A big thanks to Dean Andrews who has sent back a signed white t-shirt (signed as Dean Andrews and Raymondo which made me laugh). I’m quite hopeful that we might manage a special Ashes to Ashes raffle or auction. I still have vague ideas of organising some sort of event and holding an auction. That might need to be in London though and the thought or organising that makes me weep.
Back to the thank you. We’ve just started using Proloquo2go with Archie. This is an app that plays on the iPhone/iPod Touch and iPad. We’ve actually had it for a while but my old iPod Touch kept crashing when we tried to use it so I put it to one side whilst waiting to buy an iPad. I recently was given a free iPod Touch and so that’s been given to Archie along with some Maingo2 portable speakers, and hey presto a neat little communication aid. I suspect he’ll do better with the iPad (not so fiddly) but that will have to wait a while.
Proloquo2go costs around £100 for the app – which sounds expensive until you compare it to specialist communication aids (about $8000). Having something relatively cheap means there’s no need to get too precious about it which in turn means it tends to get used. I would love fundraising to be able to buy something like a bunch of iPads loaded with Proloquo2go for the school or respite centre. Many children with severe learning disabilities seem to use iPads fairly intuitively.
So Archie is brand new to this and it took us a few takes. Here’s one we did earlier:
But we kept at it and eventually had some success 
I wanted to finish with a great Ray Carling clip – Ray has so many good lines during Ashes to Ashes. I have trawled You Tube and found some funny examples but many in 10 minute clips. I nearly posted Uptown Girl, but eventually settled on this clip which shows off the clever script writing of Ashes to Ashes.
Cheers Dean!
