Božica Č., Special Education Teacher

My profession includes working with children with multiple developmental disabilities (intellectual disabilities, autism spectrum disorders, behavioural disorders, speech and language difficulties, hyperactivity…). When working with children, I use various low-tech tools (communication boards, books) and high-tech tools such as tablets and smartphones.

I became familiar with AAC methods during college and through various educations. As part of the program “Building national capacities for the application of assisted communication as a method of early intervention for children aged 0 to 8 with developmental difficulties”, I participated in education on determining intervention goals and selecting assisted communication method.

I use AAC methods with students with complex communication needs who cannot use spoken language and/or have difficulties in understanding language due to various difficulties – children with motor disabilities (cerebral palsy, dystonia syndrome, etc.), multiple disabilities, intellectual disabilities, communication difficulties, autism spectrum disorder, visual impairment, hearing impairment, children with neurodevelopmental risk, and children with language and speech difficulties.

In classes with students, I use the AAC method to show them the schedule of teaching activities. I use ITC-AAC applications in my work with students to facilitate the acquisition of reading techniques, calculation operations…

Assisted communication is a method by which we can easily communicate with the child using only our body or certain objects, photos, icons and symbols.

The advantage of the AAC method: teacher can use it very easy during the work with students with difficulties. With the help of different applications, students learn the teaching material more easily and follow the planned activities.

Using ITC-AAC applications in classes such as Glaskalica, I noticed a relief in mastering phonological awareness, which is one of the basic pre-skills of reading. With the help of the application, students learn to recognise the first, last or all sounds of words more easily. In order to enable gradual learning, the application differentiates the tasks according to the complexity of the words.

I believe that AAC is not sufficiently known to educators in our country, and that their information about the advantages of AAC methods should be improved and they should be encouraged to use them. I often use AAC methods to improve the quality of teaching and make it easier for students to learn the teaching material and facilitate communication.

Exercises related to AAC should be improved so that they can be more easily adapted to different teaching activities, and enable students and teachers to use the mentioned methods more easily.

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A large number of ICT-AAC applications in the Croatian language are available on online application stores.

I would recommend my colleagues to use more free applications for assisted communication in order to make it easier for students to learn the teaching material, and facilitate communication with students with language and speech difficulties and enable them to follow teaching activities more easily.

I would also recommend the use of low-tech tools when working with students. These are all tools that do not need electricity for the user to use them, and most of them are handmade and individually adapted to each user. These are various types of tangible objects (concrete objects, miniature objects or parts of objects), communication boards or books.