CANNY SLT WEB

Balloons, Cake and Glorious Sunshine!

2012-05-28T06:14:00Z

What a glorious day it was yesterday! The sun shone and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. The beautiful weather brought lots of people outdoors to Saltwell Park, Gateshead. The Family Fun day and walk was organised by the Stroke Association and I spoke to someone prior to the event to ask for permission to hand out Giving Voice leaflets. I was delighted when they said that was fine! There was a lot of entertainment in the park, including Zumba, live music, tombola, raffle, dancing, face painting and cake! We set up our table on a nice spot on the grass ready to hand out leaflets and...

Canny SLT WEB: updates from or about the North East and Cumbria aggregated by www.salt-mine.net

5000 and beyond...

2012-05-25T19:44:00Z

I’m very excited that my blog has exceeded 5000 pages views! It’s great that lots of people are reading and sharing it, to spread the message that Speech and Language Therapy Transforms Lives. Hopefully won’t be too long before it reaches 6000. I was really excited to get my blog re-tweeted by Patrick Monahan (7701 followers)and Lost Voice Guy (1166 followers) help me reach 5000 views! Thank you to everyone else who shared it too! JThe Stroke Association are having a family fun day at Saltwell Park, Gateshead tomorrow ( Saturday 26th May, 10-2pm) and I got permission yesterday to go along and...

Canny SLT WEB: updates from or about the North East and Cumbria aggregated by www.salt-mine.net

Grabbing Opportunities...

2012-05-21T04:30:00Z

I was hoping to reach 5000 page views before my birthday this month, but as that was earlier in the week I wasn’t successful with this. Almost at 5000 now though so hopefully won’t be too long before I get there! I’m still thrilled that so many people seem to be reading my blog!On Friday I went into Newcastle to go to the Northern Research Special Interest Group (SIG). I got the metro in, and was of course, wearing my Giving Voice badge. When I arrived at the SIG a fellow speech and language therapist said she noticed my badge on the metro. I’m glad it’s so noticeable and will continue to...

Canny SLT WEB: updates from or about the North East and Cumbria aggregated by www.salt-mine.net

Pinkjules meets Lost Voice Guy

2012-05-06T21:23:00Z

After talking to a colleague last week and learning that Lost Voice Guy was due to perform in Newcastle on Thursday night, I knew I had to go! Having read and heard a lot about him I was looking forward to seeing him on stage!Here’s a little introduction, for those of you that have not heard of Lost Voice Guy (where have you been?!) Lee Ridley, aka Lost Voice Guy, is “(probably) the first stand up comedian to use a communication aid”. Lee has Cerebral Palsy and uses an aid for his communication. I tweeted Lost Voice Guy on Thursday afternoon ahead of the gig on Thursday night and was rather...

Canny SLT WEB: updates from or about the North East and Cumbria aggregated by www.salt-mine.net

Specialization within language areas: brain scanning

2012-04-24T08:34:44Z

ABSTRACT: Brain scanning has been used to demonstrate specialization within language areas in the brain – notably in Broca’s area. Brain scanning of normal brains appears to support the findings of studies of language processing in people with aphasia.

Canny SLT WEB: updates from or about the North East and Cumbria aggregated by www.salt-mine.net

Building research capacity in speech and language therapy – Part 3 (Resources for EBP)

2012-04-16T21:27:14Z

I almost forgot I was going to do what I’m about to do as I was originally intending to include this information in Part 2.But as that got a bit too long it probably works out quite well as a post on its own. I’ll also just preface the main point of this post with a pertinent account of a brief exchange I had with two students in my clinical education tutorial group today while we were waiting for the remaining members of the group to join us.We got to talking about despite it being the first day of term following the 4 week Easter vacation, Mondays just have this habit of making you feel...

Canny SLT WEB: updates from or about the North East and Cumbria aggregated by www.salt-mine.net

Building research capacity in speech and language therapy – Part 2

2012-04-13T11:24:01Z

So as a Research Facilitator for SLT my remit was to increase research capacity in local NHS SLT services.The ultimate aim of this was to improve SLT services’ potential of taking part and leading large research projects which would be eligible for inclusion on the National Institute of Health Research’s Research Portfolio. This portfolio being a list of ‘high-quality’ clinical research within the UK which is funded directly through NHS funding streams or through streams that are open on a nationally competitive basis (i.e. where the researchers have applied for funding and where these...

Canny SLT WEB: updates from or about the North East and Cumbria aggregated by www.salt-mine.net

How would you feel?

2012-04-12T22:28:00Z

Where is the year going? I can’t believe we are well into April already. It isn’t long until the local elections on May 3rd – check out RCSLT website to see if your local council is holding elections. Many councillors do not know about the role of Speech and Language Therapists, and this is a great opportunity to raise their awareness. There are some new resources which will help you to engage your local councillors (here) – and they see at least fifty members and supporters sharing a story about how you started a conversation with a candidate about speech and language therapy! I wrote this...

Canny SLT WEB: updates from or about the North East and Cumbria aggregated by www.salt-mine.net

Building research capacity in speech and language therapy – Part 1

2012-04-06T21:12:19Z

Research skills are integral to any working position as a speech and language therapist (SLT).This is because SLT is (or at least strives to be) an evidence based profession.This means that the things we do, as SLTs, when providing care to real people/patients/clients have been researched and shown to be effective.To make an analogy, if you are in the unfortunate position of needing to take medication or of undergoing a surgical procedure, your doctor should be giving you information on success rates of the intervention in question (e.g. “this drug/procedure has a 60% chance of success, there...

Canny SLT WEB: updates from or about the North East and Cumbria aggregated by www.salt-mine.net

The Meaning of First Words

2012-04-03T10:11:54Z

ABSTRACT: In an early and influential publication, Halliday (1975) proposed seven semantic functions that help to classify the meaning of first words used by typically developing children.

Canny SLT WEB: updates from or about the North East and Cumbria aggregated by www.salt-mine.net

My thoughts on: Reading TherAppy from Tactus Therapy

2012-03-25T02:43:54Z

Key details (taken from http://www.tactustherapy.com/reading.html) Reading TherAppy – Phrase and Sentence-Level Reading Comprehension From Tactus Therapy Solutions (website includes a video demonstration) Cost:£10.49 / $14.99 (at time of writing) at the iTunes App store Goal areas Targets reading comprehension, attention, problem solving For who? Aphasia, Alexia, Alzheimer’s Disease, Dementia, Cognitive-Communication Impairment, Brain Injury, Early Language Learners, Language Learning Disability, Autism, English as a Second Language Learners ===== Review This was my first...

Canny SLT WEB: updates from or about the North East and Cumbria aggregated by www.salt-mine.net

The King's Speech

2012-03-24T23:46:00Z

On Monday 12th March, I went to see The King’s Speech at Newcastle Theatre Royal and it didn’t disappoint. All the acting was brilliant and I once again felt proud to be part of the Speech and Language Therapy Profession. The script was superb with some powerful words, particularly the King being “trapped in a body refusing to obey [his] commands.” Something that I am sure many people who stammer (or have other communication/swallowing difficulties) will relate to. If you get the chance to see the play I would definitely recommend it! :-) After seeing the success of the publicity around The...

Canny SLT WEB: updates from or about the North East and Cumbria aggregated by www.salt-mine.net

Giving a ‘big’ presentation on my research

2012-03-17T18:40:50Z

So I’m in the process of sorting out my filing system on my computer and I came across some text that I had written for a previous blog that I was co-author on.As it still seems to be relevant I’ll post it here.Bear in mind that this was written approximately 18 months ago.It’s also makes a change to be posting about something other than apps (but new post on this soon). ***** Given that I’m now approaching the end of my third year of my PhD research in the area of speech and language therapy, I’ve reached the point where I actually have interesting and somewhat conclusive things to tell...

Canny SLT WEB: updates from or about the North East and Cumbria aggregated by www.salt-mine.net

Children’s Literacy Difficulties

2012-03-11T18:21:19Z

ABSTRACT: Children’s literacy difficulties are of two types: decoding difficulties (dyslexia) and reading comprehension impairments. Different types of written scripts (e.g. logographic, alphabetic) make different demands on the beginner reader. Reading disorders will require different interventions, depending on their cause.

Canny SLT WEB: updates from or about the North East and Cumbria aggregated by www.salt-mine.net

Sunshine, Stammering and Giving Voice

2012-03-11T22:07:00Z

What a lovely Sunny Sunday it is today! I feel like Spring is finally on it's way; I love this time of year! For the last couple of weeks I’ve been liaising with the Front of House Manager at the Theatre Royal Newcastle, about Giving Voice at The King’s Speech (which opens tomorrow). I’m delighted that they have agreed to hand out Giving Voice flyers with their programmes and are allowing 2 volunteers to be present before the show begins to hand out leaflets/answer questions about Speech and Language Therapy. I had a large number of volunteers who wanted to help out with this which is...

Canny SLT WEB: updates from or about the North East and Cumbria aggregated by www.salt-mine.net

Find free CPD and resources for SLT's (#slpeeps) via Twitter

2012-03-10T17:01:00Z

A question so many more of us are asking these days . . . Unemployed SLTs - where to find CPD? In the Autumn of 2010, I had been unemployed for over 12 months after being made redundant. I knew how to keep up to date with developments in AAC, but I had been concerned about how best to update my knowledge in other areas of Speech & Language Therapy. For a workaholic, with Speech & Language Therapy a passion and a vocation rather than "just a job", losing access to Athens was one...

Canny SLT WEB: updates from or about the North East and Cumbria aggregated by www.salt-mine.net

Appraising apps in SLT/P (1) – Outcome measures and building the evidence base

2012-03-02T00:26:01Z

I’ve resisted the cliché of calling this post “App”raisal / APPraisal / app-raisal Well I’d probably over-estimated myself at the end of my last blog post when I suggested I’d present a structured approach to appraising apps. The more I thought about it, the more there seemed to be to think about and naturally there would always be things that I’d miss out on. So in the interests of getting a post up and making the topic of appraising apps more manageable and not restricting it to just a single blog post, I’m now proposing to present questions and things to think about, more or less as they...

Canny SLT WEB: updates from or about the North East and Cumbria aggregated by www.salt-mine.net

When the pressure changes...

2012-02-15T00:35:00Z

This morning I found myself back in the King George VI Building at Newcastle University (where my Giving Voice endeavors started just over a year ago!) I was there to attend a session with Ele and Creek from RCSLT. This was a good opportunity to share some of my Giving Voice experiences with some final year students. Anyone that knows me knows that I love to talk! They also know that I love to talk about Giving Voice! (I’m not such a fan of talking in front of large audiences but 2 out of 3 isn’t bad!) I prepared what I was going to say over the weekend and practised in front of an audience...

Canny SLT WEB: updates from or about the North East and Cumbria aggregated by www.salt-mine.net

Get with the times – Speech and Language Therapists need to be informed about apps!

2012-02-05T09:36:15Z

Considering my previous post highlighting some of my thoughts on the availability of apps in SLT I thought I’d attempt to follow this up relatively quickly with some of my thoughts on the SLT’s responsibility in being aware of and appraising apps. Both of the comments on the previous post (at the time of writing this) alluded to the same point in one way or another: as SLTs we have to accept that parents/clients/family will not be passive when it comes to speech and language impairment. It is only natural to want to help when your child or partner has difficulties with communication....

Canny SLT WEB: updates from or about the North East and Cumbria aggregated by www.salt-mine.net

Bizarre to Brilliant...

2012-02-04T23:36:00Z

Following on from the conversation I had at work a couple of weeks ago (about my ‘bizarre’ choice of career) we have engaged in a number of other conversations relating to my search for work. Today, the same person told me that he told his partner about what I studied at university as he thought it was so interesting. He said she hadn’t heard of it either, but they both agree it sounds like a brilliant career choice! I can’t help but feel a little bit proud of myself for making this man more informed and changing his view point on the profession! J I also had an interesting conversation with...

Canny SLT WEB: updates from or about the North East and Cumbria aggregated by www.salt-mine.net