Episode 327: Amy Mayer, Judy Schoonover, Remi Moran, & Tiffany Zaugg: Small Talks VIII

This week, we share a series of “Small Talks,” e.g. short recordings (less than 15 minutes) about a single topic of interest with guests Amy Mayer, Judy Schoonover, Remi Moran, and Tiffany Zaugg!

Before the Small Talks, Rachel discusses presenting ant an online autism summit about some of the fundamentals of AAC. Meanwhile, Chris shares about recording some trainings on the “specific language system first approach” with some groups in Israel, including a presentation at the ISSAC Israel Conference where participants watched a prerecorded video, then did a live Q&A over Zoom.

Small Talks This Episode:

Amy Mayer: Question Slips - Sometimes, as a teacher, it gets overwhelming constantly being asked questions that are about trivial things, like using the bathroom or which color pen to use, and Question Strips are a strategy that can help! You put students in teams, and they are given slips that allow them to ask a question. The trick is, there are a limited number of slips, and all members of the group must sign off that this is what they want to ask. This dramatically reduces irrelevant question. Since students often want to save the slips for another time, they collaborate and solve their problems themselves!

Judy Schoonover - Favorite Purchases from the Dollar Store: Something as simple as a pool noodles can be used as a pencil grip, as adaptive seating, converted into a foot fidget, made into a whisper tube, and more!  Similarly, the Dollar Store sells thin kitchen rugs (18 x 24) are velcro sensitive, so when you fasten velcro dots to something, it will stay and not move! Tips on uses for Dollar Store cookie sheets, plastic protectors, plastic plates, and push lightsare also shared!

Remi Moran: Creating a 50 Inch Touchscreen out of a TV - Remy bought an infrared frame that goes around his TV. The frame acts as a mouse pointer, essentially converting the TV into a large touchscreen. Remy shares how he puts videoes at the top and practices using AAC with his daughter at the bottom.

Tiffany Zaugg: DebriefScape - UCF has a tool called debrief scape that allows you take video you have and tag certain moments on the video. you want to discuss. You can also tag lots of different spots on the video. This tool can be really useful for providing coaching and feedback when teaching someone about AAC using video, as recommended in programs like SMORRES.

Links from This Episode::

Pool Noodles as Assistive Technology: https://blog.therapro.com/pool-noodle-as-assistive-technology/

Dollar Store Hacks for the Classroom https://www.weareteachers.com/50-dollar-store-hacks-for-the-classroom/ 

Writing Wizard: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/writing-wizard-school-ed/id631446426

Word Wizard: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/word-wizard-for-kids-school-ed/id447312716

DebriefScape: https://www.cs.ucf.edu/~ceh/EDGrants/DScape/ 

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 Chris Bugaj
Welcome to talking to Tech. My name is Chris Bugaj, and I'm here with Rachel Madel. Rachel. Rachel, I heard from multiple sources that you just presented at a. Is it an. It was an early intervention. Was it? Or was it early childhood? What was. Is there a difference? What.

00:00:25 Rachel Madel
What was it that you presented at preschool Autism summit?

00:00:29 Judy Schoonover
I.

00:00:29 Chris Bugaj
What's that?

00:00:30 Rachel Madel
So, Tara, over at autism, little learners hosted this conference. It was an online summit. It's actually super fun to participate in. And I got asked to present on the topic of AAC naturally. And it was a completely free event. So we had shared this on my social media and my email list, just kind of letting people know whenever, especially, there's a free event where you can learn. And I'm presenting, of course, I share it with my platforms to say like, hey. Cause oftentimes, I don't know about you, Chris, but I get a lot of emails from people asking, oh, when's the next time I can join this course or this event? And so I was really excited because this was not just a summit for slps, although there were plenty of slps that attended, but there were a lot of educators, and it was a broader audience. The first day of the summit was focused on communication, and so it was alongside of a lot of other really great SLP presenters in the space. But the other two days, it was psychologists, nutritionists, lots of different kind of modalities and different topics, which I thought was really interesting because oftentimes we have very thematic types of events and conferences. It's like, this event's for speech therapists, this event's for occupational therapists, this event's for teachers. And so to kind of see a multidisciplinary group of people come together was really exciting. And I think the last time I checked, there was 28,000 people who attended the summit, which was super cool. And I just love especially that I had the opportunity to present to, you know, teachers specifically. There are a lot of parents who join, too. And sometimes we get so kind of caught up in our little AAC bubble, Chris, that I'm like, everybody understands the need for AAC. Everybody understands AAC. You won't prevent verbal speech. You know, it's like we kind of forget that this is not common knowledge across all the different disciplines and spheres, and so it was just really good opportunity to teach. Some of my best strategies course was actually on modeling in a classroom, and I go into some of the different nuances because I feel like we can oversimplify modeling and say, well, just model you just model for kids and that's, you know, all we need to do. And it is not always so simple. You know, there's nuances. There's also modeling and explicit teaching. There's coaching, elements of how to get teams to model and how to prevent roadblocks from kind of coming up that prevent us from doing effective modeling. So I went into all the different kinds of nuances, shared some great resources, and it was cool because the event had a Facebook group and there were like 8000 people in this group. And I got tagged in so many comments yesterday. People loving my presentation, people sharing, inspire, don't require, like, can you make t shirts? Which has been on my to do list for a while. So I am going to eventually make t shirts. But yeah, it was really cool. It was just really, really great engagement. And I especially loved hearing from people who didn't have a lot of familiarity with AAC. You know, some of those kind of basic principles that I kind of take for granted and think everybody understands and knows, no, that's incorrect. And so it felt really good to be able to teach those things.

00:04:19 Chris Bugaj
That sounds so awesome. It's so great to be able to stretch to other disciplines and to other people that don't often get to or haven't yet had the experience, let's put it that way. And now you're the introduce, you introduced that concept to them and that opens them up to a whole new world of things that they may have never even known before. And that just makes it even better for the world of AAC.

00:04:42 Rachel Madel
Yeah. And what I was really excited for was there was a lot of presentations on the topic of AAC, actually. So it wasn't just me. Sometimes I feel like when I get asked to do events like this, it's like I'm the sole representer of AAC. But it was really cool. There were multiple presentations on AAC and a lot of people incorporating it into their sessions, even if the main topic wasn't AAC. Like, there was some on gestalt language processing. But I heard AAC a lot and that made me really happy and really excited.

00:05:14 Chris Bugaj
Yeah, that sounds awesome.

00:05:16 Rachel Madel
So, Chris, you also did a speaking event recently.

00:05:20 Chris Bugaj
Yeah, I had the great fortune to present in Israel, actually. So there was this whole plan that I was going to go to Israel this past summer, of course, because of the conflict over there, that didn't happen. And so we pivoted and we decided that we would do an online experience where I would record a video specifically around what they were very interested in. Was the specific language system first approach and how they could bring that sort of spread it around the country and how it could be used to, again, you know, move the borders of AAC. And so we did this video, and the way it worked is they all went. All the people who participated in this Isaac Israel conference came to, like, an auditorium. I wasn't the only thing. I think there was other parts of that conference. It was like a two day conference, and I was part of the second day. They watched the pre recorded video, and then at the end of that, I came in live, and we did a Q and A, you know, through Zoom, where they were asking about it. And at the end, it was really. They asked such great questions and thoughtful questions, and it was such an awesome experience because they. That we had. Sharon. Thank you. Often translated, someone spoke Hebrew, translated English, and back and forth. But such great, thoughtful questions about how to move the specific language system first approach or apply that to what they're. They're doing in their own practices or in their own places of work. And at the end, I didn't get to hear it, but I guess it was this, like, round of applause. And what they said was, chris, you really. I think this might have been a translation thing, but it's like, you're really moving our cheese. And I was like, well, in English, that's sort of like a negative thing. Like, like you. You don't move someone's cheese because they're used to that. She's like, no, no. Here we mean it to be like, you're stretching our thinking. You're making us think of things we haven't thought of before. And this is a. This is exactly why we wanted you to be here. So, so over the summer, there's been lots of conversations, there's been some recordings that'll be coming up in the podcast where there have been more school districts that are sort of, hmm, how do I do this in my. Here's what our situation is. Chris, can we pick your brain? Sure. You want to record it? And so we have some episodes like that coming up further down the. Further down the line here. But it was such a wonderful experience. I'm sad I didn't get to, but I'm still glad that we got to do it.

00:07:58 Rachel Madel
I love that, Chris. It's so cool when we get to have a reach beyond the United States, which I know with this podcast, we definitely do. But it just is super cool to think about global AAC and how we can make an impact, especially with that idea of the specific language system first just is super cool to see how that has shifted our clinical practice in the United States. I feel like we are very often getting emails in our inbox that I forward to you. I'm like, yes, Chris, Chris can respond to this one. I know a lot of people at a TAA this year came up and shared, and so it's really cool to see kind of that idea of yours really blossom and evolve. And so I'm just like, it's really exciting to be a bystander and see the impact.

00:08:54 Chris Bugaj
So, sadly, you presented without me, I presented out without you. But we did get to present together, which is our favorite way to present, and that was. Thank you, Arkansas. Arkansas invited us to the Arkansas Speech and Hearing association invited us to participate in a talking with tech live event where people submitted questions onto a Google form which spread fed into a Google sheet, and then we sort of answered them. But not just us, people in the participating answered them. So there's great collaborative responses to the questions, and we recorded it. So it will eventually come out on the podcast. Months and months and months from now, it's scheduled to come out. We do have it up in Patreon. So if you are, if you can't wait, you could subscribe in Patreon and get access to that content now rather than waiting. But thank you, Arkansas. That was a lot of fun, don't you think?

00:09:50 Rachel Madel
It was so fun, Chris? I've never been to Arkansas, but virtually I've been there, and it was. The talking with tech Live is also such a fun event, because the way we've structured that professional learning is so unique and so powerful. I think that oftentimes in the world of AAC, it can feel like we're in our own silo doing our own thing, questioning whether or not we are doing it right and whether or not the things that we're doing or the ideas that we have make sense. And so I think what's really nice about those events is that, one, we realize that we know more than we think we do. I think that that is often a takeaway, because it's not just you and I, Kris, answering questions, it's really us facilitating a conversation. And, you know, I think that that can be so powerful sometimes. You know, just having people share their ideas makes people realize that, oh, okay, I'm thinking about this the same as others, or, oh, this is a universal struggle. This isn't just a me struggle, and those can just be really powerful again, when you're kind of in your own silo doing your own thing, not having the opportunities to collaborate and connect with other people that are doing the same types of things. And so that's my favorite thing, is that we can kind of bring a group of people together and they can share their experiences, which are really powerful. And we can kind of facilitate a really, really awesome conversation.

00:11:19 Chris Bugaj
For sure. For sure. Now, speaking of awesome conversations, we have had podcasts in the past, and occasionally we invite people to sort of stay after the recording and record a little bonus segment. And then when we have enough of those banked up, we put them out as what's called a small talks episode. And we've had a number of those we are up to. I guess this is episode small talk number eight. This is be the 8th time we've done this. And so let me give you the rundown about what you're about to hear. So these are shorter segments, bonus clips. One from Amy Mayer talking about a specific strategy she uses called question slips. Another one is our friend Judy Schoonover, who I asked her the question, what are your favorite items from the dollar store that you can flip around and use for awesome educational experiences? The next one is, do you remember Remy Morin, that podcast that we did together? Well, we stuck around and we talked to him a little bit about the tv and how turning a tv into a touchscreen works, which was really innovative. We talked to doctor Tiffany Zog, who talked about a particular tool called debriefscape. So without further ado, let's listen to these interviews for our small talks episode. Welcome back to the podcast, Amy Mayer for our small talk episode. So, Amy, what do you got? What's one short little nugget you can share?

00:12:56 Amy Mayer
Well, it is a strategy called question slips.

00:13:00 Chris Bugaj
What's that?

00:13:02 Amy Mayer
I really love it. It's something I think every teacher should know about. But first, I want to make sure it solves a problem you have. Have you ever gone home from work drained from answering questions like this? Can I write in this blue pen, or do I need to use a black pen? Can I write in the top left, or do I need to put my name on the right? Do I put my title in the middle? Or where do I put my title? Can I go to the bathroom? Can I change seats? Can I sit by her? Can I sit by him?

00:13:27 Chris Bugaj
Yes.

00:13:28 Amy Mayer
And at the end of the day, you're like, don't ask me another question. I can't. I can't. Don't ask me what to eat for dinner. I can't even do that. So it's a problem that you have.

00:13:38 Chris Bugaj
For sure. For sure. Especially those questions that don't really matter. The answers don't really matter.

00:13:43 Amy Mayer
None of those questions, I just said matter. Not a single one of them. Do I care about what color pen you use? Do not care. Yes. So I found myself completely overwhelmed by questions as a teacher and by decision making. Like, constant, constant decision making. And it was very fatiguing. It was a huge part of the job that fatigued me. And I went to a conference one time, and this was really. It was probably 25 years ago, and this guy from Canada was there. I don't even know his name. I wish I did, so I could give him credit. He was a speaker at the conference. They had flown all the way to Texas from Canada, and he gave this strategy called question slips. And what a question slip is. And you can google it. You'll find our blog. We have these published, so you can go get a version of it that you can make your own. What a question slip is, is you always have your students working in some sort of teams, even if they're not working together. They have a team, so they're together. So I know these four people are my people I'm working with. And I'm going to give you, as the teacher, I'm going to give you three question slips. So I don't want to give you four, because then you can say, okay, everybody gets one, and you decide your own question. I want to make them agree with each other when they ask a question. And the question slip is just something that you use after open question time is over. So open question happens. Open question time happens every day. I answer questions as the teacher until there are no more questions, and then we get started with the work. Anytime we're working on a project or working on something, there's open question time. I give the instructions. It's open question time. Now it's time to work. And then this gives me the chance to do what you suggested in our podcast, in our original podcast episode, which is more time working with small groups. So then I go into small group time or whatever. I don't want to be constantly interrupted with questions like this. So I'm going to give you question slips, and all you have to do, you can ask a question anytime you want. You just fill out the question slip and hand it to me. Only thing is, everybody on your team or in your group has got to sign off on it. So this is how it goes down. Chris, can you sign this? I gotta go to the bathroom. And Chris says, no, go to the bathroom. Class is over in ten minutes. Just go to the bathroom. Then you don't. You don't have to go to the bathroom right now. And I say, yeah, you're right. I can wait ten more minutes. And now I don't go and ask Miss mayor if I can go to the bathroom, right. If I really, really need to go, I can find a way to say it, but it's not a question.

00:16:10 Chris Bugaj
Yes. I love this idea because it's helping people. Well, first, it's preventing those unnecessary questions and realizing you have more autonomy and authority over your own life. Just choose which pen. The teacher doesn't need to make that choice for you, and you're embracing communication opportunities for the learners themselves to solve the problems themselves. Do you use some sort of technology along with that? Like, use a Google Slides and put your questions on the slide? Is it like that or a piece of paper or any of the above? Anything like that will work, right?

00:16:46 Amy Mayer
You could absolutely do that. I'll tell you. For this case only, I like to use the technology to make the question slip, and then I want it to be a physical piece of paper. And the reason why is because our human psychology is if I have something, I don't want to lose it. So it's loss prevention. And so what I thought would happen when I printed out question slips originally, and I printed hundreds and hundreds of them, and I thought, I will come back to the copy machine and print hundreds and hundreds more. No, I printed them out one time in my teaching career, and I used them literally for years. I probably still have some of them in my cabinets back here somewhere. So I like giving a piece of paper in this case. And what happened was they never used the question slips because there was no question that had not been answered that mattered. There was no team of people who signed off on it. So I rarely, very rarely ever got one back. And when I did, it was something like, you know, I mean, it was like, I mean, I might. I know. Many times I literally said, you don't have to give me the slip for that. That's such a good question. Like, you know, you just keep it. Use it for next time. You know, like, it wasn't ever about the piece of paper, and yet the piece of paper does something in your brain.

00:18:00 Chris Bugaj
For sure. For sure. All right, Amy, that is awesome. What a great strategy. I appreciate your time. Thank you.

00:18:06 Amy Mayer
Thank you.

00:18:16 Chris Bugaj
Welcome back. I'd like to welcome back to the talking with tech podcast, Judy Schoonover. How's it going, Judy?

00:18:22 Judy Schoonover
Oh, it's going very well, Chris, how's it going with you?

00:18:25 Chris Bugaj
Great. Great. Now, I understand that you just got back from the dollar store and you have some different purchases that you made that you might give as recommendations for either educational tools or as functional tools to help anybody with their learning. So what are some of your top purchases at the dollar store?

00:18:43 Judy Schoonover
I love the dollar store. And yes, I did just go to the dollar store. So I'm thinking about what's in my car right now because I hide it from my husband, and I don't bring it in until he's not home because he thinks I have too much stuff. So number one, pool noodles. You can make a hundred different things on pool noodles. And there is a great blog, I think it is the therapro blog, and it's pool noodles as assistive technology. And I use that blog. I use the references from that blog in several of my presentations. And it's got things like, you can even make a whisper phone out of a pool noodle. But I like them for cardholders. I like them for pencil grips. Understood. Has a section on seating, adaptive seating in the classroom, and one of them includes pool noodles for, you can put them around the back of the chair and fasten them with a, those bungee hooks. What are those called?

00:19:43 Chris Bugaj
Yeah, like, sort of things. Or the hooks?

00:19:45 Judy Schoonover
Yeah, yeah, the hooks with the stretchy stuff. You can use them for lumbar support, but you can also put them under the front of the knees to kind of push the hips back. You can also stretch them across the base of the chair, and the student can use them as a foot fidget. So pool noodles are number one. And I could think of a zillion different things to do with pool noodles. The number two thing is, and I don't have the right word for it, but there these little, like, kitchen carpets, I call them, they're about 18 inches by 24 inches, and they're like a thin rug or carpet that you can buy. And they're usually in the, in the household section. And they are velcro sensitive. So the coolest thing is, I was buying stuff for a while. The dollar tree had these little foam cubes that were the same as counting cubes, the wooden ones, but they were foam, so they were really lightweight. And then the dollar tree also has velcro dots that you can buy. So if you don't have access to big, long lengths of Velcro, you can buy the little Velcro dots. They come in like sets of 15 or something like that. So if you put the Velcro dots on those cubes and you fasten those cubes, that carpet, the cubes don't go anywhere. But also with the Velcro, you can build a tower and a student that may have difficulty with motor skills, and the tower might fall unintentionally. The Velcro holds them together so they can have more success in building. But the other nice thing about these carpet things is you can put them in any position, so you can put them up in a vertical plane, you can fasten them to the wall or whatever, and then you can have different things displayed vertically for easier viewing. On a previous podcast, I talked about PVC, and there's a PVC frame that you can make that's adjustable. It tilts, and I stabilize that PVC frame or any of the other PVC creations I make, that I don't want to move on those carpet squares because it holds them at the right angle or at the right distance from the student so that they work the best and don't tell anybody. But you can cut that stuff with a paper cutter at school, but the secretaries would get really mad at you because it dulls the blade after a while. The other thing that I like at the dollar tree is the cheap version of rubbermaid shelf liner, and it works like gripper. And so you can use that. You can use it inside a pool noodle. If you're using the pool noodle as a pencil holder or pencil grip to change the, not change the way that the pencil or the pen or the paintbrush fits in the hole of the pool noodle. But make sure that it allows you to make sure that that pencil doesn't shift. You wrap it with the rubbermaid and stuff it in, and then it's a nice secure grip or hold. Rubbermaid can go under a notebook so that the notebook doesn't slide around. And I hope you're using the notebook as a slant board instead of paying $35 for one. You can get inexpensive notebooks at the dollar tree as well. And if you turn them inside out, they become an easel. And then you stabilize that easel by sticking it on the carpet square or on the rubbermaid stuff. The other thing that the dollar tree has is these little plastic. They look like sheet protectors, but they're of a more durable plastic than sheet protectors. And they've got like a little binding, a little cloth binding, and it's wonderful for use as a dry erase board. It's a full size thing, so you can put things inside that they can trace or they can circle, they can answer a question or whatever, and then you can pull out that sheet so it can be replaced over and over again. The big thing too. My other always buy is cookie sheet is once again, you take that cookie sheet and you can put it on that tilting eye gaze frame, and you can attach anything to that cookie sheet with magnets so that the child might have access to puzzle pieces or to Alphabet letters or whatever else they might want to engage in. They also have these little small metallic boxes that are made out of the same aluminum as cookie sheets that you can have, like a mini task box. I know that a lot of teachers are making these task boxes right now, and these are just little small ones that you can have like one attribute inside. And if you go online, there's a lot of free or for very small amount purchase of ready made text box activities that you can swap out. So you use the same box, but you just swap out the attributes you want them to do with the task and keep those in baggies. What else do I like at? Oh, plastic plates. Plastic plates. If you buy two plastic plates and you put little beads or marbles underneath the top, plastic plates becomes like a lazy susan. You can spin it on the little wheels on the bottom and, oh, press lights. They have inexpensive press lights, and so you can use those if you keep the light on. You can put them in one of the dollar store shoeboxes. Line that shoebox with parchment paper, and you've got a very inexpensive light box. And the other thing that you can do with those push lights is you can have them for different switch activities. You can have a yes or a no or a stop and a go by covering them with that colored paper, and they can push one for start and one for stop. So I got a million of them. Chris, if you came with me to the dollar tree, you would be stunned at all the different things that you can do for free or for very little cost. It's now $1.25, unfortunately, so you have to kick in an extra quarter. But there's a ton of things you can do.

00:25:54 Chris Bugaj
Still, look at everything you just described. $10 or less.

00:25:59 Judy Schoonover
Absolutely, absolutely. And the containers you can turn into all sorts of put in. Oh, even with pool noodles, you can cut them in different lengths, and you can drop the pom poms through them so they can sort by color and then drop them down through the tube. And then you have the little plastic containers underneath that catches them. So you can see if you've sorted the color correctly.

00:26:18 Chris Bugaj
I love it.

00:26:20 Judy Schoonover
I wanted to add one more thing, and it was something that I found recently online while I was looking for ideas on what I could do with things I found at the dollar tree. There's two different things. Number one, we, our teachers website has 117 things that you can do with things purchased from the dollar tree. It's more educational in nature, but it's got a lot of ideas. And, you know, the dollar tree in my neighborhood never is the same. You never. There's so many things that you don't find consistently. Oh, another thing too is the sheet magnifiers, because you can make different things with sheet magnifiers. I forgot to say that. But my main point is that dollar tree also has a website. And you can go to the website and you can order things from dollar tree online, and they have a lot more choices. But what I found when I was exploring things to do with things she found in the dollar tree was a series of videos on YouTube called Dollar Tree hacks. And there is a mom, and I'm not sure if she is a special educator or an OT or a parent, but she has two children that have limb deficiencies. And she takes them to the dollar tree and they buy things. And then she takes them home and she has the kids show how they use them. And the most important part of this is that the kids show how they use them. Like, there was a long handled scrub brush, there was a long handled shoehorn. There was the rubbermaid grip liner on the table to keep dishes from sliding around. She asked the child, do you like this? Does it work for you? And I think that that's probably the most important thing that you can have as a takeaway from what I talked about earlier, is it's got to be for the kids, and you've got to assess the effectiveness and whether it's a good tool by their reaction to it. And these kids had a say in what was provided to them. They had a chance to trial them, and they had a say as to whether they liked them or not. And that's the most important thing that you need to remember. And I will send you that link, Chris, so that you can include it in your transcript.

00:28:36 Chris Bugaj
We will definitely have it in the show notes. Thank you, Judy.

00:28:38 Judy Schoonover
Judy, you're welcome.

00:28:50 Chris Bugaj
So we'd like to welcome back to the podcast Remy Morin. Remy, tell us about some of the innovative stuff you're doing for homeschooling.

00:28:57 Remi Moran
Yes. So in terms of homeschooling, what I did. First, since my kid was really tablet oriented, I bought a frame, an infrared, infrared frame that you can put on the tv. And then what it does, it's USB. You can plug it in the computer, and then you can use your tv as a big 50 inch touchscreen. So that way you can, you can model, you can put YouTube videos. And what I did is I oriented my, my tv vertically, like portrait. So while doing that, well, you can put your video on top and you can have your. Your AaC application at the bottom, and then you can press and, you know, in terms of form factor, well, it's great because it only occupies the down portion of the screen. And then at the top, you have your YouTube video or your interactive book or whatever, so. And it's all in the same tv. And what I did also is I bought a stand for, you know, these, these tv cabinets that are, you know, inside the furniture, and they just get out. They go up and down. So we have that, too. So now the screen can be up or down. So if she has to do something, it's down. And if I have to present something, I put it up and it's automated. It's very fun.

00:30:21 Chris Bugaj
Oh, that's so cool. I mean, schools we have, in our local schools, we have interactive whiteboards, right? Yeah, it's super expensive. You came up with a way to do it that anyone could have one at their home.

00:30:32 Remi Moran
Yeah. So the frame was, I think, $300 or something like that. You need to have the tv also the same size. And you just, you just put it on it. And the infrared is just the beams that go across. And when you put your finger on the screen, then there's an interception. And then it says, okay, you are at that position and it acts as a pointer, like a mouse.

00:30:54 Chris Bugaj
Well, and it's also brilliant to oriented in a portrait view. So you can have the video in the top because it keeps the motor planning the same. Sometimes when you're scrunching an AAC app. Well, now the buttons are in different spots, but if you oriented the way you described it, the buttons are in the same spot. The words are in the same spot.

00:31:13 Remi Moran
That's it. And one great application I'm using is called openboard. And what openboard does, it's an application for if you have a whiteboard, interactive whiteboard, it's exactly the same, but you have it to put on your computer. So on your screen. And then you can do doodles, you can put shapes. So, for example, what I did with my daughter, I had this. I took the icons from the, from the system. So I had all the days of the week, I had all the months and the seasons, and I had a little. It looked like a magnifier. And we were moving it, you know, day per day, say, okay, well, we're that day, and then we move it. So you see the movement and, oh, now we are in, we are in fall, now we're in winter, and, and you just move all this stuff there. So it's very interactive. It's really. And at the same time, we see the icons and we can model them and we can get to that page. Oh, see, it's the same icons. I mean, at some point, you're able to bring something that is very consistent in terms of symbolic representation. And that helps a lot, because then it's. No question, this is June, this is Wednesday. No question. It's exactly the same each time. We see that. We use the same symbology every time.

00:32:34 Judy Schoonover
I.

00:32:35 Rachel Madel
So I'm curious, Remy, if you've ever used the tools, writing wizard or word wizard. I know you've talked a lot about literacy. Ooh, those are good ones. Those are really good ones.

00:32:46 Remi Moran
Look, recorded already.

00:32:48 Rachel Madel
Yes. Actually, you know what? I believe the app developer is French. I'm almost positive, because I had reached out to this app developer years ago and asked if they could do high contrast because I was working on literacy with some of my students and they needed high contrast. And so he was super open to changing it, then followed up, and I was like, can we also have it integrate with a Bluetooth keyboard? Um, so anyway, though, I use the, the app, especially word wizard, they're both by the same company. Um, the app, word wizard, is a game changer for literacy for my students. And I can just envision you having that application, you know, screen. And now I remember life.

00:33:28 Remi Moran
Now I remember. In French. It's La Meg. Yeah, I know that application. My, my oldest, she was that at school.

00:33:35 Rachel Madel
Okay.

00:33:36 Remi Moran
I know that. Yeah.

00:33:37 Amy Mayer
Yes.

00:33:37 Rachel Madel
It's a really, it's really versatile. I work using, like, kids with emergent literacy skills all the way up to more conventional spelling activities. You can customize word lists. I think that that's a huge. It's a big tool that I use with a lot of my clients on literacy.

00:33:54 Remi Moran
Good. Okay. Yeah, yeah, I think I'm taking notes, that's for sure. Excellent.

00:34:00 Chris Bugaj
Awesome stuff. Well, thank you so much for coming back on and sharing about how you're doing the innovative stuff with the touchscreen for home schooling.

00:34:07 Remi Moran
Thanks.

00:34:25 Chris Bugaj
I'd like to welcome back to the podcast. Tiffany Zaug. How's it going, Tiffany?

00:34:30 Tiffanie Zaugg
It's good. How are you?

00:34:31 Chris Bugaj
Great. So this is a small talk segment. So tell us a little bit in a few minutes or less, what's some cool strategy or resource that people need to know about?

00:34:40 Tiffanie Zaugg
So the University of Central Florida has what is called debriefscape. And debriefscape allows you to take video that you have and upload it into the web. And it is not saved in their web space or anything. It's automatically saved in yours. And you can go in and you can tag things. So think about if you need to provide a video feedback to a teacher or to a parent or a student. Right. You can go in and take that video and tag different spots. So the actual reason that they created it is for math and science teachers. And actually they will, the tags will lead you to professional development, but you don't even have to do that if you want to use your own. So you just upload, take, take your little video, upload it into the system and tag it. And then as you play it back, and then it analyzes the data for you, which is amazing.

00:35:42 Chris Bugaj
So it'll tell me more. I'm not sure I'm following. So I take my video, right? Let's say I make this little three minute video about whatever. I take this video, I put it up into the website, and then I can hashtag different parts of it. Or do you mean I can add hyperlinks that take you to a different.

00:35:57 Tiffanie Zaugg
Resource so you can hashtag. So actually, if you reach out to them, they'll actually, and say, can you create these? They will actually create the hyperlinks that will take you out. So UCF is willing to do that. But think about when we had our last conversation about the smart partners and we talked about avoiding asking lots of questions. You could go in and have that video playing of that teacher. You could hyper, not hyperlink, sorry. You could tag those areas and you can tag more than one. You could tag various different things. And then when you're done, you can hit the analyzer button and it'll give you the percentage or the amount of times that that person asked those questions.

00:36:39 Judy Schoonover
Wow.

00:36:40 Tiffanie Zaugg
And it'll be in a, it can be, you can, it'll give you two choices. You can have a bar, bar graph or it'll do it in a pie graph and it's all free.

00:36:51 Chris Bugaj
So I, it will, I could tag all the places where someone is, is using, let's say, self talk, the strategy of self talk, where I'm just describing what I'm doing. And I could watch the video, tag it, tag it, tag it, and it'll analyze all that for me. And now I have data. That's exactly what we're doing when we're coaching AAC users in my neck of the woods. Sorry, not AAC communication partners will focus on, like, different aspects of skills we're trying to build, like self talk or parallel talk, or, like you said, wait time or whatever. Um, we could. And. And we're counting those, but this will help you do it for you. Oh, that's. I haven't seen that before.

00:37:31 Tiffanie Zaugg
So we actually. The. It was actually. It's through a different grant than the grant that I'm on and the grant that I am on. We have to sit and watch the videos and we need a tally. And I'm like, hey, can't we just use our other grant tool? And why are we doing all of this when we have this other tool that's available?

00:37:50 Chris Bugaj
So.

00:37:50 Tiffanie Zaugg
So it works very smoothly.

00:37:53 Chris Bugaj
And give us the name of it one more time.

00:37:56 Tiffanie Zaugg
Brief scape.

00:37:58 Chris Bugaj
Brief scape.

00:37:59 Tiffanie Zaugg
Debrief.

00:38:00 Chris Bugaj
Debrief. Gotcha. Debriefscape. All right, we'll make sure we have it linked in the show notes.

00:38:04 Tiffanie Zaugg
And if you check out, if you go to UCF's website and check out Debriefscape, it'll tell you that the link and get you information, so.

00:38:14 Chris Bugaj
Awesome. Thanks, Tiffany.

00:38:16 Judy Schoonover
Yep.

00:38:16 Tiffanie Zaugg
Thank you.