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From: Judy
Date: 08 Oct 2009
Time: 21:35:32 -0500
Remote Name: 74.104.112.9
Yirmyaho, I have been thinking about your question all day. What other forms of technology would I like to try with students and why? I'm left reflecting on earlier replies in which I mentioned ethical practice and described how I came to search for visual feedback based on a specific research article and the characteristics of my client. Your suggestions sound very interesting, as long as I had ethical justification for trying them. For this particular client, something visual that held his interest and had some positive effect in the course of one 30-minute session could be something I would pursue. Would a 3D graph help him to see, enjoy and therefore work toward continued improvement? Cool idea. All of the questions so far are making me think hard about how I would generalize what I did with Audacity to other similar situations. I don't think we can choose technology at random. I would hope that even the holistic doctor who gave my neighbor an herbal solution for adult stuttering had some thoughtful process by which he came to such a recommendation. (true story; I did not challenge my neighbor's faith in her doctor. I just gave her the Stuttering Foundation website address.)I would enjoy hearing why you made the suggestions you did because I'm sure you have some valuable observations about stuttering that led to them. And, clearly you know more about high-tech options than I do. I began to wonder what I would wish for and decided it would be a video game with microphone headset and visual feedback for speech characteristics. The video game would consist of many, many social language situations. This would be a 'first person player' game (like a first person shooter game without the shooting!)in which a player had a variety of conversations with a wide range of listeners. The easiest game level would be reading aloud or monologue with a single listener in a quiet environment with minimal distractions. A level-up would take you to conversation with one or two listeners or maybe as an actor in a play with well rehearsed lines in staged interactions. Players would "beat" a level by achieving whatever goals they were working on. With each level up, the player would encounter different kinds of fluency disrupters: an increased number of conversational partners, more complex language, interruptions, listeners of increasing status, use of the phone. And wouldn't it be cool if it was a multi-player game...and could be played with others using an internet connection (allowing only 'friends' of the younger client), like videogames are now!! This is what I see lacking in stuttering therapy: opportunities to practice carryover in some systematic kind of way. I am thinking aloud a bit here... In any case, we need to meet the needs of 'Digital Natives (Born Digital, John Palfrey and Urs Gasser, 2008 Basic Books.)Thank you for your patience with my limited knowledge and thank you for your question. :)