This morning the Australian AAC Community attending the 2025 AGOSCI Conference was both educated and challenged by the fabulous Jordyn Zimmerman. Jordyn’s speech engaged us, both emotionally and intellectually – and I know that many of us fell more than a little in love with her passion, her intellect and her skills as an orator. We hope to see her again!! If you weren’t lucky enough to be at #AGOSCI2025, I highly recommend watching the film This is Not About Me, which is the story of Jordyn’s life and explains why she is such an amazing advocate for others.
And since I’m already fan-girling about Jordyn, I’m going to share a photo of the two of us from yesterday. Woot woot!!
I was also fortunate to attend some other great sessions today – and to be involved in two presentations.
Firstly, I was very lucky to be able to share the amazing work being done at Bullimbal School in Tamworth, along with the principal, Brett, deputy principal, Emma, and AAC Consultant Helen Tainsh. We had a lot of text on our slides, as we had a lot more to share than could be done in 40 minutes – and we hope that by putting all the things we couldn’t say onto our slides, that the presentation would become a useful handout.
And so, as promised to those attending, I have put the presentation below, with student photos removed.
The second presentation I was involved in was with the amazing Helen Tainsh once again! Helen and I presented on working with emergent communicators. And just to clarify – by emergent communicators we mean students who aren’t yet using symbols to communicate. In the presentation you can see a more detailed definition of an emergent communicator from the Roadmap of Communicative Competence (ROCC).
Once again, as promised, the presentation is below with photos of people who use AAC removed. And, I have put the additional resources that we said we would share, below the presentation.
Additional resources:
- Supporting the Development of Communication Autonomy for People who need AAC: Early Communicators handout
- Fiona Beauchamp from Arbre Therapy is the Occupational Therapist we have both worked with who has been invaluable in teaching us and many others about sensory processing. If you are looking to learn more about this area, we cannot recommend her highly enough!!
- Communicative Functions: Modelling PODD with an emergent communicator handout
- Communicative Functions: Modelling SimPODD with an emergent communicator handout
- Communicative Functions: Modelling Proloquo with an emergent communicator handout
- Revisiting the AAC Prompt Heirarchy handout
- Paying Attention and AAC handout
And I’m really looking forward to Day 3, the final day, of #AGOSCI2025!
