The Byte Size Lunch Series: Assistive Technology for Executive Function

Summary

The Byte Size Lunch Series featured an engaging discussion on utilizing assistive technology to aid executive functioning skills, key for organizing, planning, and strategizing in everyday life. Presented by Mike Morata and Naomi Leibowitz from the Richard West Assistive Technology Advocacy Center, the webinar highlighted practical technology tools and strategies useful for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Participants were encouraged to use existing device features before exploring new options and shared real-life applications in an active chat discussion. The session outlined various high-tech and low-tech resources available to the New Jersey community, emphasizing trial and error in finding the right tools.

Highlights

• Mike Morata and Naomi Leibowitz shared insights on assistive technology for executive functioning. 🤖
• Participants actively exchanged tips and personal strategies in the chat. 💬
• Attendees were guided on using in-built device features before looking at new applications. 📲
• Trial and error was emphasized as a necessary approach to finding effective tech solutions. 🔄
• The webinar detailed resources like device lending and funding programs available in New Jersey. 🏢
• Real-life uses of tech ranging from sticky notes to sophisticated apps were explored. ✨

Key Takeaways

• Harness existing tech features on your devices before purchasing new apps. 📱
• Assistive technology can boost executive functioning like planning and time management. ⏰
• Sharing and learning from peers enhances the discovery of useful technology tools. 👫
• Lending programs allow users to try tech before investing cost-wise. 💸
• Voice recordings and reminders can significantly help task initiation and completion. 🎙️

Overview

The Byte Size Lunch Series introduced insightful perspectives on assistive technology for executive function, led by experts Mike Morata and Naomi Leibowitz. This session explored the ways technology can support organizing, planning, and strategizing, essential skills in the daily lives of individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

Attendees were encouraged to first maximize the use of existing features on their devices, like calendars and reminders, before opting for additional applications. The use of such tools was illustrated with practical examples shared by participants, fostering a community of exchange where experiences and tips spread knowledge.

Morata and Leibowitz also highlighted available support resources in New Jersey, such as device lending programs and funding for technology acquisition, critical for many families navigating these needs. The session underscored a trial-and-error approach, important for tailoring the right technology solutions to individual preferences and situations.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 01:30: Introduction to the Byte Size Lunch Series The chapter introduces the Byte Size Lunch Series, a program focused on making assistive technology work for users. This series is a collaboration with the Richard West Assistive Technology Advocacy Center at Disability Rights New Jersey, facilitated by the Community Living Education Project.
• 01:30 - 03:00: Today's Presenters This chapter introduces the 'Today's Presenters' session, focusing on the CLEP program at Rutgers School of Public Health. The program is dedicated to providing mentorship, guidance, and education regarding community living resources for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities in New Jersey. The CLEP team, many of whom are family members of those with disabilities, act as intermediaries to help these families explore residential options. The session also introduces today's webinar, 'Assistive Technology for Executive Functioning.'
• 03:00 - 22:00: Assistive Technology for Executive Function The chapter titled 'Assistive Technology for Executive Function' begins with an introduction by Mike Morata and Naomi Leibowitz. They explain how attendees can participate in the learning series using the Q&A option on the screen. Attendees are encouraged to keep their questions general. To interact with other attendees or provide resources, attendees can use the chat feature available on Zoom.
• 22:00 - 30:00: Richard West Assistive Technology Advocacy Center Services This chapter focuses on the 'Richard West Assistive Technology Advocacy Center Services'. The discussion is led by presenters Mike and Naomi, who express their enthusiasm about returning for the third session of the series. The main topic highlighted for this session is assistive technology for executive function, which Mike describes as an interesting topic. He emphasizes the engagement and interaction with people on a monthly basis throughout these sessions.
• 30:00 - 45:00: Funding Opportunities and Upcoming Programs The chapter delves into the universal need for assistive technology, emphasizing its importance across various abilities, situations, and environments. It highlights how everyone utilizes a range of technical and low-tech supports in daily life to navigate and manage various tasks.
• 45:00 - 51:00: Executive Function and Assistive Technology Overview The chapter discusses the concept of executive function, particularly in the context of using assistive technology to better manage tasks and responsibilities. It begins with a brief introduction on managing oneself and other aspects of one's life, followed by an interactive session. Participants are encouraged to engage through chat or by turning on their microphones to ask questions and participate in discussions. The aim is to provide a bite-sized understanding of how assistive technology can aid in enhancing executive function.
• 51:00 - 61:00: Built-in and External Assistive Tools The chapter titled "Built-in and External Assistive Tools" discusses accommodating different needs during an event or presentation. The transcript excerpts reveal that the hosts are offering to facilitate live commenting through a microphone for those who wish to share thoughts. Attendees can request to make a live comment by indicating their desire in the chat or Q&A sections. The chapter portrays a commitment to accessibility by indicating flexibility in the presentation format to enable more interactive participation.
• 61:00 - 70:00: LiveScribe Pen and Audio Note App The chapter discusses an introductory presentation prepared by the speakers, Naomi and the narrator, for a webinar involving the LiveScribe Pen and Audio Note App. The slides are described as broad and somewhat basic, intended to lead into a deeper conversation later in the session. They plan to speak for 15-20 minutes before opening the floor for broader discussion. Despite the slides being simple, the narrator assures there are valuable resources included. Participants are encouraged to access the slides through a displayed code or a direct link shared by Naomi.
• 70:00 - 84:00: Questions and Answers In this chapter titled "Questions and Answers," the importance of the chat box in facilitating discussions is emphasized. Naomi is highlighted as being particularly skilled in managing the chat box, making relevant information readily available when needed. The usability and interactive nature of the chat box are appreciated by participants, who actively engage through chat and other interactive means such as a question and answer box.
• 84:00 - 90:00: Closing Remarks In the closing remarks, the speakers invite participants to engage in a conversation and clarify that they are open to discussions as long as they remain focused. They introduce themselves, mentioning that they are part of the Richard West Assistive Technology Advocacy Center at Disability Rights New Jersey. The Director, together with the AT specialist Naomi, provide their social media information for further engagement and emphasize their role in sharing information about assistive technology.

The Byte Size Lunch Series: Assistive Technology for Executive Function Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 welcome to the community living education projects bite size lunch series making assistive technology work for you these sessions are being offered in partnership with the richard west assistive technology advocacy center at disability rights new jersey the community living education project
• 00:30 - 01:00 also known as clep is a program through the rutgers school of public health club is committed to providing individual guidance mentoring and education regarding community living resources for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities living in the state of new jersey the club team many of us who are family members ourselves can serve as a bridge for families whose loved ones may be seeking residential options outside of the family's home today's webinar assistive technology for executive functioning is being presented
• 01:00 - 01:30 by mike morata and naomi leibowitz before we get started let's quickly go over how you can participate in today's learning series to interact with the hosts and presenters please use a q a option on your screen for consideration to all of our attendees we encourage you to keep your questions as general as possible to interact with other attendees or to provide a suggestion or resource during today's session please use a chat feature found on your zoom screen
• 01:30 - 02:00 at this time i would like to welcome today's presenters mike and naomi welcome thanks melanie hey everybody good to be back with you this is our third session and i'm getting really nicely into the flow of this this is fun to connect with people once a month uh today's discussion as melanie said was uh going to be about well is going to be about not was but is assistive technology for executive function such an interesting topic i i think
• 02:00 - 02:30 out of the topics that we talk about this is such an interesting one just in general about assistive technology because it's that idea of of an area of support that all of us need regardless of ability regardless of situation regardless of the environment we find ourselves in we all do these things all day long we provide ourselves with supports both tech supports and low-tech solutions to help us manage
• 02:30 - 03:00 i'm just going to say manage i was going to say manage ourselves but i'm because i manage just manage everything um so we'll talk about that a little bit today and as we do with with these uh bite size sessions um a little discussion first from us to you and then we'll open it up questions uh you can put things in the chat we can have conversations uh if you want to turn your mic on i bet we have a way that melanie can turn your mic on if we want
• 03:00 - 03:30 that if someone needs to um use the microphone to share theirs right melanie yeah sure if someone just types in the chat section or the q a that they would like to have offer a live comment we'll make sure to uh make that work perfect thank you yeah i didn't want to offer you everybody something that we weren't going to give you but i thought we could so we'll do it that way we'll see what happens and you know these are our plan usually is to be about 45 minutes ish i love this idea of an
• 03:30 - 04:00 ish with this i know that the slides that we've pulled together naomi and i um are very broad and just kind of introductory and then we thought we would go into some deeper conversation uh so maybe about 15 minutes from us 20 minutes from us and then we'll flip over to everybody else that's kind of how these uh these uh webinars roll if you would like the slides boy now that i sold them as not having a whole lot in them but they are good they're they're really good there's some nice resources there uh you can scan the code that's on the screen you can click the link that naomi just
• 04:00 - 04:30 dropped into the chat box uh you will soon soon learn naomi is the whiz of the chat box it's like i just say something and imagine it shows up there which is awesome so thank you to naomi but we'll keep this going it's good to see everybody using the the chat box already so the slides are there you'll be able to see them and click into some of the resources that are there as well as we mentioned you're welcome to join in any way you would like you can join in the chat you can join in the question and answer box you can
• 04:30 - 05:00 request to have your mic turned on we are game for just about anything and i say just about to keep everybody's expectations tempered there let's not completely go off but let's have a great conversation about this so there we are as melanie said we are from the richard west assistive technology advocacy center we're at disability rights new jersey uh myself in naomi i'm the director naomi is our at specialist there's all our socials that you can follow us on we share tons of information about assistive
• 05:00 - 05:30 technology you can email us feel free we'd love to chat with you about anything and everything related to technology we do have a website which houses i'm going to say it tons of information at4nj.org you can go there and learn about webinars that we have coming up conferences other resource links for services around new jersey we we are at the atac uh federally funded
• 05:30 - 06:00 to be the resource for new jersey related to assistive technology so we have a couple core services that we do we provide device demonstrations so if you think you need technology but you're not quite sure what you need technology changes and we can't know everything about it you can reach out and myself or naomi can do an assistivetech demo for you we can do that in person we can do that virtually whatever whatever works for you and that's designed to identify your need and then show you
• 06:00 - 06:30 some examples of technology that might work for you to help you solve that issue that you're having whatever it might be we also have a loan program where if you know a piece of technology that you think might work for you you can borrow it from our lending center for three weeks at a time to try it no cost to you we will ship the device to you we will give you the information to ship it back to us for free for free on your end you you have no cost for that but it's a really nice opportunity
• 06:30 - 07:00 to get a chance to try something and and the way i always like to announce this to people is play with things like it looks cool it seems like it might work i think this is going to help me but i don't want to spend the money on things some things are expensive others not so much but still you don't want to waste money on things that are not right for you also with that you can borrow equipment try it for a couple weeks see if it's going to work and then help you make a decision as to whether that's going to be the right path for you with tech and then finally
• 07:00 - 07:30 we have device reuse we partner with goodwill home medical which is down in camden county and they collect equipment from the community refurbish it fix it clean it sterilize it to all that and then they put it back out into the community for a small fee so you can pick up some equipment you might need for a very low cost for you a couple more things then we'll jump into our topic and we were just telling melanie before we started we are very excited because uh we have partnered
• 07:30 - 08:00 with uh the new jersey council on development of disabilities to provide funding for individuals in the community who are looking for technology tools so as long as you're looking for a tool that helps in one of these three areas advocacy engagement health and wellness and then education and socialization uh there is money available it's not an endless stream of money but there is money available where
• 08:00 - 08:30 we can work with you to help you figure out what you might need and then provide funding for a tablet or a computer and so that is a really exciting program we are just announcing it today in this webinar all the information is on our website um as we go through i'm seeing a thing in the chat sorry um for students who visually paired should they request a laptop so the question was for a student who's visually impaired should they request a laptop with jaws from cbvi or atac
• 08:30 - 09:00 this money is earmarked for individuals that are served by ddd so if the individual is um ddd eligible and signed up then they can do that um the program does not cover ketty to answer your question that the um in from the program does not cover the purchase of software or any other tools you might need it is strictly that hardware purchase is to help someone with the purchase of a tablet or a computer
• 09:00 - 09:30 so in the comment that you mentioned in your chat getty i would say you would probably still go to cbvi for that so hopefully that helps you can reach out to us you can see it scan the link on the page scan the qr code you can go to the link whatever works for you there is a application form that gets filled out and one of us myself for naomi will reach back out to you to have a conversation about how we can help you move through that so that is really exciting um this program does go
• 09:30 - 10:00 only from now until the end of our fiscal year which is at the end of september so there's a small window for money and there's like i said not an endless stream of money but there is a a sizable um pot of money we can pull from for this so please share this with individuals who might be eligible yeah naomi points out the deadline is september 15th that gives us a chance to process everything excellent all right so we'll have that information up you guys
• 10:00 - 10:30 can check that out we also have a couple more workshops that are coming and another code to scan sorry if you're using your phone you're now opening multiple pages but we want to let you know um that we have our statewide conferences coming up at the end of september we're finalizing that date now so we should be able to announce that soon and then we're also providing a two-day training class on pod which is the pragmatic organization of dynamic display for aac users that
• 10:30 - 11:00 scan will get you to our website which has information about that and a form that you can go to to be on the list to get information when those dates are officially announced all right finally and then we'll move on to our topic i know this is always just a lot in the beginning uh if you're enjoying this please sign up for the other ones these are our monthly events that are coming up so we'll go once a month all the way through the end of the year you see some of the topics there
• 11:00 - 11:30 the link that you use to sign up for this webinar i'm pretty sure signs you up for the other ones too so you can look for those as well our next one is in august and we'll talk about creating accessible materials as we get ready for the school year to kick off we'll have that conversation so there's some of our topics coming up all right let's jump into executive function we will give you an official definition of executive function um but this is a great one um to make it very practical for us so
• 11:30 - 12:00 what is executive function it's it's like the orchestra it's like think of an orchestra the conductor guiding the orchestra together to create this beautiful music right so it's these these separate pieces somehow brought together to accomplish a task executive function impacts almost everything we do throughout the day and so when we think about this
• 12:00 - 12:30 and how we can use technology to meet our needs for this here's the official definition that we use quite a bit a set of mental processes that helps connect past experience to present action so making that connection but here on the right side of this slide is the piece that gives us that sense of how this area of executive function impacts everything so you think about executive
• 12:30 - 13:00 function we use that to perform activities such as planning organizing strategizing paying attention to and remembering details managing time and space when you talk about an area that touches virtually everything we do throughout the day this is the area now that could be very scary to think about because this impacts everything but really a lot of this is
• 13:00 - 13:30 a strat are the strategies that we use all day long to perform our tasks look at all of us that are here now all of us here had some strategy to get here at noon whatever your strategy was maybe you put it in your calendar maybe you wrote it on a post-it note and stuck it to your computer uh you could do any number of things that would remind you maybe you told your alexa to to remind you at 12 o'clock for
• 13:30 - 14:00 the webinar whatever it might be we all had a strategy that got us there one strategy is not better than another one tool is not better than another it's just the way that we figured out what works best for us and what's interesting about technology in this area we think about assistive technology supports and we'll show you some examples and then as we go through i'm sure people will throw in their um strategies and tools they use as well when we think about um the types of
• 14:00 - 14:30 tools we can use for executive function support this is really quite a tricky area to help people with because you think about this idea the system i use works for me the system naomi uses works for her my system might not work for naomi i'm pretty sure it won't um i i don't know that i would wish my system on anyone the way i manage it but it works for me
• 14:30 - 15:00 and so i think the trick here is when we start to look at tools and supports for individuals sometimes we find in this area of executive function it becomes very hit or miss we try things it doesn't work we refocus and try something else we see if that works and so it's a lot of trial and error a lot of times what we find when we're talking to individuals about supports we give scenarios like
• 15:00 - 15:30 hey what do you think about this as a tool to use do you use your calendar in your phone how do you use your calendar do you use post-it notes i'm laughing because i posted notes all over my desk right now but this idea of what are the systems that you put together that work for you and some will work for others some might not but we might be able to modify it as we go forward and so as we think about
• 15:30 - 16:00 the things we use it's a perfect example and if you were here for our built-in accessibility session that's how we started that one with start what you start where you are and use what you have what do you have that meets your needs what can you do with the things you already have in that moment in time where you are and then we grow from there and so what i will put up on the screen and
• 16:00 - 16:30 some of these icons might be a little older but i think you're going to get the idea of this these are if you have an iphone these are the apps that come with your phone there's a whole array of them over here from the calendar to the contacts to notes to the camera to your books and the task list all of these different apps that come with your device how do you use these to help you in this area of executive
• 16:30 - 17:00 function think about that [Music] second part of the definition uh planning organizing strategizing paying attention to and remembering details managing time and space okay those are the areas that we're talking about the executive function what do you use out of these apps and how do you use it share it in the chat and we'll and we'll talk about some of these
• 17:00 - 17:30 i'm almost afraid to say any of mine because i don't want to steal someone's thunder as they they're all excited to share their ideas so i'll give you 15 seconds to add those on your own and then i'll start jumping in don't mind the dog okay here we go here's some of them so the maps travel time and guides of places i've been favorites for quick
• 17:30 - 18:00 directions awesome teresa awesome very good the timers tracy write the timers i mean it's it's not just the clock app it's those timers that are in it whether you set alarms use it for timers any of those things that you can use to help organize yourself naomi throws out calendar of course how do you use the calendar the calendar slash notifications that come from it using those and thinking about how that helps
• 18:00 - 18:30 elevate a tool that without some of those additional features the calendar is pretty static in a sense but if you start adding other features into it like using notifications and and doing those kinds of things suddenly you you've made a tool much more effective for you maps to determine how long it will take to get somewhere um yeah and to know when you should leave to get somewhere the tasks app and giving yourself notes jen says the notes
• 18:30 - 19:00 the notes app to keep track of the grocery list the schedule and the reminders always using the compass for directions awesome this idea of using the supports you have so funny and maria i started using the compass on my apple watch for that reason it just to kind of get a sense of which direction i'm supposed to be going cheryl says i put my to-do list on my calendar and delete when i'm done cheryl you win the day that is how i do things
• 19:00 - 19:30 also so maybe my system is not as strange as i think it is cheryl and i are exactly the same that's exactly how i do it instead of using a different app i simply plop these things into my calendar yes plop is the technical word i just plop them in there and then as i do them i delete them and it's incredibly satisfying it's great nicolette uses the reminders perfect notes in safari the settings the app store heather says the calendar the notes and the reminders
• 19:30 - 20:00 but using the camera taking pictures of slides to remember things how many of us could go back through our photo gallery right now and find pictures of where our car might be parked the entrance to a building the wi-fi code when i travel i take a picture of the front of my room so i remember the room number in case i lose my key all of these things right the camera and then you go through and clean them out every once in a while the contact list
• 20:00 - 20:30 um awesome talk to alexa to add things to a grocery list these are awesome right these look at this list we have i still have 20 messages i haven't looked at yet that is the perfect example of using what you have i didn't ask any of you what extra apps you have on your device right now these are the things that are already there and so when we start in this area our first step always is how are you using the things you have
• 20:30 - 21:00 how could those be used better to support you and start having some of these conversations with people let me see if i can see any different ones location-based reminders camera maps the reminder's awesome these are great all of those are perfect examples of ways we can use things now could we go buy a calendar app sure we could there's probably hundreds of them if not thousands you could buy an app but why
• 21:00 - 21:30 not start with the calendar you have and use it until you can't use it anymore and what i mean by that is you think about the tools we have and the minute you open up an app on your phone or your tablet or even on your computer the minute you open up an app and say oh i love this app i wish it did and then you say something else what you're saying is that app no longer meets your need you need some kind of additional feature
• 21:30 - 22:00 in order to be successful with that tool and that's the time we go looking for something you know we use the calendar as an example the calendar great tool we've already talked about it it's awesome you can add different things in there you can put to-do lists in their assignment um assignments meetings all of this stuff can be put in there but you think about a calendar calendar is still
• 22:00 - 22:30 text based if i struggle with text perhaps visually struggle with it or reading is difficult for me to have a lot of text in a calendar might not be a solution for me but what about another calendar or another tool that allows me to put audio in there or video clips and things like that so that i suddenly have a little bit more of multimedia support for the assignments i need to do
• 22:30 - 23:00 so one of the one of those uh apps i love for that is called visual schedule planner and wait a second i can probably show it to you i'm going to flip to another slide deck don't get thrown off by this but i want to show you the picture there you go i had this one open too just in case um because i wanted to as things came up i wanted to remind myself we talk about calendars we all know a standard calendar right so if we think about our standard calendar
• 23:00 - 23:30 it looks like that well that's mine actually that's and that's an example of color coding and putting things in in lists and all of these reminders that cheryl and i do in our calendars but if you're not great with text that picture on the bottom of my phone is a scary thing for you but what about some of these the picture on the top left is the visual schedule planner and you'll notice right away it's chunked into three pieces
• 23:30 - 24:00 morning afternoon evening each of the events in there has its own section and there's picture support there's text and then you'll notice on those in those columns look at some of those other icons that are there on the morning part it says get dressed there's a picture of a person getting dressed but then there's also a clipboard with a check mark on it you could click that checkboard
• 24:00 - 24:30 and it will give you the steps of that process so if i don't remember so the second activity in the morning is feed the dog i don't remember where the food is and how to put it in the bowl and all this other great stuff i can click on that checklist and go through all of the steps the other thing you can do in that is if i need to remember what to do and perhaps i need to see it before i do it look in the middle there in the afternoon part
• 24:30 - 25:00 the second item there says bus to home and then there's a little picture of a film reel there if i click that film reel it plays me a video of where i would go to get the bus home so before three o'clock perhaps i get a little anxious like oh where's the bus how do i get there what do i have to do i can watch that little video clip to show me how i would get to the bus and suddenly that anxiety reduces a little because i've gotten that additional support
• 25:00 - 25:30 that's a powerful feature that you can't do in a regular calendar but you can do in that calendar so we start looking at some of these different strategies and tools to use that becomes really powerful the piece on the right is a reminder app called ada aida it's like most reminder apps uh where you can set a time in a day all of that stuff so it will give you the reminder but one of the things couple things that
• 25:30 - 26:00 are different there first your reminders can have pictures attached to them either icons that are in the in the app or your own pictures you can drop in there so your reminder also has a picture flash up with it and then the one other thing you can do is you can record audio and attach them to your reminders so if i can't read it i can click that button it will play audio
• 26:00 - 26:30 and so really interesting way to kind of build on the support that's given in a standard reminder app and priscilla asked is that in the apple store yes it is called ada reminder i'll put it in the chat so you can see it up wait a second i probably shouldn't just randomly click on my screen sorry about that there you go and the other one was called the visual
• 26:30 - 27:00 schedule planner um that visual schedule planner the one on the top left is a bit more expensive that's about 15 give or take um because i'm not totally sure of how much it costs but it's around there the reminder app on the bottom i think is two dollars might be a dollar but i think it's two and again that's why i say you think about these strategies of using the tools we have already until you can't now in the bigger scheme of things buying an app
• 27:00 - 27:30 for a dollar that we don't end up using not a huge deal probably buy 10 of those apps and suddenly it's a little bigger deal um and so those become tricky so diane i see you saying you don't have apple um so you're in an android situation i believe the ada reminder app is also an android app diane don't hold me to that but i'm pretty sure it is um the visual schedule planner app unfortunately diane is just on the apple
• 27:30 - 28:00 products at this point so those become part of our conversations of what is it i need do i need to explore perhaps looking at a different platform because while we're seeing a lot of tools that crossover platforms it's available for apple it's available for android there are still some tools that are unique and only live on one platform and those become those moments where we have to have a conversation about
• 28:00 - 28:30 is that something that's worth changing the technology i use or can i find similar apps that do certain features but maybe not as embedded all in the same product um and so you know a lot of times we look at you know there's one app like that visual schedule planner does all of those things calendar videos checklist if that doesn't exist in android can i find an android app that does the
• 28:30 - 29:00 checklists and the video reminders and can i somehow navigate using one or two separate apps to do that maybe i can maybe i can't that's part of the conversation that we have when we look at these tools and their ability to be flexible enough to support us i think i think that's a really important thing we don't change the way we this is who i am and this is what i need now i need to
• 29:00 - 29:30 find tools that are flexible enough to support me not the other way around like oh i have this thing and i'm gonna change the way i do things in order to use it um not always the greatest way to do things it i always feel it's a lot better to find those tools that are flexible enough that they can support me we jump from the things that are built in to our devices to this screen which literally is an explosion of tech right now it is a little of everything
• 29:30 - 30:00 and it's about strategies and tools you can use and some of them are as low-tech as a pad of post-it notes one of my all-time favorites interesting in that and maybe you had the same experiences prior to the pandemic i would have been all digital for things and i would you would have asked me how i managed tasks and and calendars and to-do lists it was all digital in fact it was all in google keep which is
• 30:00 - 30:30 listed there on the screen which is a tool that works on any device any platform and helps you organize yourself but what i found was as the pandemic rolled on i rarely left my desk and so i went back to my old standby of post-it notes everywhere and here they i mean i could pick up roughly 25 notes right now off my desk but what's interesting is now that we're shifting back again
• 30:30 - 31:00 to this ability to go out and about which is awesome i have to change that again and find a way to bring that back to some kind of digital tool that follows with me and so when we start thinking about tools what is it you're looking for always start with what is it you need and then what are the tools out there that can support you the app and the checklist oh if you if you're asking kathleen asks what is the name of the app shown on the
• 31:00 - 31:30 slide with the checklist which is this um that says morning school routine this is an app it's a visual schedule app the one i showed you on the previous slide sherry is absolutely correct this is called visual schedule planner so this does the calendar with the checklist if you're looking at this one on the slide right now which has got the brown kind of wood panel background that is called the first then app which is the same company good karma
• 31:30 - 32:00 and in fact if you were to use the visual schedule planner here i am sorry i'm flipping back and forth but over here on the top left the visual schedule planner when you click on the checklist app it is actually the first then app i'm going to pause because i know my son's going to come in the dog's going to bark he barely bought he barely barked uh i
• 32:00 - 32:30 was trying to plan that out i saw him coming up the lawn so that first then app allows you to put in steps of a task pictures text audio so you can also embed audio there so people can listen to it and then as as you all pointed out as a checklist when that item is done i can click the box and check it off as finished as i keep moving through things so suddenly my steps
• 32:30 - 33:00 of my process i know where i am in that morning school routine i can look at it quickly i get a visual of things that are done things that still need to be done so thinking about that there's a timer app there again is it different from the timer that we use in our uh clock app no yes but no it's different in that it's visually presenting information a different way so do i need that visual display to
• 33:00 - 33:30 support me as i go forward or can i use a straightforward to count countdown um so really those become part of the um the aspects the features of a tool that we find we need in order to be helpful you see there's notes at the top which is just a strategy of of using basically electronic post-it notes on the top right in the center i mean in the top center of the screen we have a couple different ways that you
• 33:30 - 34:00 could manage reminders and note takers and things like that one is a digital recorder you have a digital recorder on your phone you could do that i mean if you just want to do voice recordings um you could do that as well uh and so thinking about as we go forward laura so that that's a great point so in the top left is post-it notes um in the on the top in the middle is a sony digital recorder and the device next to it is
• 34:00 - 34:30 a livescribe pen the livescribe pen if you're not familiar um is a system a little high-tech but it's composed of two pieces the notebook which is a special notebook because it's got um dotted paper and then there are controls on the bottom the pen works like a regular pen but it also has an electronic voice recorder built into it that when you
• 34:30 - 35:00 pair the pen with the notebook you can use that as a note taking system in that i can record audio that's happening in the environment at that moment and so what you see is if i'm taking notes in a meeting and maybe we've been there or you're at an appointment and you're taking notes um perhaps you've been in this situation you write notes on a piece of paper if you're a handwriting note person you write notes on a piece of paper meeting
• 35:00 - 35:30 ends you fold that notebook up and then you look at it in two days two days come and you say i have no idea why i wrote that note i have no idea what i meant when i wrote that note maybe that happens to you happens to me a lot because i write poor notes and so what happens is as you're writing the notes if you push the record button that's on the page it turns on the audio recorder
• 35:30 - 36:00 and so as you hand write your notes the pen is recording everything that's happening in the environment now when you're done you push the stop button that's on the pad the pen stops recording now any time you go back to those handwritten notes if you look at something you wrote and you're not sure why if you tap the pen to your handwritten note it will play you the audio of the moment in time that you
• 36:00 - 36:30 wrote that so think about this idea it's basically giving you an indexed audio recording to your handwritten notes and that is incredibly powerful for people who take bad notes uh people who perhaps writing is difficult but they can identify the important piece of something they're hearing they could simply make a mark on a page and then you could use that to go back and listen to it it's a really powerful
• 36:30 - 37:00 tool that allows you to go back in time to when you write things so diane asks i'm thinking diane you're talking about the livescribe pen when you say how do you try this these are tools we have in our lending center that people can borrow so if that's something that you feel might be helpful for you we could set that up through a visit i'm going to write it in the chat and our our lending center is at the
• 37:00 - 37:30 assistive technology center which is advancing opportunities here comes the link in the chat and you can search on their website for the lending center and you could borrow that device try it out one thing that i will warn people about the livescribe pen it's a great tool but it is a two piece system if you have only the pad and you don't have the pen it doesn't work if you have the pen without the pad doesn't work
• 37:30 - 38:00 so you need to have both you need to make sure the pen is charged because the pen is electric so you have to do that and so that is a two-piece system there what i find for some individuals that struggle with the idea of that tool is because it's two pieces they have to have with them now an option might be a tool that does the same function but does it through an app and so there is an app called audio node
• 38:00 - 38:30 give me a second let me get out of this slide presentation and see if i can have a picture of audio note i just knew this one had a lot of those pieces in it yeah so here it is so the audio note tool in addition to the livescribe pen the audio note is on the right hand side of this slide so the live scribe is on the top left the audio note is on the
• 38:30 - 39:00 right that is an app that audio note app works on every platform it's an apple product it's an android product it will work on a mac and a pc so work anywhere the whole idea with that it works the same way as the livescribe pen but instead of handwriting i type so i hit record it uses the microphone that's built into my device and then it allows me to move through and type and every time i type
• 39:00 - 39:30 it gives me a time stamp alongside the text that allows me to go back there and click and then i can listen to it as i go and so thinking about that that's a way to do it you can also do it in chrome that's the piece on the bottom which is similar to mic note but it's working it's a web-based tool so if you have a computer you can do it in the browser as well uh and so these are ways to do this kind of note-taking strategy
• 39:30 - 40:00 or keep ourselves on track as we use this to support things that the app is called audio note and it works everywhere um it has a cost and and uh i don't remember the cost robert so i don't even want to say it because i don't want to set us up for less than it really is i don't want to say it but i'm not going to um and the the mic note which is on the bottom left is that web-based version um which is a
• 40:00 - 40:30 monthly a monthly subscription i believe it's ten dollars for the month and then you have access to that tool but again great options great ways to approach note taking and thinking about this creatively think about what it is your writing notes about so i was working with a young lady through vocational rehab who was returning to school and work so she was going to college and she was working she had acquired a traumatic brain
• 40:30 - 41:00 injury and was really struggling with with steps of things remembering things we got her the livescribe pen and she took that everywhere with her and so when she went to work she was a waitress and she took the pen with her to work and when people were giving her the order she would record it so that she made sure she got the order right uh and you know we had a conversation about maybe not recording people without telling them so she would she got away that she would tell people she was doing
• 41:00 - 41:30 this and she sold it to them in such a great way if i was in a restaurant and someone said this to me i would never have a problem with it she said i use this tool to make sure i get your your order accurate so it comes out the way you want it and you know what no one ever complained about that because we all want what we want and so that was really good but then she also used that when she went to school so for her college classes she also used this as an independent independence tool when she went to doctor's appointments
• 41:30 - 42:00 and things like that because she was a young adult she didn't want to go with her mom to every appointment she wanted to go by herself and so when she met with the doctor she would open up the livescribe pen and hit record and as they were talking she would write notes but it would record all of their conversations so she could go back to it later it's really really a very very cool product really great thing so that's that example there um great conversation in the chat i'm watching it as it goes and i feel like
• 42:00 - 42:30 we're answering questions as we go yeah diane points out the doctor doesn't allow her to record the visit that is that is a really um a possibility of something that might happen i think the live scribe or any of these tools that record one of the first things we have to figure out is will people allow themselves to be recorded and if not we need to find another strategy for that i i think one way
• 42:30 - 43:00 you could approach the doctor and say i am recording this so i can write down my notes later i don't know if that's going to sway anybody as they go forward but i think as long as you're pretty upfront with why you're doing it sometimes you might have someone come with a little flexibility of like okay i get why you're using that but those are those are conversations you have to have you you can't just start walking around recording people you do have to give them a heads up melanie i see you popping on and i see our time um
• 43:00 - 43:30 as we're just having this conversation as we go no and then right this is exactly what we were hoping uh these sessions to be so that's perfect i was actually hopping on i did get a question emailed to me says can you offer can you offer some suggestions for task initiation or staying focused on tasks yeah so staying focused on tasks and that idea of initiating something really interesting um notifications are a great
• 43:30 - 44:00 strategy for that notifications that remind us oh it's time to do something have you started i've seen people that do multiple notifications about the same item one of the interesting things that i've seen and i'm trying to remember its name and it might come to me so give me a minute it might it might flash in my brain um were tools that allowed you to record reminders
• 44:00 - 44:30 uh and so it could be someone's voice saying don't forget to start this task um and that ada reminder app that i showed you before allows that with reminders you could put audio in there and so it could be someone's voice it's just really interesting experience with a with a um a young man who would not acknowledge the notifications when they popped up on his phone because it's just text and if you just wait long enough it'll just drift away into the background uh
• 44:30 - 45:00 but what what he um what we did for him was using that ada reminder we put the reminders with an audio cue of his family members reminding him of something and just the familiarity with their voice caused him to look down and do what he needed to do and so this idea of an audio prompt of somebody who perhaps will help facilitate the start of a process could be really powerful
• 45:00 - 45:30 i always think about when we talk about staying on task um i knew someone who it was almost a band that would offer a slight vibration um that would sort of remind him to to refocus right and tend to the task that he was hoping to complete for himself yeah some of those kinds of vibration tools and things like that are really powerful because sometimes that's all it takes is just that little something to remind me that that things are happening um
• 45:30 - 46:00 there is there's a little device called the ditto and it's the ditto wearable and it's about that big it looks like a kidney bean almost and you sync it to your smartphone and every time a notification goes off on your smartphone it will send a different vibration to your wrist if you're wearing it and that's exactly what that's formally that idea of giving people the subtle
• 46:00 - 46:30 reminder that something's happening i was working with a young man who if his and he was in school at the time if the bell rang for the class to let out before he realized it was about to end he would get very upset and and start to um not be able to move forward because of the of kind of this anxiety would of stress of just getting done and so what they did for him was they
• 46:30 - 47:00 programmed this into his phone that it would send a vibration five minutes before the end of every class and so when he felt that vibration he would look at the clock recognize the class was about to finish and then he would start packing up his things yes kathleen it's called the ditto the ditto wearable and it's about i know i'm sorry i'm giving you these about costs it's about forty dollars i know i bought it on sale it was thirty dollars but i didn't wanna rub it in but
• 47:00 - 47:30 it's about forty dollars and it syncs to your smartphone through an app and it runs on a watch battery it runs for at least six months if not a year before you have to replace it and so when we start thinking about things that need to be charged and that becoming an issue this ditto device just keeps running it's also waterproof so if you forget and it goes through the wash it's not a big deal and mike if i could i know that a couple of people have asked how to save the
• 47:30 - 48:00 chat there's a ton of resources right and information being changed saved in that area so if you go to the chat section the chat bubble on the bottom of your screen in the area where you should have a message that says type message here right to the right of that if you go um in that in that white square in that white uh rectangle there should be three dots if you click on those three dots the
• 48:00 - 48:30 three dots should be next to the smiley face if you click on the three dots it will say say save chat so um if you're still having um any technical issues doing that please reach out to me directly after the session and we'll see what we can do to get you that information again if you type if you click on the chat box where it has a type message here if you look to the right above a little bit it
• 48:30 - 49:00 has three dots if you click on those three dots it'll give you an option to save chat and i've seen people come through if you're on a phone you might not get those three dots for the chat and so if you reach out wait a second let me do this let me get us back to the our email addresses at the front there you go um if you reach out to one of us we've saved the chat so you could either reach back out to melanie or you could reach out to naomi or i
• 49:00 - 49:30 we've saved the chat we can simply email it to you so you have it it's a it's if you've never seen the chat from zoom it's a little tough to navigate through um because it comes kind of as one block of text almost it is time stamped and that does help but just be prepared it's not going to be very uh structured and organized beyond just the time stamp one of the things that always comes to mind as i'm listening to you talk about all these tools and resources
• 49:30 - 50:00 again are other watches right yeah the um i saw someone earlier mentioned that they use an ipad uh not a phone um and i'm not sure if the watches connect to the ipads i'm sure you still probably have to be within a distance but to me the watches offer so many more i don't have one but my daughter does um it just seems like it offers so many more portable options for people it does it's such a the watch any of the smart
• 50:00 - 50:30 watches whether you have an android device or an apple um are such a nice extension of your device so that you don't have to worry about having your phone in your hand all the time and this idea of things coming right to um the watch face whether it's those simple the reminders the vibrations to let you know something's happening or the notification so it can be really can be a powerful addition to your smartphone for sure wonderful um and then also we and i'll let you uh
• 50:30 - 51:00 sort of wrap up but uh we have a lot of people asking for a copy of the recording we will make sure that that goes out through um email within the next 24 to 48 hours that email may come from the community living education project it may come from melanie mcgakin it may come from clep um but let's see um i'll do my best to try to include the chat um conversation in there also i will include the powerpoint and the
• 51:00 - 51:30 copy of the recording with today's session awesome actually get everybody everything you had and and as always the the kind of the the power of these sessions um is in the sharing so i really do appreciate uh everybody sharing as they as they did in the chat that was awesome to hear how you're doing things um and and ways that you are finding supports for yourself and maybe those those additional pieces you might need so thank you for participating naomi as always thank you for managing the chat
• 51:30 - 52:00 for us that was wonderful um and everybody else i hope to see you next week this will be next week oh boy you can see me next week but i mean next month is what i meant we do uh creating accessible materials it's our next topic on the 4th august no okay i thought so i remember that from before okay the fourth so there you go and uh many people may have already registered for that i know when we did registration for this session we set it up so they can register for the select
• 52:00 - 52:30 sessions or all the sessions at once so if you didn't register please uh look for any follow-up emails that's going to give you the option to do so um additionally before we hang up today or as we're preparing to disconnect today you're going to see a brief survey pop up on your screen um taking that survey will take maybe 30 seconds but it really allows us to plan for future sessions that are going to better address your needs and as always naomi mike wonderful job
• 52:30 - 53:00 incredible information always shared i have to say probably some of the most active chat uh box sessions i have are with the two of you and you're right mike naomi is absolutely a rock star with keeping up with that chat yeah it's amazing right it's just like you're on stuff it's great it's so perfect and you um you see mike and naomi's emails up there please um reach out to them with any specific questions regarding today's um
• 53:00 - 53:30 resources materials anything like that but also reach out to them if you have specific questions about the lending library or the new grant that might share so um until august uh thank you again and we look forward to our future sessions awesome thank you very much thanks everybody everyone thanks again naomi thanks stanley