Testimonials

“First let me say a heartfelt thank you for paying to send us to the #talkingAAC conference as well as all the many gifts your organization has bestowed upon us at DPSCD. They are very much appreciated and well used. The #talkingAAC conference is probably one of the best conferences around in the mid-west for AAC. They bring in well known- well-researched presenters who always share what the most current best practices are. Every drop of information whether I already know it or not is valuable. When someone presents information, I already know, I'm validated that I am currently still using the best practice. When they present something, I don't know, it gives me an opportunity to grow and create better therapy, better therapy services, and support all my students with the most current knowledge.  I graduated with my masters in speech and language pathology about 17 years ago...AAC was a tool that was only used for people who had language and lost it, it was not even discussed for children or people who were developing language. It was literally a 20-minute conversation. When you graduate and you leave college you are responsible for your own continuing education credits, and you work in a vacuum where what you know is what is in your bubble. When you search for continuing education, you pick topics that reflect your caseload. Makes sense right, but we are like general practitioners, especially in the school system and there are sooo many areas that we cover (Swallowing, fluency, articulation, pragmatics, language, etc). You can go your whole career and never even work with one student who might need an AAC device, and your best practice information is sorely behind, so much so that if you run into a student who needs it you might not even know it. Time to research best practice for every single student on your caseload ( 60 students or more) is very limited and CEU's can get very expensive very fast. All of this is to say without support from the district or organizations like yourself we must work twice as hard to keep up with best practices and we and our students truly appreciate your providing this opportunity for us. When you provide this knowledge it not only impacts the students and families, we work with but the teachers, the staff, our colleagues who call us for our current knowledge. AAC has evolved significantly in the last ten years, and it continues to evolve at a very rapid pace right now, changes are made almost every day as people explore all its possible applications. Personally, I will say the absolute best part of the conference was Linda Burkhart and partner assisted scanning, there is not enough discussion on this topic and for those students with severe complex needs. I hope that was what you were looking for, if you need anything else, please feel free to contact me. There aren't enough ways to express how important your organization is. The world is a crazy place and having families who are out there sharing this with the world makes the most impact and the more society sees how this affects lives the more accepting and willing they are to integrate it into society. We all know that the more it's accepted the more our kids and students are accepted and the more doors that will open for them.”