I successfully passed my PhD candidacy at The Pennsylvania State University with the paper, The Effects of Aided Language Stimulation on the Communication Performance of Individuals with Complex Communication Needs.

It has been a miraculous time. Proloquo2Go, the iPhone app I co-developed, has taken the world by storm, with David Pogue featuring it as a part of his TEDMED talk last week, CAN MY IPHONE SAVE MY LIFE?
, and then writing about it in his NY Times column, Medical Apps for the iPhone. This comes after a front page NY Times feature of two beautiful users of Proloquo2Go. There have been a ton of other major media features as well. Here are a few:

-Medicare Would Rather Buy $8000 Computer than $150 iPhone App
-iPhone applications can help the autistic
-ieeeTV Proloquo2Go AAC in your Pocket
-TUAW Proloquo2Go: Assistive communication for the iPhone and iPod touch

Last month, in October, we presented to overflowing rooms at Closing the Gap and had the first ever rounds of iPod touch labs at a major assistive technology conference. The stories pour in daily about how Proloquo2Go is helping children, teenagers, and adults. All of this is fantastic beyond belief.

It is truly beautiful to see individuals getting the communication technology they need, combined with getting the coolness factor.

Yet, among all the beauty and energy that is Proloquo2Go, I have been quietly hitting the books and spending long hours in classes and at my writing desk. I am ten months into my PhD at The Pennsylvania State University. It is an amazing experience that has proven to be a terrific decision in my life. Being here with the AAC faculty, Janice Light, David McNaughton, Kathy Drager, and Krista Wilkinson is truly amazing. The special education faculty are awesome. The range and depth that they represent is a wonderful gift in my life of learning to be a teacher/ researcher.

Finishing the candidacy process has set me free in a way that is hard to explain. I have been feeling so terrible missing my classroom teaching practice. This creative absence has left me feeling so indulgent. Where before I felt like I was going the way, I now am just reading and writing constantly. Yet, all of the sudden, nearly in one fell swoop, all of that is swept away and I see that this absence has left me quite a bit more prepared to serve the community that I care so much about. The research training is very important in my practice. So now as I turn to finding my lab, I feel free to go very deep into the work and study. I know that I can have the best of both worlds now, researching and having a group that I work hands on with. I also feel free to enjoy the process. The high stakes candidacy is very stressful! It feels great to realize what a gift this program is and how I have a great opportunity to leverage it into greater ways to contribute to the field dedicated to serving individuals with disabilities, their teachers, their families, and now their researchers.

Overall, I am very thankful to all the supporters of my work. The special education faculty in particular have been simply amazing and I feel that I owe them a great deal of thanks.

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Dan Herlihy and I are very excited to present a session:

Dan & Sam: Cool, Free, or … You’ve Gotta Have It Applications!

at Closing the Gap!  Date: Fri, Oct 16, 2009 from 12:30 pm – 1:30 pm

Here is a preview of the presentation.

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From Gordon College STILLPOINT Magazine:

Making Voices Heard

by Heather Smith
Samuel Sennott’s commitment to improving the lives of disabled people began with a life-changing volunteer experience. Caring for babies with cerebral palsy and adults with developmental disabilities at Michael Carter Lisnow Respite Center in Hopkinton, Massachusetts, inspired Sennott (pictured at top right), who graduated from Gordon in 2004 with an education major, to transform others’ lives.

With the help of colleague David Niemeijer, Sennott has recently released an application for the iPod Touch or iPhone that provides a complete communication system for the disabled. Created specifically for those with little or no ability to speak, the Proloquo2Go will revolutionize the way that autism, stroke, Down syndrome, cerebral palsy, and Lou Gehrig’s Disease patients live.     READ MORE

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Sometimes the stars/ contingencies align!  Today, I had the privilege of having lunch with Temple Grandin.   While I have read many of her books and followed her work for quite some time, today was the first time I was able to hear her speak.  It was also terrific to show her Proloquo2Go.

Temple Grandin and Samuel Sennott

Temple Grandin’s Talk

The closing keynote address she gave to over 1,000 people  for the Penn State National Autism Conference made me shiver.  Her message of early, intense intervention and cultivating the interests and talents of individuals with autism was moving and brought into focus exactly why I am a special educator.  You can watch the webcast of her talk and other talks from the week long conference, here:  http://www.outreach.psu.edu/programs/Autism/webcasting.htm You can obtain the handouts here:  http://www.outreach.psu.edu/programs/Autism/handouts.htm While sometimes I feel more like a speech therapist or an occupational therapist, listening to Dr. Grandin speak helped me realize that while I am passionate about empowering people with literacy and communication skills, I love the holistic experience of  teaching and helping individuals with disabilities and their families.  This multi-component approach to helping is important.  The many sides of special education:  Behavior Analysis, Speech Pathology, Literacy Instruction, Occupational Therapy, Physical Therapy, Vision Therapy, Teaching, Music Therapy, Psychology, Neurology and Medicine  and beyond  are helpful and can be balanced to assist the individuals we serve.  I am happy to be a part of that.  Days like today help me see how many components are necessary to the success of the diverse and unique individuals we serve.

Lunch with Temple Grandin

I emailed Dr. Temple Grandin a few weeks ago and set up a meeting to show her Proloquo2Go, the affordable and innovative communication system for the iPhone and iPod touch I co-developed during a sabbatical time before joining Penn State for a PhD in Special Education this past year.  First,  Temple,  two terrific new colleagues from PSU and I had a nice buffet lunch after her Keynote address.  We spoke about her diet and dieting for people with Autism.  The conversation shifted around to some of the points in her talk such as medications, florescent lighting in schools, wearing colored glasses, lcd monitors, brain imaging and sensory disorders, hyperbaric oxygen therapy, the DSM-V and the importance of affordable solutions for individuals with autism from low SES areas.

Then after the meal, I showed her Proloquo2Go on my iPhone.  It was fun to show her how it worked and neat to watch her interest in the text to speech capabilities combined with visually presenting and organizing concepts.   We had fun trying to push the speech technology to the limits of pronunciation!  I asked her what her impressions were and she said that she saw the value of the communication technology, but stressed the importance of affordability and durability.  She liked the iMainGo 2 case and I felt very much validated when I told her that we have created Proloquo2Go to be one fifth to one tenth of the cost of the comparable portable AAC systems.  Overall, it was terrific to hear her encouragement about Proloquo2Go.  It was a rare opportunity and I am so thankful for the experience.

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In some preparations for a presentation I came upon some resources some of you may like to check out:

• Online Digital Instruments are a terrific resource for motivating students in the domains of access, writing, conversation, and more.
• Try scratching behind singing the ABC’s, or your phonemic awareness tongue twisters.
• Handout
• Online Digital Instruments.pdf

Use these for:

1. a break
2. as a musical instrument
3. as a background to a friend saying the abc song
4. as a background to a friend reading their latest story or poem
5. Playing and then journaling about how it felt to play
6. Anything you can think of

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