What did she just say?

Every day Maggie comes home from school with her “news” programmed into her Dynavox (communication device). She hits the buttons, maneuvers the dynavox to her “news” page and lets us know what went on during the day. Her teacher programs that at the end of every single day. It takes several minutes to do and I appreciate his efforts.

Of course, it is my job to do the same thing when Maggie goes to school. I program in the “news” from home and she shares that with her classmates. I try to do it as a 15 year old would and use interesting phrases and sayings. It is difficult though for several reasons. First of all, (and this may shock some of you) our life is not that interesting from day to day. Often her news is something like, “my house is so boring. Mom had a meeting and Dad came home late so I was stuck with the nurse.” Blah. It’s necessary to spice things up a bit. Another difficulty is the voice output itself. It is not a human voice, but a synthesized computer voice without intonation. The delivery is very flat. If you put an exclamation point at the end of the sentence there is an almost imperceptible rise in the speech pattern. Same goes for a question mark. The last word of the sentence is slightly different which indicates it is a question.

To compensate for that, we try to use words and sayings that are more interesting but still acceptable for school. Though the lack of intonation may turn some people off, they are more likely to listen if the words are interesting. They are sayings that would ordinarily demand a lot of intonation and expression. They really hit the mark and become hilarious with the flat delivery. The contrast between the sayings and the delivery is entertaining and gets the attention of people. One of our standards is “sheesh!” when Maggie wants to convey frustration. Her teacher loves that. Often her news will describe some angst of her school day and finish with “Triple sheesh!” Every time Maggie hears that, she laughs. Other sayings in this ilk are “ay yi yi”, “Holey Moley,” “Yikes Stripes,” and the indignant “what is the world?” [Try saying any of those in a voice with zero intonation…it’s difficult)

I recently stole another such saying from a follower of this blog. She always has these upbeat posts and I’ve noticed her use of “woo and two hoos” periodically. I put that on Maggie’s talker on Friday (describing the upcoming weekend) and it was another huge hit with the kids and especially with the adults in her class. Maggie was particularly proud of herself.

If anyone has suggestions of sayings like these, lay ‘em on me. Maggie is always looking for new material. Her's a picture of Maggie's dynavox . It's mounted on the front of her wheelchair and she uses the switches on the wheelchair tray to work it. - you can see the various pages listed - each is like a folder with additional stuff behind it, and she knows how to get where she needs to communicat. If youlook closely at the picture youmight be able to see "mom come here" at the top of her screen. She found those words and then hits the button to make it say the words written there. "Mom come here" is a HUGE favorite.

For you information “sheesh” “yi yi”, “Moley” and “hoos” are not recognized words in spell check. We are not picky about things like that.

It’s all phonetic, baby.