Welcome to my project updates!

Seray Ibrahim

Thanks for expressing an interest in my research. These termly updates give a short summary of activities and events surrounding my work on children’s communication and assistive technology.

Over the course of 2021, I will be sharing snippets from my research. I hope these are helpful for classroom and therapy practice. I will also be sharing ideas for how assistive communication technologies might be improved to reflect some of the findings from my recent PhD. 

If you are interested in discussing any of these ideas, please get in touch! I can be contacted here. Have a restful and safe Easter break! –Seray.

Bite-sized videos

I’m excited to share the first in a series of short videos designed as practitioner resources. These illustrate some of my design insights for supporting interactions that involve people and augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) technologies.

In this first video, I explore three possibilities for building on the design of AAC technologies. The focus is on:

  • Scaffolding learning in flexible ways
  • Regulating privacy through AAC
  • Offering lightweight ways for children to signal misunderstandings.

The second bite size video will focus on strategies for supporting interaction in the classroom. Looking forward to sharing this next term!

Activities and events

  • Practice sharing both within and beyond academia is a large focus of this project. In June 2020, I co-organised an academic workshop at the ACM Interaction Design and Children conference, on ‘What we learn when designing with marginalised children’. A summary of discussions from the workshop can be found here.
  • In December 2020, I presented a talk at the Multimodality talks series held across UCL, University of Leeds and the University of Stockholm. The talk was titled: Communication and non speaking children with physical disabilities: The issue of recognition.
  • In February 2020, I attended the AAC journal club for SLTs in the UK. A summary of the discussion can be found in my blog post on AAC research and practice.
  • Later in February 2020, I was invited to give a talk on the UCL Multimodal communication MA module which generated great discussions on AAC for students of applied linguistics!
  • I’m delighted that my paper was accepted at the International Society for Augmentative and Alternative Communication conference. The presentation will focus on a slice of my research that considers how multimodal communication theory can inform the study of communication. The conference is scheduled to take place in August 2022 (postponed owing to pandemic). More details to follow next term!
  • The Communication Matters conference call for participation is out! I’m looking forward to hearing from the AAC community at the virtual conference in September this year and hoping to contribute as well!

If this newsletter has been forwarded on, you can sign up to these updates via this link

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