I haven't posted for a while. Yesterday we were trained on the Tobii C12 by our Tobii representative. After spending 3 hours putting on the mount, she had to take it off and put it up higher on her wheelchair, but basically we had it right! This puts Anna in better position for the eye gaze technology. At home the other day, Anna told me that she wanted a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and then she looked me straight in the eye and smiled. That is a small victory because I know that she knew she was making a choice. So she got her sandwich and she gobbled it up pronto. These are the moments when I am hopeful that as we move along in this process, the technology will become more useful as Anna makes more meaningful choices. She is still learning, so most of the time she enjoys engaging the computer and just making noise, but if one watches closely she will make choices. For example yesterday, during the training, she kept perseverating on certain buttons and there was a lot of excitement and confusion in the room because the teachers were getting their first looks at the computer. But I asked her two questions and she made the right choices on both! The Tobii rep also helped us set up the 3 side buttons, one of which is a PAUSE button, and that is helpful, because when
Anna starts perseverating on an icon, we can pause the computer and redirect her attention.
Anna's teachers and therapists were excited and very engaged in learning how to make pages and buttons. I think they were surprised at how easy the software was to learn. They are going to download the workbook and work through that during a professional development day.
