Social Thinking Conferences

Fun Activities to Connect Engage and Socially Succeed: Merging Technology with Social Skills Training
Haggett 

Friday, June 22, 2012  3:00 PM

Description

This session introduces a theoretically and researched based program for social skills development that focuses on the subtle nuances of nonverbal communication. These skills help clients decipher meaning and intention especially, well intentioned from ill intentioned communication and assist clients in cultivating relationships, making informed decisions, and solving problems. 

We will describe several fun, “low tech” strategies and two exciting “high tech” strategies:  video self-modeling and computer gaming.  Learners will experience integrating video self-modeling and computer gaming into treatment sessions designed to enhance body positioning, eye gaze, perspective taking and nonverbal communication. Data collection processes will be reviewed to assist practitioners with progress reporting and targeting areas of difficulty for further review.  Participants will learn strategies to promote generalization across environments.

The workshop culminates with easy steps to engage clients in an interactive multimedia experience by customizing the demonstrated computer games with images of clients' own facial expressions.  Each game promotes the learning of making, recognizing and interpreting their facial expressions as well as expressions of those they interact with regularly. 

Imagine taking clients to higher levels of social engagement by helping them see themselves in highly motivating, customized versions of video clips and computer games designed for social learning! 

Objectives

  1. The participants will be able to explain two ways to incorporate video self-modeling into social skills instruction. 
  2. The participants will be able to identify three features of computer games that provide a motivating learning environment for social skills instruction.
  3. The participants will be able to relate two examples of how this technology can be customized for their practice.