Pixon Project

Pixons are symbols representing a variety of language concepts for creating manual communication boards for nonverbal students.  I recently saw Gail Vantatenhove explain this kit and the way that her group of developers came up with the symbols.  By combining "old school" augmentative communication techniques, including color-coding backgrounds of symbols based on language function (verbs-green, nouns-orange, etc.) and organizing pictures in order to create sentences ( it used to be called the Fiitzgerald Key but no one knows that anymore) she reminds us of the importance of language first.  I love all the communication apps that are out there for iPad/iPod Touch........but it is so important to look at the language structure our students need and not just providing basic choice-making.    Using manual Pixon symbols can provide core words for teaching a wide range of communication functions and  help prepare  students for eventual speech generating device use or serve as a bridge to learning language.  I've put Minspeak symbols on low tech devices (Go Talk - Super Talker) to teach multi-meaning icons to students but am loving the Pixon symbols for this purpose - either as a manual board or on speech generating devices.    Her kit comes with two pre-made boards - one designed as a mobile board with pages in a customized portable pouch - and the other one a one-page board with core and extended vocabulary.  You also got 4 CD's that contain numerous pre-made boards and symbols that can be used independently or imported into Boardmaker.
All set to give it a go!

For more information, go to the AAC Institute website Pixon Project informatoin at  http://www.aacinstitute.org/Resources/ProductsandServices/Pixons/PixonSheet.pdf