Tackling the High-Intensity-Practice Challenge in SSD - Guest lecture from Prof Kirrie Ballard

Today we were very honoured to host Prof Kirrie Ballard at Charles Sturt University in Bathurst. She presented a hybrid workshop titled "Tackling the High-Intensity-Practice Challenge in SSD".

Overview of the session • Your client with SSD is now stimulable for their target sound/s • Now, research says they need high intensity practice 3 or more times a week to master this • You can't see clients that often • You give them homework but have no idea how much gets done • Could your clients be improving faster? • In this session we'll discuss your biggest challenges to implementing evidence-based practice and brainstorm ideas you can take back to your clinics and try. We'll get hands-on experience with the one tool, the Say Bananas app, that we designed specifically for this problem. • BYO tablet (iPAD or Android). We will have some extras for those who don't bring one. Note that the Say Bananas app is not available for phones/laptops.

Say Bananas YouTube video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYvRJzDCmQM

Thanks and bon voyage Grace Kelly

Over the past year Grace Kelly has worked with Prof Kirrie Ballard and myself on Kirrie's AMP Tomorrow Fund grant to investigate the use of the SayBananas! app with children with speech sound disorders across rural Australia. Grace has been a fantastic colleague, and today was her last day before she heads back to the UK. We will miss her a lot - and hope to catch up with her when we get to visit the UK. We are finalising our analysis in order to present our research at the upcoming Speech Pathology Australia National Conference in May and then to submit our work to a journal.

Thanks again Grace!

Say Bananas!

Say Bananas! was built for children with childhood apraxia of speech but can be used for children with any type of speech sound disorder (SSD). Hair et al. (2021) included a sample of 10 children SSD and Prof Kirrie Ballard has just completed a trial with 7 children with cleft palate. 

Here is a Youtube video giving an overview of the app and basic instructions on how to use it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Unh1uKJWwA 

SayBananas! will be launched it in the apps stores soon.

Say Bananas research day

Friday 11 February 2022 was a fantastic day - it was the first day for a very long time that I was on campus due to CSU COVID-19 restrictions. It was the first day for a very long time that I worked face-to-face with people.

Prof Kirrie Ballard travelled from The University of Sydney to analyse data and write up the Say Bananas research with Grace Kelly and myself. It was such a productive day!

Prof Kirrie Ballard, Grace Kelly, Prof Sharynne McLeod

Our research is in the media

CSU Media has published a media release about our latest research and request for participants:

Speech therapy app research needs children in regional and rural Australia

As a result, Grace Kelly has had the following radio interviews:

• ZOOFM Dubbo (Dan Hillard) - 8 July 2021
• Triple M Orange - 8 July 2021
• Triple M Wagga Wagga - 15 July 2021
• ABC Dubbo TBC
  
• 2BS Live and Local TBC

In addition, Nicole McGill has been contacted by the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) to prepare a newstory on waiting lists. It is great to see our research in the public eye.

Ethics approval received to start research with "Say Bananas"

Last week we received ethics approval from Charles Sturt Universtity to commence our research to share the Say Bananas app with children in rural NSW. Grace Kelly gave a presentation about the research to speech pathologists in non-government settings in Orange. Now we have our first participant ready to begin.

Grace Kelly presenting to the speech pathologists in Orange

For more information email gkelly@csu.edu.au, and information about the research project about Say66 and the Say Bananas app is available on social media: 

• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Unh1uKJWwA&t=5s 
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/UCanSay66 
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ucansay66/ 
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/say66

An interactive technology-based tool for remote speech therapy of childhood speech sound disorders

Prof Kirrie Ballard has invited me to collaborate with her on a study titled "An interactive technology-based tool for remote speech therapy of childhood speech sound disorders" that is partially funded by an AMP Tomorrow Fund Grant. It will involve providing 50 rural children with free access to the Go Bananas! app to support their speech therapy. Here are more details explaining the project: https://www.ampstomorrowfund.com.au/tomorrow-makers/kirrie-ballard.html

We are finalising the protocol/processes now. It is going to be such a great boost to children who don't have access to speech therapy in rural areas, or who are currently on long waiting lists.

Prof Kirrie Ballard and Prof Sharynne McLeod

I am very honoured to work with Prof Ballard and her colleague Dr Beena Ahmed, who are the co-founders of Say66. They have been winning a number of awards recently.

Prof Ballard won the Speech Pathology Australia Innovation Award for 2020: https://speakingmylanguages.blogspot.com/2021/02/congratulations-prof-kirrie-ballard.html

Dr Beena Ahmed is a senior lecturer in the School of Engineering and Telecommunications at UNSW. This week she won the 2021 Women in AI Award in the field of Education. https://www.womeninai.co/waiawards2021aus-nz

Women in AI (WAI) is a global network of female experts and professionals in the field of Artificial Intelligence working towards gender-inclusive AI that benefits a global society. Our mission is to close the gender gap in the field by educating the next generation of female leaders in AI and to increase female representation and participation in AI. ​ Committed to supporting and rewarding excellence to women in AI, the WAI Awards 2021 will be prestigious in their recognition and vital in building the credibility and exposure for women in AI in Australia and New Zealand.

 

Congratulations Prof Kirrie Ballard - Speech Pathology Australia Innovation Award + AMP Tomorrow Maker 2020

Congratulations to Prof Kirrie Ballard who has won the Speech Pathology Australia Innovation Award 2020 and was named an AMP Tomorrow Maker for 2020: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyHktCHmbr8&list=PLRA7I7WhI1-Qbnqu34HPsYSkh-87h61nt&index=10

Speech Pathology Australia is committed to promoting innovation and being at the forefront of emerging trends and opportunities. In order to help meet this aspiration, early in 2019, the Association’s Board of Directors approved the introduction of the Speech Pathology Australia Innovation Awards. In 2020, the Speech Pathology Australia Innovation Award in the Research category has been awarded to Kirrie Ballard for her nomination, titled: ‘Go Bananas! The game changer in speech therapy’. The nomination outlined the development of an interactive video-gaming system for remote tablet-based speech therapy that solves the challenge of delivering intensive evidence-based treatment protocols to children with speech sound disorder. As the winner, Kirrie Ballard is required to provide an article for Speak Out about her innovation and to provide a short presentation to the Speech Pathology Australia National Conference in Darwin in 2021. Congratulations to Kirrie Ballard! #innovation #WeSpeechies #SLPeeps #SP2030

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/speech-pathology-australia_innovation-wespeechies-slpeeps-activity-6704903308894724096-5Sqt

These grants and acknowledments enable her to continue her important work that we profiled here: McLeod, S., Ballard, K. J., Ahmed, B., McGill, N., & Brown, M. I. (2020). Supporting children with speech sound disorders during COVID-19 restrictions: Technological solutions. Perspectives of the ASHA Special Interest Groups, Advance online publication. https://doi.org/doi:10.1044/2020_PERSP-20-00128