How persuasive are your writing skills?

Missy's class have been participating in weekly pre2 Video Conference sessions with another class from a nearby school. This was aimed at improving the students persuasive writing skills through public speaking. Each week six students from each class would present a persuasive exposition on a topic of their choice. One person was chosen as the round winner and sent through to the finals.

Well Missy was chosen as a round winner by her peers and the other school and was very excited and a little nervous about the next round.
Missy's persuasive talk was about "Teachers should let kids dance everyday at school" she outlined the wonderful benefits of it by presenting her speech using her Dynavox V-Max accompanied by wonderful hand and arm actions to enforce her message.
As the morning arrived that Missy was to travel to the other school, she was signing she had butterflies and couldn't eat all her breakfast. She never looked back though and faced her nerves head on, she has actually scheduled to go first and presented her speech beautifully.

Missy was very pleased with herself and so she should be , it takes some courage getting up in front of people you don't know and present a speech on a communication device that others may not be familiar with.

Kermit is in use

Opps.. it been a while since I blogged, been a bit busy - believe or not?
Kermit is Missy's new (well second hand but was still new- confused?) Dynavox V-max, it is a bright green colour hence the name. We managed to get it from a USA family who unfortunately their elderly mother passed away before getting to use it. So it actually brand new but a fraction of the price.
In the USA their medicare system puts a high priority on the value of speech and funds speech generating device. If only our broken disability system could see the value and life changing options available to people when they have the opportunity to speak. After our government telling us when Missy was three that a communication device was not a priority and our recent approach to the government thru our therapist meet with a "get in the long queue behind people who have been waiting for a wheelchair for more than 12months" NSW is in poor shape, compared to other states who give families $7000 towards communication devices.
Anyway back to the positives, Kermit is up and running and as I have blogged before we are enjoying some of the improved features. DET were kind enough to fund a 40 hole new style keyguard which is working well- considering I saved the government potentially funding a $14,000 V-Max thats the least they could do. I have been busily programming and trying to incorporate some of the new setups with some familiar pages that have I imported from the DV4. I am yet to master the E-Books and need to personalise some the InterAACT pages to our situations, no doubt we will get there.
So when Missy returns to School Monday week, she will be accompanied by Kermit.

Dynavox V-Max trial

After trialled the Eco2 and now the Dynavox V-Max, I have a clear preference for the Dynavox. Yes it is more familiar to us but allot of the little annoying features of the Dynavox DV4 have been improved on the Dynavox V-Max.
I will attempt to list them;
There is an improvement in the ability to view the screen when outside with the addition of a light ambient sensor on the front.
Speakers are located on the top front part of Dynavox which allows for better projection.
The is a UNDO button, so in our case if the clear button is accidentally pressed after Missy has spent 10 minutes typing up a sentence , it can be retrieved, the undo feature also applies the page editing that you make a mistake with.
It's an integrated computer/Dynavox, hence providing more Independence to send emails, research the web etc.
Now has the option to read E-Books on screen and games.
Improved and more choices of voices.
Has Interaact Pages, so it shows different pictures of situations appear like a doctors waiting room and you press on an area that you want to ask about, ie press the clock and a popup appears with relevant questions about the time....how much longer? So it provides numerous platforms and encouragement to ask the relevant questions to the situation.
We feel at this stage in Missy's literacy development we didn't want to take her over to a Minspeak system that the Eco2 provides along with a few features that I didn't like on the Eco2.
So I guess we will move onto a Dynavox V-max, our Dyanvox DV4 has served Missy well for five years now, allowing opportunities for language development, computer access, social contact, pre-school and school transition and importantly being seen and expected to contribute to conversations and learnig as she has a means of communication and the ability to demonstrate what she thinks is valuable.