Episode 238: Sean Sweeney (Part 2): Evaluating Resources & Apps for Therapy with FIVES

This week, we present Part 2 of Chris and Rachel’s interview with Sean Sweeney! Sean is a Speech-Language Pathologist and founder of SpeechTechie.com, a website that focuses on the intersection of speech therapy and technology. This week, he discusses his “FIVES” pneumonic to help evaluate if a resource (e.g. an app) is a worthwhile investment of time and money. 

Before the interview, Chris and Rachel share about their recent trip to Montana to do a presentation, and some of the highlights of the trip. They also answer an excellent listener question that asks “Regarding the least-to-most prompting hierarchy, if the student is new to the board/device and we jump to the last step and model without expectation, how long do we stay at that level?”

Key ideas this week:

🔑 The least-to-most prompting hierarchy is related more to an individual words than to a particular student student. The amount of prompting that a student needs will depend on the word, so a student isn’t ever at a certain “level” of the hierarchy 

for every word.

🔑 The symbols or pictures on an AAC system give users way to recognize the word(s) they want to say. Without the visual, it can be harder for students to construct an effective spontaneous utterance. 

🔑 Sean came up who the pneumonic “FIVES” to help evaluate resources that he is considering using for therapy. FIVES stands for Fairly priced, Interactive (decision making, create narrative), Visual, Educationally relevant, and “Speechie” (i.e., the app can be used to target specific clinical objectives)

🔑 Sean likes to take materials and items from a student’s hobbies and use them to target his clinical objectives. For example, he has a student who loves Pokemon, so he pulls story grammar and vocabulary from a Pokemon comic to make the lesson more engaging and interactive.