February 18, 2019
Illustration by Ariel Davis for NPR
I’m a big NPR person. It’s a great resource for listening, and for narrative! This past month I was intrigued by a feature on “EMOTIONAL GRANULARITY”—being able to name or describe your emotions more specifically. The author described an increase in stress in his life being alleviated by his working on “learning more emotion words and emotion concepts from one’s culture.” There was research to support his assertion that this self-identification was of help; according to Kashdan, Barrett, and McKnight (2015), “evidence suggests that interventions designed to improve emotion differentiation can both reduce psychological problems and increase various strands of well-being.” We can reframe this information in the light of what we might usually address as speech-language pathologists and literacy interventionists...
January 28, 2019 1 Comment
First of all, you may wonder, what is telepractice? And, if you are not so interested in the answer, this post will still have some tech-related ideas for you to apply in your “in-person” therapies. To quote ASHA’s resource page on telepractice: “Telepractice is the application of telecommunications technology to the delivery of speech language pathology and audiology professional services at a distance by linking clinician to client or clinician to clinician for assessment, intervention, and/or consultation.” All of the exact same principles and practices of intervention via in-person therapies apply to telepractice, just the method of delivery is different. Telepractice is often conducted via a secure web portal such as Zoom, allowing clinicians and clients on the other side to communicate via microphone and webcam, and using visual and interactive tools to conduct activities (e.g., screensharing, giving the client control of the screen for clicking and dragging)...
November 20, 2018
This past week featured the American Speech-Language Hearing Association’s annual national convention in our home state (and my home city of Boston)! MindWing presented and exhibited at the convention and I was proud to be part of two presentations that incorporated MindWing’s tools with context-setting resources including both technology and picture books. I was thrilled to present another edition of an oral seminar describing the helpful pairing of picture books and apps for contextualized language intervention. As this year’s ASHA theme focused on evolution and innovation within the field of speech-language pathology, this presentation centered around pairings that aligned with social studies and science topics (Boston also is a “Hub” of both disciplines). Some of the background within this presentation centered on why SLPs and literacy interventionists might seek to incorporate social studies and science topics in our work...
October 30, 2018
Following up on last month’s Tech Tuesday post describing some narrative and expository teaching tools within Google’s G-Suite, this month we’ll look at some Google resources to visualize setting (and more)! Google Earth has long been a great tool for language development, as it is a searchable, interactive globe allowing you to zoom into an aerial (3D) image of any location, as well as offering Street View interactive imagery and text descriptions. Google Earth previously existed as a complicated downloadable application but now is available as a web version in the Chrome browser, as well as a simplified free iPad app...
August 21, 2018
Using interactive apps and websites, we can help students deconstruct discourse and see its essential parts. However, technology can also provide a space—a blank slate, so to speak—that we can use to help students use narrative and expository elements and icons to build language through engaging mini-projects using apps for creation. The realm of “digital storytelling” has expanded, and at the same time became more simplified with the arrival of easy-to-use apps. iPad and Android “creation” apps (oft referred to as apps that allow students to “show what they know”) can be used to make picture collages, books, animations or videos that tell a story or give information...
June 26, 2018
Maybe you’ve heard of Minecraft. In the past several years, this gaming universe has become particularly popular with the elementary set, and also has sparked efforts to incorporate its visually engaging and spatially useful interface into educational contexts. This post was sparked by some questions from a reader of this blog who wrote me to inquire whether I use Minecraft in my work and as a language development context, so I thought I might elaborate on that here. Complicated, right? My philosophy on technology integration in speech and language work has always been that tech is a tool to establish context, engagement, foster interaction and provide visual supports. It’s for this reason that complex, extended activities with technology such as Minecraft are not something I gravitate towards, though they are certainly possible if well planned. After all, we tend to have a limited amount of time for intervention with our students, and every minute is important...