Help! Doing a project on autism and Boardmaker. Can you help? Who uses it? Where is it used? Is it successful?

Question

And, any other information would be great!

Answer 1

I teach students with cognitive impairments. I use boardmaker as well as photos in my room for communication and for schedules. Boardmaker is used in many classrooms for students with cognitive disabilities and/or autism. It is very helpful for non-readers. It is successful for many children and can be used as pecs (picture exchange system)...where the child hands you the symbol, or it can be used on an augmentative communication device like Cheaptalk, Dyanvox., etc. It can be used to adapt books so nonreaders can read them (check out News2You), label items in a classroom, create a student specific schedule. It is great because it supports other languages and can be done in a variety of sizes (like REALLY big for students with visual impairments). Many students can be taught to use Boardmaker symbols.....if they are NOT cognitively able to use the symbols, then they may need photos or object representations.

Answer 2

I heard one quote "If you know one child with autism, then you know ONE child with autism."

In otherwords, autism varies widely from one person to the next. Some may have difficulty understanding 2 dimensional images on paper and several may not need images at all. But Boardmaker is very useful in a classroom.

I've used Boardmaker in Autism workshops. Many kids need images to communicate with. And some need consistant images. Such a child will be confused if you use one picture of an apple one day & another picture another day. They can't generalize like that. My niece doesn't have that problem. She uses images to communicate with us, but doen't seem to have a problem understanding us.
When I print images for her, I just pull up images from Yahoo Images.

Every child is different.

Answer 3

If I am correct, Boardmaker is the picture icons used for communication. If this is correct, we use the pics here at home, & my kids' teacher uses them for schedules at school.
At home we use them for basics: drink, eat, outside, etc... It helps them let me know what they need. When they give me the icon, I then say what the icon is example: they give me the eat card, I then say "you want to eat? Are you Hungry?" Then I would get them a snack/meal.
The school uses them as a schedule. The have velcro on them. Each child has a board, on the board they place the pics in whatever order they will be doing their next four things. After they have completed a task, they are told to go check their schedule. They walk to the board take the pic off and go to the area it says. At each area there is an envelope for them to place their pic in. This helps stop a lot of meltdown. The child sees that if they do this, then they get to do this. The first is usually a school task the next is normally a reward task (like a puzzle or computer time).

Answer 4

I use two Mayer-Johnson products Boardmaker and Writing with Symbols with ASL sign language which provides a bank of signs. I use it with Deaf/Hard of Hearing students both with and without sign support. I have modified all my spelling lessons grades 1-8 so there are symbols for all vocab words. I have even used with MIMR deaf and never had any problem with the symbols although most of the time I have to go in and modify or add to the symbol. Sometimes the symbols I choose are pretty far fetched because there just aren'tthe right word....but the kids laugh and seem to remember.It is easier to do that on Boardmaker than WWS but WWS allows you to type out a story and faster to go back into to modify. WWS can make grids for voice out put devices but I never use them, just the computer. WWS will "read" what you type also.
Oh, we color code nouns verbs etc by pouring a color back into the background. Helps kids using grids but for my kids, helps them put into English word order.