Boardmaker Plus: Now That's a Program!

I don't think I have felt more frustrated or rewarded with any other assistive technology that we used. To say using Boardmaker Plus for the first time was easy would be a huge understatement! Again, I had to keep telling myself to put my feet in the shoes of someone who does not have the same means of expressing themself that I have. That would be real frustration! That always brings me back down a level or two.

The Boardmaker Plus program has awesome potention as a communication device. Through trial and error Marney and I learned the process of creating boards, making them speak and moving from page to page with the simple touch of a switch. We are able to go deeper and deeper into different levels from the front page on our board.

From this page the student can use the switch to move to three more layers under each category. (If I could figure out how I got that first picture to go in I would add the next levels but that is going to have to wait for another day, for alas, my mind is blank once again). Our student can select the "I want" category which will move them to a new board where there are four choices of things she may want. A drink, a nap, something to eat or her favourite show. She can click on one of those to move to another layer. For example if she selects "I want a drink" it will take her to another layer where she call tell what she wants to drink (ie. water, juice, milk or pop). We did not put in another layer for nap and favourite show as we felt that was self explanatory.

We were also very careful with the language choices we made on each of our boards. Our student is an emergent reader so we had to keep the language fairly simple while also considering that she is in grade seven. We had to use phrases that would be more common for older kids but readable by her. We did not want to make her language choices look too young nor too advanced. It was tough but we feel we were fair and considerate. Each section on the board on the front page leads to at least two more levels. We did not go any further than the front page with the home selection on the board. We felt we should consult with home to see what her parents felt they wanted her to be able to express in that section.

So, out of four choices on the front board the student can communicate a total of 64 messages. Pretty impressive for only starting out with four on the front board. We also added an assessment section under the school selection on her board. In this section we put yes/no questions to a topic she is learning about in Social Studies. Putting anything more than yes/no questions would have involved a lot more time and layers so we kept it simple for this time. Marney and I suffered through some learning curves with this one, but we got it done and we are really, really pleased with the final product and our accomplishment.