Episode 336: TWT Live: ArkSHA 2024 (Part 1)

This week, we share Part 1 of Chris and Rachel’s TWT Live episode recorded at the 2024 Arkansas Speech and Hearing Association! The episode touches on several topics, including using AI to analyze language from Gestalt Language Processors, getting buy in from teachers, and more!

Before the interview, Chris and Rachel discuss the some of the controversy surrounding “revoicing,”which involves a communication partner restating or clarifying messages from an AAC user.

Key Ideas this Episode:

🔑 Revoicing as a Communication Tool: Chris and Rachel share why, from their perspective, revoicing, should be considered a legitimate component of a communication system when consented to and ratified by the AAC user. Rachel and Chris stress the importance of differentiating “revoicing” from controversial practices like facilitated communication, and call for structured guidelines to ensure ethical and effective practices in this area.

🔑 Generative AI as a Tool for Language Analysis: Chris and Rachel explored how tools like ChatGPT could assist in analyzing language development, including its potential to identify stages of Gestalt language processing. They noted the importance of educating AI tools for more accurate and insightful analysis.

🔑 Gaining Buy-In for AAC in Education: Strategies were discussed to encourage teachers to adopt AAC devices in classrooms, such as helping educators empathize with the challenges of nonverbal communication by asking if they have ever taught without their voice.

Transcript of the Episode

Please Note: This transcript was generated using speech recognition & AI tools; it may contain some grammatical and/or spelling errors.

00:00:08 Rachel Madel
Welcome to Talking With Tech. I'm your host, Rachel Madel, joined as always by Chris Bugaj. Hey, Chris.

00:00:13 Chris Bugaj
Hey, Rachel. All right, so I've been teasing Communication Matters and some of the awesome experiences I had there. I want to dive right in with one of the sessions that I went to, because there was a new concept to me that I had not heard of before. I'll be curious if you've heard of it, and I'm going to set it up with the story of how this goes. And I should say that I hope to interview the people that were conducting this session so we can get even deeper into it. Because, you know, there's a little bit of the telephone game here is that these people were presenting and I met with them, and now I'm going to kind of try and summarize my thoughts on it, but. And recap it. But let's just try and get it right from them. Right. Okay. So one of the nights, and I'll talk deeper about this in the future, was this thing called an open mic night where the AAC users go to a bar, and it was on a college campus. So it was a college bar. It was open to anybody, and they do the open mic stuff. I'm going to talk more about that in a different podcast. That's not what I want to talk about today. So foreshadowing for future, one of the people that was sort of a star at Communication Matters 2023 was this guy named Jamie, and he's married to someone named Emma. Okay. So Jamie is an AAC user. Emma is not, and they're a married couple. And I had heard whispers of Jamie, oh, you gotta go to open mic night. Jamie's so funny. So funny. And he had sort of made a name for himself at the 2003 one. So he was setting up for this 2004 one. Right. So as I go to the bar and I'm there with Melissa and meeting all these people, there is. I meet Jamie and his wife Emma. And what's happening is Jamie has his communication device, and he's chatting with his communication device, but also Emma is popping, you know, piping in. And we were just having a conversation all together and can't wait to listen to your set and all that kind of stuff. Right, right. And I have been in many interactions like this in my career where there's either a couple or there is a, you know, someone with a parent, you know, with a kid that's using aac. And so whatever, the night goes on, next thing. But then I'm flipping through the program and I see there's a session called Joyce for the Revoice, or Rejoicing, the revoicing, something like that. I'll get the. I'll get it. I'll get it right. And we'll have it in the show notes. But rejoicing around revoicing, the whole thing, whatever the title was, was about this concept of revoicing. And so I ask you now, have you heard of it before?

00:02:53 Rachel Madel
No.

00:02:55 Chris Bugaj
No, I hadn't either. Right now, let me just shout out a few people here. Joanna Holmes, I got to spend some time with her. Joanna Holmes has been on the podcast, longtime listener, great friend. Again, more stories to come about giving hugs to people I'd not met in person and having great experiences with them. So more to come about Joanna and those experiences. But Joann was in this session, and then our friend Charlie Danger was there. Big shout out to Charlie Danger because we got to actually hang out with Charlie a little bit after the conference. Charlie lives in London, so we went to London, we got to meet up with him, and he got to give us some little scavenger hunt of go things to find in London and do in London that were not like, necessarily the big thing. So Charlie, just a shout out to you, had a brilliant time with you. So much fun. Again, I'll probably be talking about that in the future. But Charlie was in the session as well, and so I was there and there was more. Right. And so I think it was a relatively new concept for Joanna, maybe not, but Charlie. And then we got to. I got to have conversations with Charlie and Joanna afterwards around this concept. But what is this concept? What are you talking about, Chris? What is re voicing? So the presentation starts off with a notion that what we're about to share with you is not facilitated communication. They were very explicit. They had a slide that this is not that, you know, facilitated communication. There's all these controversy around who is actually making the message, what revoicing is. I'm going to do my best to try and explain. It is when you're with somebody and that person uses their organic voice, I guess, you know, their musculature to their. I don't know what's the best way to say it. Let's say their organic voice. Right. To reshare what their partner is saying. Right. So in some case, Jamie might say something that was unintelligible to me, turn to Emma, and Emma would say what he's saying is, and then explain what he's saying. And the whole point of this whole thing was to say, this should be considered a legitimate form of AAC and part of someone's AAC system. Again, taking that broad approach that a system is not an app. It's everything you use to communicate, from your gestures to your facial expressions to the app that you might be using. They were saying this should be thought of as a legitimate way that someone is communicating because Jamie is indicating that it's appropriate that I'm giving you permission to do this. And sometimes re. Clarifying, like, getting upset if voicing in some sort of way that, no, Emma, that's not right. You did not say what I was trying to say. You got it wrong. Right. And so it was a really interesting concept. It was interesting on many levels, because one of the things that jumped into my mind is these are adults, right? These are consenting adults that are, you know, have. That have learned language into a way that they could say whatever they want to say. So it got me thinking about kids who I primarily work with, and what are the implications of that, you know, which, again, great conversations with Joanna and Charlie afterwards about these sorts of things. Charlie actually asked the question. I hope he doesn't mind me sharing. He asked the question in the session, like, is there anything I can do as the third party? Right? So if I'm standing there listening to Jamie and Emma, to really know that it is Jamie that you're revoicing, that it actually is Jamie sort of confirming it. Like, I have an intuition because I can see he's upset if you're. He's not. You're not it. Right? Like, he's making gestures that sort of. I'm interpreting as. He's like, no, no, no, no, that's not right. You know. But I don't really know, and I don't really know your dynamic as a. As a couple. Like, you know, maybe there's some things that happen behind the scenes. And so I don't really know. Is there something that I should be looking for as that third party to really know? And it was great. They sort of answered that. Him indicating that and multiple times of Emma, sort of. No, hold on. I got that wrong. What do you want me to say? Okay. Yes. And the fact that he could, if he wanted to use his AAC to clarify and recast an example that they used was that Jamie used in sharing his story was he said, I got a job. And when I got that job, I felt like I was 50% less productive because I'm communicating with other people. And it's taking me longer. But if Emma was here, she could do this a lot faster. And so can you invite her to come? Like, I'm asking you, with my AAC device to bring this portion of my AAC system. I want to have that here because I could be more productive. Which, again, from an adult standpoint, it felt really like, yeah, that makes sense to me. You know, they also share the story that something happened. There was a crime committed. They were clear to say that it wasn't Jamie that committed the crime, but I think maybe he was burgled or something like that, and. And had to have a conversation with the police. And the police allowed Emma to sort of be his voice and be a portion of his communication system. And again, they sort of legitimized it because there were times where she was like, wait, hold on. He's telling me I got that wrong. And sort of that. Not the detail that the way I said it was this. And it's not that it's this. Right. Is that right? And he'd be like, yes, that's right. So they sort of like, you know, would it hold up in a court of law sort of thing. Well, these, you know, the policemen in this situation accept the police sort of accepted it as a valid form of communication. So the whole concept was sort of new to me. Clearly, that has. That's been a thing. But I had never had a word cast onto it, this revoicing. And it made me. It challenged me in some really good ways. Like I said, kids and power dynamics. When we've had this conversation, people often brought up the Netflix movie. There's a documentary called tell me that you love me.

00:09:13 Rachel Madel
I was going to say it was. On the tip of my tongue. Yes.

00:09:17 Chris Bugaj
And so we're like, how is this different than that? And we were drawing comparisons, and then really more contrasts. You know, that that is facilitated communication. And this is not because the person has a way to say whatever they want to say, however they want to say it autonomously. Right. It's them choosing to use this way, and they can tell you that all on their own. Right. And so that's why they were trying to make it very separate, which I appreciated, you know, so, anyway, I. Again, I'm so excited. I apologize to the listeners because I. And I apologize to you because I monopolized this with my excitement. What are your thoughts as I just kind of ramble all about that?

00:09:56 Rachel Madel
I mean, I think it's an interesting concept, and I think it's something that is already naturally happening, but like, maybe we haven't considered, as part of, like you said, an AAC system. And of course, like, I think there are important distinctions to make between that and facilitated communication. And I think the biggest one is just that these individuals have the ability to communicate in a way that is autonomous. And that's very obvious. When I think through the lens of kids, I feel like it becomes a little trickier. And maybe not even just kids, but like, individuals that haven't fully learned language and literacy yet. You know, it's like, that's where I think it's kind of like, really tricky to navigate those waters. But I like the idea of thinking about communication partners. And I think because of facilitated communication and, you know, other approaches that have. Have been kind of lumped in with that, this idea of a communication partner has become, like, so taboo. Like, no, if it's someone's next to you, like, relaying a message, like, it has to be, like, wrong, and we can't do that. And so I like the idea of. Making the distinction because I do think that, like, individuals who use aac, they have communication partners that know them super well and know what they're communicating, and it's just like, so much easier. I mean, I know even AAC users, like some AAC users, when they're with their family, they don't even really use their aac. They're using more verbal speech, but their family understands that. Right? And other people who aren't as familiar, like, don't understand it, so they're more inclined to use their aac. And so I think it just, like, broad level looks at all the different ways that communication can happen. And also thinking through the lens of making things easier and more efficient for AAC users. Because we know that communicating using aac, even if you have all the language and the literacy, is time consuming. And so if we can make that faster and easier, more efficient process, then I feel like that's great. And so I feel like it's something we should consider and something that I haven't fully considered in this way until you kind of talked about this.

00:12:23 Chris Bugaj
It's funny how you say they're sort of lifting the burden of that communication partner, feeling like maybe they're doing something, something wrong. Right? And it's funny that that. Because something that happened in that session was there was a another AAC user kind of sitting on the side, and there were two women on either side of him. And one of them spoke up and started crying, saying, this is my brother. I'm the sister. We're sisters, we're all family and you're legitimizing what we do where we might have otherwise felt like we're doing something wrong. Right. And so that felt really warm to me. Right. It felt right to me. Again, that again, if this person, again, not knowing any of the abilities and their dynamic, but if the student, if the person, sorry, if the person can say whatever they want to say, they've learning, they've learned language and this is just faster way then I think it makes sense.

00:13:24 Rachel Madel
You know, one other thing that comes to my mind too is the really important distinction that the AAC user is the one who decides who is that communication partner. Because I feel like I've also learned from AAC users, please don't finish my message. Please don't assume you know what I'm saying. I feel like that's an important distinction because it's a specific communication partner that the AAC user has decided and designated is, you know, able to do that for them and they want that to happen. And I'm sure every AAC user is different. I'm sure there's a users that are like, no, I don't want anyone supporting communication in that way. And I feel like it's, it's so individualized. And so I just want to call that out too because I feel like it's important to know that it has to be designated by the AAC user as something that they want.

00:14:22 Chris Bugaj
Well, again, you've crawled into my brain because what you're sort of talking about here is some sort of maybe guidelines around this. And again is an emerging word for me that I wonder if it was like, okay, this is a practice for adults who already have language. Here are some guidelines for that. One of those guidelines might be the AAC user gets to choose who that person or persons are. It can't be imposed on them. Like I could see that as a guideline or a rule. Perhaps another one is they always get to ratify what is being said and that should be known how they're ratifying it. Like I could see some guys sort of, you know, techniques that you would use to help people. Like again, like Charlie said, a third person know what's happening or other people knowing what's happening. But then also, if you wanted to start learning about this and doing this, not falling in other pitfalls, you know, like you said, someone finishing your sentences for you or going close enough, you know, there could be some guardrails put around it. And I wonder if the people that were at this presentation it wasn't just Jamie and Emma. There were others might be doing that, you know, then maybe that's their next step in the evolution of this.

00:15:35 Rachel Madel
Yeah, I mean, I really like it because it does feel. Feels a little nuanced. And so I feel like having more guidance around it, both from a third party that's communicating and also for the communication partner themselves. I'm sure there's people listening who might have an. A user in their life and they know them very well, and if they want to potentially step into that role. Or maybe they're already doing it in. Some ways, maybe putting some parameters or more guidance around it or having more conversations around it. So I think that would be really. Cool and hopefully something that's, that's. That's going to come down the pipeline.

00:16:15 Chris Bugaj
So I. They're on the list. I have a very long list of people to interview from and to reach out to, and they're top of that list. And so I'll be reaching out to them to see if we can get them on the podcast, see if they'll be willing to come in and talk more about those nuances, you know, and what they think the future of this is and maybe answer some of those questions about what do you think about the dynamic if it wasn't. If it wasn't your dynamic, you know, what are your thoughts about that or concerns or what do you champion? Those are all the questions that I hope to ask when I get to interview them. If, you know, we talked about it and they were like, oh, yeah. So I hope we can pull it all together and make it happen. Happen. So let's talk about more to come on communication matters. Much, much, much more to come. But if you've liked what we talked about last week and this week, I just want to say, and in previous episodes, when I've been talking about communication matters, and I highly suggest finding out when it's going to be next year, as soon as we know, I'll mention it here on the podcast and consider going because it was, you know, especially if you can wrap some days around it with, you know, with a trip to Lond or Paris or Edinburgh. Foreshadowing. I met people from Scotland, Rachel.

00:17:34 Rachel Madel
I love it. Have them on the podcast. We might have to.

00:17:37 Chris Bugaj
They're on the list.

00:17:38 Rachel Madel
Great. I love a thick Scottish accent.

00:17:43 Chris Bugaj
So, yeah, consider that. All right, so the interview today is not an interview. Arkansas Speech and Hearing association conference. They invited us to do a session at a virtual session at their conference, and we did a talking with tech Live. And so Talking with Tech Live, I think we explain it, but just real quick, it's us facilitating conversations with actual questions that people bring. It's not pre planned by you or I. People put in those questions and then we all have a conversation around it. So without further ado, let's listen to part one of Talking with Tech live at Arksha 2024.

00:18:29 Wendy Roark
Schools Conference and boy is it going to be a great one. My name is Wendy Roark and I'll be moderating this session. We wanted to let everyone know, if you didn't just hear that you're being recorded, that we are going to be recording this session today for the Talking with Tech podcast. Our presenters Chris Bougay and Rachel Madle host this very popular podcast which is full of amazing content. Talking with Tech has over a million downloads. Rachel and Chris interview people from all over the world on their podcast and today we're going to get to be a part of it. So make sure you go and subscribe to this wonderful podcast and be on the lookout for this episode. So I think now would be the best time to do our final door prize which was donated by Chris Bouguet himself. Chris graciously donated his On Demand course, the Specific Language System First Approach to aac. This is an on demand presentation which explores the evidence based practices to select AAC and at through an MTSS that supports an inclusive learning environment. Awesome. Congratulations Diane. This course, Talking with Tech Live, has been approved for ASHA ceus. Following this presentation you will need to complete the survey linked in the attendee Dashboard to verify your attendance. That survey must be completed to receive your Certificate of attendance which will be sent to attendees in the few days following the conference. I want you guys to use the Q and A for any questions that you have that require a direct answer from our presenters and then use the chat for general comments that don't require a direct response. Now I'd like to introduce our wonderful speakers for today. Chris Bugaj is the Assistive Technology Specialist at Lougham County Public Schools. Chris is the author of several books including the New Assistive Tech Make Learning awesome for all inclusive learning, 365 ed tech strategies for Every Day of the Year, the Practical and Fun Guide to Assistive Technology in Public Schools and Technology Tools for Students with Autism. Chris co hosts the podcast Talking with Tech, Nightlight Stories and at Tedcast. He is a highly sought after presenter having presented over 650 presentations around the world. Welcome Chris. Rachel Madel is a Los Angeles based SLP that is Dedicated to coaching parents and professionals on how to incorporate technology to best support speech and language development. Rachel presents both nationally and abroad on the use of AAC for children with complex communication needs and coaches, clinicians, teachers, and parents on integrating technology in classrooms and at home to support communication. When she's not working with children in her private practice in Los Angeles, she co hosts the weekly podcast Talking with Tech that focuses on best practices in aac. Rachel's work has been featured in many prominent publications. Welcome, Rachel, and welcome to Arkansas, both of you. We're so thrilled to have you today. And I'll let you guys take it away.

00:21:27 Rachel Madel
Thanks so much, Wendy. It's so good to be here with you guys.

00:21:31 Chris Bugaj
Thanks, Wendy. I'm gonna put a fun link in the chat. Once upon a time, I actually when you mentioned that I have presented in. Quite a few places. One of them has been Arkansas. And my daughter and I made this video once upon a time to talk about the awesome educators in Arkansas. So I put it in the link. Don't watch it now. Copy it and. And watch it later. It was just when Wendy was talking or reminded me of like, yeah, we made that video.

00:21:55 Rachel Madel
So I love it. Well, Chris, you put the link to the slide deck in the chat. I'm also going to share the slides. Really excited to be here with you guys. And let's see. Let me share my slides. Okay. Everybody can see that we're good. Okay. So, yeah, they already did a really great job of us, of introducing us. I'll put the captions on here for when I'm speaking. And yeah, I think we can kind of go through this. We are there. They did a great job. What were you gonna say, Chris?

00:22:37 Chris Bugaj
Well, I was gonna say that because. Of Zoom, Zoom has a captions option for the people on the. On that end. So we'll have double captions in the recording if we turn it on through Google Slides. But if you didn't know that little trick, that's an awesome little trick for people in schools. That or anywhere. If you're presenting with Google Slides, you can. It's. There's built in capt. So you can just turn them on. Just like Rachel did in the bottom left hand corner.

00:23:00 Rachel Madel
Yes. Okay, we don't need to go over this. This is all the stuff for me. But none of this is relevant on my speaker disclosures. Not super relevant to today, but there's a list down here. This link goes to my. All of the disclosures that I have if you're interested, and all the different ways to Contact me, follow me on social media, all the things and same thing. Chris, I feel like we kind of already went through this. Anything else you want to say?

00:23:26 Chris Bugaj
Nope. Agreed. Congratulations to Diane for winning the course. I think it was Diane.

00:23:30 Rachel Madel
Yeah. And with the podcast. So for those of you guys who listen to the podcast, can you put it in the chat also? If you've never heard of it, you're going to be on it, but also put it in the chat. Let's see. Let me pull up. Let me pull up the chat.

00:23:49 Chris Bugaj
Me too. I'm going to put it over here.

00:23:51 Rachel Madel
Yay. We have some people who are listening, who listen, who love it. First timer. Awesome. So for those of you who haven't listened, we've been doing the podcast for over six years now, right, Chris?

00:24:05 Chris Bugaj
Yeah, yeah. It's been a long time.

00:24:07 Rachel Madel
Yeah. And we have so many episodes you can see here. Talkingwithtech.org is our website. And so if you are new to the podcast, want to start listening. There's. Our website is right there. We also are on all the major podcasting platforms, which is really great and easy. But, you know, the structure of the podcast is usually we have some type of interview where Chris or I or both of us have some type of guest on. And then the first portion of the podcast is where we are just kind of talking, just chatting about our lives, our work, a small win, a struggle. And so that's kind of usually the way that we set up our podcast. And yeah, there's lots and lots of episodes at this point, since we've been doing it for so long. Actually, right now, because it's summer, we're doing what we're calling recast episodes. So every year we pick kind of episodes that are more early on in the podcast and we re air them over the summer. So right now we're kind of recasting some older episodes that we just loved so much. Chris, what am I missing?

00:25:18 Chris Bugaj
Well, I think the only thing you left out, Rachel, because you did an amazing job there, is that on the website you can go and search. Because we do have so many episodes, a common problem people have told us is, well, I need to find this and you've got so much. Where do I start? So if you go to the website, there's a search feature where you can look through different episodes and say, oh, for instance, an example we use all the time is I have a student with cortical visual impairment. I wonder if talking with tech has done any episodes on cortical and visual impairment. And I can Learn about it as I'm driving to work. And we got like six, so there's plenty. But any topic, any particular topic.

00:25:56 Rachel Madel
And our favorite episodes, Rachel, they're the AAC user episodes. We have had the pleasure to have so many adults who use aac, even some teenagers, Chris, that use aac. And we've interviewed them on the podcast, and there's no better way to learn about AAC than through someone who has a lived experience using aac. So we really try to amplify the voices of both autistic adults and AAC users. And so those are definitely my favorite episodes. It's also really helpful when you're working with a family who is introduced to AAC for the first time. It can be really empowering for that family to listen to someone who's an adult who uses aac, you know, communicate in such a great way on a podcast. So those episodes are really great to share with families, too, as a resource to showcase, you know, how awesome AAC is and how, you know, an adult who uses aac, their kind of perspective.

00:27:03 Chris Bugaj
All right, so that's mostly about the podcast. Now, Rachel said that most of the podcast episodes feature a little banter episode or a portion at the beginning where we talk about something and then some sort of interview. But that's not all of the episodes. Some of the episodes are sort of special episodes, and this is one of them. One of the things we've done over the years, years is something called talking with Tech Live. And that's what we're going to do today, where we record the podcast and play this, this particular. This thing we're doing today on the podcast. So you're going to be on the podcast today. And like, it's not today, we're recording it today, but we'll put it out later so later on you can listen to it. This particular episode of what we're doing, what we're recording is talking with Tech Live is really based around your questions. This is not a post. Questions to Chris and Rachel, and Chris and Rach will answer your questions. This we will. We will. But it's more about. There's. There's over 60 people in this room. Let's all participate together with your insights and your experiences and what you've seen to work. And let's share together. So we're going to lean on our facilitator skills to facilitate the conversation. So this is day three of Archa, right? This is where the anchors. Rachel, I think we're closing out the conference.

00:28:20 Rachel Madel
Are we the Headliners. Someone's once told me when I was presenting at Asha at like the last spot, they were like, you're like the Beyonce of this conference. And I was like, thank you. Because I was feeling, like, not so good about it.

00:28:35 Chris Bugaj
So. So with that in mind, either stuff that's been, you know, rolling around in your head through practice, maybe a student that you're working with, or maybe something you've learned over the last three days. And you want to talk more about. Or, you know, run it by the room full of people, this is your chance. So what's. What Rachel's displaying on the screen right now is a bit ly or bitly bit ly slash talking with TWT live. Bit ly slash TWT live. The twt. The capitalization counts here. We can also throw it in the chat in a second.

00:29:11 Rachel Madel
I'll put it in.

00:29:12 Chris Bugaj
This will be a link to a Google form with one question. Where, you know, a Google form has. One thing and you type in your question that is going to populate a Google sheet. And we have that up on our screens. We'll be able to. You are going to share that with you too, because you actually have access to both. You can ask a question through Google Forms. And then, Rachel, if you'll move on to the next slide, you'll see there's a link for the responses. And this takes you to the Google sheet that the Google form feeds. Your responses will show up here in that first. In those first three columns, the yellow columns. But that's not all over to the right columns. D, E and F. Yeah, where Rachel is now, there are there. You can add your own insights. So if you're like, well, you know, I, I have something to share, but they're talking right now and I just want to. You can, you can jump in. There's multiple ways to participate in this experience where you can be typing, you can adding. Add information to there, or you can just chat with us. Put it in the chat. Any. Anything.

00:30:19 Rachel Madel
You also can come on mic because we would love to hear your voices. Put your camera on if you want to. Also, you don't have. It's going to be really helpful for the actual podcast if you guys are brave enough to come on and share your experience. So I'm going to go back to this link. We put the link in the chat. We also have the QR code you can scan. But we need, we need you guys to ask some questions because that's how this goes.

00:30:52 Chris Bugaj
Dr. Frank's learned from the Bitly's from the podcast. How awesome is that? See, practical stuff.

00:30:58 Rachel Madel
I know. Bitly links are a game changer. Okay.

00:31:06 Chris Bugaj
You know what? I'm going to also put the link in case people didn't get the slides. I'm going to put the link to the responses here as well.

00:31:13 Rachel Madel
Great. That's smart. Also. Yes. Wendy's saying if you guys raise your hands, I'll change your settings to talk. Awesome. That's a great system. So if you guys want to come on mic. Yeah, I'll probably have to give some permissions there, but. But we can do it.

00:31:26 Chris Bugaj
Rachel. We got our first one. We got our first question. It worked.

00:31:29 Rachel Madel
Yes. Okay.

00:31:34 Michelle
He doesn't even have to unmute me because I'm already here.

00:31:38 Rachel Madel
Beautiful.

00:31:40 Chris Bugaj
We could have guessed this is going. To be one of the first questions and this would be part of this talking with Tech Live. So, Michelle, this is your question. Yep. You want to ask it out loud. So your voice is on the podcast.

00:31:52 Michelle
Yes, I want to hear myself on the podcast.

00:31:55 Rachel Madel
I'm so excited.

00:31:57 Michelle
Okay, so we've been learning a lot about Gestalt language processing. So we had a session on that and then we had three hours on AI. So I'm trying to kind of think through how I can use AI to help me figure out maybe what stage against alt language processing utterance. It like if I, like I'm, I'm tracking language out of my kids on a spreadsheet and I'm trying to like label it. Like that's a stage one or that's a stage two. Is there any way, have you ever tried AI to help you figure that out? Because that's probably where I'm at in my learning curve on Gestalt language processing.

00:32:34 Rachel Madel
That's a good question. I'm curious if anyone else, before we chime in, anyone else has experience ideas? I feel like we're talking about two buzzwords here. Geshot language processing and AI fusing them together. I'm curious if anyone else has ideas put in the chat or can come on mic. I know that we've definitely talked about Gashant language processing in AAC on the podcast quite a bit. We had two autistic adults, Alyssa Hillary Zisk and Lily Conine. So I don't know, Michelle, if you've listened to that episode, but that's a really powerful one where both of them talk about Gestalt language processing and aac. They are both part time AAC users and it's a very, very interesting conversation where I learned a ton about kind of this intersection of gastronomic language processing and aac, especially when it comes to motor planning, which I can go into a little bit more detail about. But I definitely want to share that episode because I feel like that's a really great resource to kind of start understanding the kind of the nuances of that intersection.

00:33:45 Michelle
What was the name of that episode again?

00:33:47 Rachel Madel
The Alyssa, Hillary Zisk and Lily Conine. We can see if we can. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I could go ahead.

00:33:58 Chris Bugaj
Here's what I would add. Let's take out the word gestalt and just use language processing as opposed to getting hung up on analytical versus gestalt. Just think about language processing. So what kind of questions might we ask generative AI to help us? Take a language sample and get an mlu, for instance, or take a language sample and ask for patterns, ask for phrases, ask for, I don't know, other ways to analyze the language as opposed to thinking of it as in one or two camps. Right. If you just think of a language. As language, then you can ask generative AI all sorts of questions to gather insights about what to do then as writing goals, as next steps, as how to communicate what you've learned to parents, to other team members. So I think here's how I use generative AI. I think of it more as pulling the camera back, not being so specific, and getting a greater perspective around the students or the teachers that I'm trying to help. Does that help?

00:35:08 Rachel Madel
Yes. Thank you. I also think that one of one part of your question, Michelle, is talking about the stages. And just my own clinical experience with Gestalt language processing and AAC specifically, is that it's really hard to kind of map the way that an AAC user learns language using AAC onto kind of the NLA framework. Like, it's not. It's hard to make that just because I think because of the motor planning challenges that we know, our students who use AAC experience, which is part of the reason that, you know, verbal speech is not coming easily or it's inconsistent oftentimes we can, you know, trace that back to motor planning challenges. And so when we're thinking about motor planning and AAC and then we're thinking about gestant language processing and the idea of, you know, phrases and longer utterances in the initial stages of language learning, like those two things are kind of in direct opposition in a lot of ways with each other, which has always been my biggest challenge. So that episode with Alyssa Hillary Zisk and Lily Conan, I start talking about that motor planning piece because, you know, if we're thinking about. About stage one of gestalt language processing through the NLA framework, it's like, okay, well, lots of phrases. But if we program lots of phrases into an AAC system, but we're not actually teaching the motor planning behind that phrase, then as we go through that framework, it just becomes really tricky to navigate mitigation. And how do we actually teach the individual motor plans for each word? And so one of the things that I learned from that episode is, is making sure that we aren't just programming a bunch of phrases into an AAC system. And that's it. We can do that as a way to support our learners, especially if, you know, we know that there's a specific gestalt or phrase that's really powerful for them. However, we need to keep in mind that eventually it all leads to generative language. And that generative language through AAC means making sure that our students have the individual motor plans for each word of an utterance. And so it just. It does become really complicated. But I am making sure that I, Alongside of including gestalt and phrases into the programming of an AAC device, I'm also modeling those single words so that we can build that skill. I don't know if that makes sense, but it's.

00:37:52 Chris Bugaj
It's.

00:37:53 Michelle
It's really out of it from that person.

00:37:56 Rachel Madel
Yeah, that's.

00:37:57 Michelle
I think that's why I'm struggling.

00:37:58 Rachel Madel
Well, I think that's why a lot of us are str.

00:38:01 Chris Bugaj
It's.

00:38:02 Michelle
Yeah, I don't know how to marry them, you know.

00:38:05 Rachel Madel
Well, exactly, because it's kind of like apples and oranges in a lot of ways. And, you know, even with the Alyssa Hillary's siskilly Conine episode, you know, one of their suggestions was to model, like, why are we only modeling the single words we need to be modeling long phrases? And. And while I believe that to be true, I also know even when I'm modeling single words for some of my students, they're not responding and they're not imitating, and they're having a hard time just learning the motor plan for a single word. And so, like anything else, I feel like, you know, using our clinical decision making skills, understanding, you know, gestalt language processing, and trying to kind of incorporate some of those things. But I think everyone in the field is kind of looking for this, like, golden solution or this, like, formula that we. We use for AAC and gestural language process, and I just don't think that exists. So I think we have to kind of figure out what we know, what we're learning, and then individualize it to each student in front of us and do the best we can to kind of use what we know and also see how the student responds to kind of the intervention that we're, that we're doing.

00:39:12 Michelle
Totally makes sense. Thank you.

00:39:14 Chris Bugaj
Check out the response. I'm going to put it. I'm going to make it audio so. That podcast listeners can hear the response. Response. Someone wrote, I just plugged a language sample into ChatGPT and it did attempt to analyze, but it's not consistent with what we learned. What I'm guessing is what we learned today. Right. Or we learned earlier. This at archa. Yeah. Gestalt language processing. Let me, let me make some comments about it. The first thing is I really think you. I really think digging into the research around it is helping. The research around it is developing. How about I put that. So I like to check my assumptions about Gestalt language processing, where analytical processing, if you use that term, has been around longer. So there's a lot longer history of research and development around it. It's a lot. I get nervous about a lot of the assumptions that are made around Gestalt language processing. And just to be give you an. Example, something that I've been wrestling with is the intersection of gestalt language processing and phrasal verbs. So let me put that in. Let's throw that out to the crowd here. We've got a bunch of participants. Have you heard of phrasal verbs? Do you know what those are? Or is that new?

00:40:39 Rachel Madel
Put it in the chat.

00:40:42 Chris Bugaj
Wendy says it's new. Don't think so. New. New. New.

00:40:48 Rachel Madel
New.

00:40:48 Chris Bugaj
New. New.

00:40:48 Rachel Madel
New.

00:40:49 Chris Bugaj
New. New. Yes. Okay, so let's. In contrast to that, how many people in the room, because it looks like most people are saying it's new to them, the concept of phrasal verbs. How many people have heard of core vocabulary? Let's change it up. Put that in the chat. Have you heard of core vocabulary? Yes. Me. Yes. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Right. Okay. Everyone knows core vocabulary. Here's the thing. When you. Oftentimes we are teaching core vocabulary, like Rachel said, with the motor planning in isolation, like, here's the motor plan for go, and here's how you find go on an AAC device. And it's this motor plan, right? When you take two core vocabulary words and you put them together, it often changes the meaning to be a different verb. So if I were to say go out, right? What does that. What does that really mean, hey, Rachel, you want to go out? What does that mean?

00:41:42 Rachel Madel
Yeah, put in the chat.

00:41:48 Chris Bugaj
Like, what's the verb that means go out? Like dinner or on a date. Right. If I was to say put on what. What does that mean? Yeah, Wendy, it could be several things. But put on, what does that usually mean? I guess it could be like a joke, but yeah, like someone said dress. Right. Don some clothing. Right. Well, I could go on and on with examples there. It's sort of like the matrix. Once you hear about phrasal verbs, you're going to start to see them all over and how often we use them. They're used quite frequently in language. So those are short little phrases where the individual word doesn't have a meaning. It only means something in context with the other words or around it, which is akin to a phrase. Right. So where do you draw the line between what's a gestalt and what's a phrase? And how does that get teased out? And I'm sure people listening to this will have all sorts of ideas on how we might tease that out, but I haven't heard that discussed before. So something going back to using generative AI and how to help analyze it, your language samples or create goals or something might be, hey, how many phrasal verbs are in analysis? What are the early developing phrasal verbs? And should we be targeting those? If they're frequently used in language, then should we be targeting those in therapy? And so these are sort of questions that I think, well, I think that's a new question people are wrestling with. But that's because gestalt language processing, or the concept of it seems relatively new. There's a lot of wrestling that happens with fair.

00:43:32 Rachel Madel
Yeah. I want to share a little bit about some of the things people are putting in the solutions for the ChatGPT. Were you able to specify that I might analyze with developmental sentence scoring? And also someone said, I think this would be a time where we have to teach ChatGPT a lot and never rely on it to know, which I think is very relevant for generative AI is like, yes, we need to teach it, but then also be very wary.

00:44:00 Chris Bugaj
So a good question to ask ChatGPT might be, how do I know the research I'm reading is valid? Right. And ask questions like that so that it can help guide, you know, what's true and what's false or how, how, how. What's the right word? I could ask ChatGPT for the right word, how there's. There's different levels of how deep the research goes. Right. How valid the research is. So there's different metrics for that. So you could take the research and ask it to ask GTPT to give it those levels. So that's another way that you could use ChatGPT to kind of guide you. Or not just ChatGPT generative AI at all in some sort of way of analyzing and wrestling with all the questions, with language processing and general. Look at all the questions, Rachel.

00:44:58 Rachel Madel
I know. Let's. Let's go. We. We're not gonna. We never have enough time, but let's go. Okay, next question. I feel like the biggest frustration for my district therapist is how to get buy in for AAC use in the classroom. What are your suggestions to get buy in from teachers? Great question. Feels like. Feels like it comes up all the time. Curious. Looks like Tammy has something to say. Yes, Tammy, come on in.

00:45:24 Wendy Roarch
Okay, Tammy, you should be able to talk.

00:45:26 Tammy
Okay. You might ask them if they've ever lost their voice and tried to teach a class, because I love it. Not allowing the student to use their AAC device in the classroom. They're taking away their voice.

00:45:44 Rachel Madel
I love it. Yes. That's great idea. Yeah, Tammy.

00:45:48 Chris Bugaj
Oh, sorry, Rachel. No, no, go ahead, Tammy. Have you seen that work? Have you used that with teachers and have you seen them change because of asking that sort of question?

00:45:57 Tammy
I have not seen that work because most of the students that I have a. That use AAC devices are students that are in community based programs in the, in the school. So CBI classroom classrooms and those teachers allow them to use the AAC devices. As a matter of fact, they encourage them to use them. So I've not had a student in the general education classroom that had one.

00:46:34 Chris Bugaj
Awesome.

00:46:35 Rachel Madel
Awesome.