“What just hit us?”
It is really hard to wrap our heads around the Coronavirus Covid-19 situation. Our world has changed dramatically almost overnight.
Clinics have closed.
Schools have closed.
Home Health services have been drastically reduced.
Hospital services have become greatly restricted.
These are BIG changes that have been hard to handle. But in the midst of all of the craziness, people and companies have found ways to do good. Ways to support others. Here are bright spots in the midst of this global pandemic.
SLPs Reach Out to Their Students, Clients, and Families
First and foremost, the messages that SLPs have been sending out to their students, clients and families have been amazing. Check out this 30-second video of Thomas hearing from his school-based SLP.
Companies are Giving
Zoomand LifeSize have offered free accounts for educators.
Apple has shared amazing resources and tools for educators.
Smarty Ears has provided access to their Smarty Symbols program for parents and educators so they can make visual schedules, social stories, and other activities and games.
SLP Impact has provided a month of free membership so members can access the library of courses, edge case videos, free resources, and attend the two monthly webinars.
Pro-Ed has digitized their tests and is granting free access to them on Red Shelf.
Pearson has made many of its stimulus books and examiner manuals available for free in their Q-Global system.
Beereaders has extended an invitation to all Texas schools to join a free program that uses their digital tool to improve reading comprehension for Spanish-speaking children from now until the end of the 2019-2020 school year. Contact them via email or phone—512-590-5901.
- Keep your ESL students engaged and improve outcomes via remote learning
- Offer personalized assessment in a game-like environment for students
- Acquire analytical insights and customized reports per student and per class
Boom Learning is offering free memberships to those impacted by Covid-19. Boom Cards are well loved tools for teletherapy.
Tobii Dynavox is offering a 90-day free trial of Boardmaker Online. They have also shared some amazing boards they created to help children understand the changing rules brought on by Coronavirus.
ASHA has provided the Free Learning Pass through June 30, 2020. They also led great advocacy efforts to get insurers to cover teletherapy. Alongside the Texas Speech-Language-Hearing Association, they supported efforts to get Governor Abbott of Texas to quickly change laws to allow SLPs, SLP Interns, and SLP-As to better serve their clients.
People are Getting Creative
We’ve also seen a lot of creative solutions to problems. Our local school district, The Austin Independent School District, has gotten creative about providing remote access to students by utilizing their busses as hotspots in densely populated areas. They’ve also delivered Chromebooks to students to ensure access.
It’s nice to see so many people in communities across the world coming together to make things better.
Thank you for this info.
You are very welcome!
I can’t find these things:
Pro-Ed has digitized their tests and is granting free access to them on Red Shelf.
Pearson has made many of its stimulus books and examiner manuals available for free in their Q-Global system.
Does anybody have a direct link to them? I’m looking for the CELF-5, GFTA-3, KLPA-3, and the TNL-2.
Here is a link to Pro-Ed’s contact page. They are very prompt at getting you what you need. They have the TNL-2. The other’s you can access on Q-Global. Good luck!