Linda Burkhart Conference
by: Alison Kingerski

On May 12 & May 13, 2009 the Open Access Resource Centre (OARC) held its annual conference at the St. Boniface Golf Club. With 182 people in attendance over two days, OARC welcomed to Winnipeg Ms. Linda Burkhart.
Linda Burkhart was an excellent speaker with plenty of practical information to share with all attendees.
Day 1 of the conference focused on Multi – Modality Supports for Communication: Strategies for Children on the Severe End of the Autism Spectrum. Throughout her presentation, Ms. Burkhart highlighted the importance of repetition with moderate differences. Ms. Burkhart stated that repetition is crucial for learning however too much repetition can reinforce a narrow focus and lead to habituation. It is extremely important to balance novel and known, start with what the individual understands and use repetition with moderate differences. For example, read the same story on multiple occasions with moderate changes each time – read slow, read fast, whisper, sing etc. Ms. Burkhart also spoke about the importance of using multi modal communication (sign language, speech generating devices etc.) with students with Autism. By using a multi modal approach individuals can improve their receptive language and auditory processing skills. Ms. Burkhart passionately discussed socially engaging individuals with Autism. We must go back to building relationships. Ms. Burkhart referred to such programs as Proximal Communication (Potter and Whittaker) Floor time (Greenspan), SCERTS (Wetherby and Prizant) as well as the Hanen Program. Currently, augmentative communication services focus mostly on requesting and compliance. By using the above-mentioned programs we can go beyond this and make communication a much more engaging process for everyone involved.

Day 2 of the conference focused on Developing Communication Skills for Children Who Face Severe Physical and Multiple Challenges: Partner Assisted Communication with PODD. Highlights from day 2 included adopting the following beliefs:
1. Not having speech is not the same as not understanding.
2. Everyone communicates.
3. Communication happens all the time.
4. Communication begins with intent (the intent has to be worth it to the individual).
5. Communication is about something we don’t already know.
6. Keep your expectations open.
Ms. Burkhart introduced her audience to PODD (Pragmatic Organization Dynamic Display) communication books and how to use them with individuals with severe physical and multiple challenges. The PODD books were created by Gayle Porter and are described as comprehensive, multi page communication books for communication all the time. Ms. Burkhart demonstrated the success of using the PODD communication books with various videos of students throughout the day. Ms. Burkhart also discussed using dynamic assessments to accurately assess these individuals. A dynamic assessment is an ongoing interactive and dynamic team process that happens over time. It starts with what the individuals can do and builds on that. Ms. Burkhart stated that it is incredibly important to balance cognitive ability with motor ability. That is to say that if a task is cognitively quite difficult then the motoric portion should be easier and vice versa.
Each day, Ms. Burkhart ended the session by asking participants to name their “aha moments.” Judging by the amount of responses received it was apparent that everyone was taking several practical ideas back to work with them the next day.
OARC would like to thank all those who attended the conference, as well as the conference committee for organizing such a great conference.