"Sara is a grade 7 student who accesses the computer through indirect selection to an onscreen keyboard through single switch scanning with her elbow as control site and appropriate mounting system (you will learn these terms Thursday;). She is non verbal but is able to communicate through her onscreen AAC scanning program Boardmaker Plus. She enjoys participating in all classes with her peers. Sara is on an IPP for all subjects. She is a dependent wheelchair user. She is consistent and accurate when using her switch at the appropriate rates and settings. Sara presents with emergent literacy skills, global delays and good receptive language."

Individual cells were planned with care, either inserting symbols using the symbol finder feature, or by inserting a jpeg image with accompanying text. Then cells on one board had to be logically linked to subsequent cells, and in consideration of consistency and ease of use. Speech was also added to augment text with the goal of Sara moving forward in her IPP communications goal of reading with more independence, and so growing her immergent reader skills, too. The navigation buttons at the bottom of each screen had to planned with significant care so that buttons were programmed appropriately for each different page in the book. There were SO many details to think of, programme, check, recheck!
The detailed planning needed to functionalize the communication boards was a wonderful exercise in task analysis, and content planning. We were careful to select images and text that matched the true story of Longfellow's Evangeline poem (summary here, or full poem here). We also carefully selected images to match the Grand Pre national historic site, located closeby Wolfville, since a field trip to the site would be planned with the full class.


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