Game Changers™ are off-the-shelf games played with an auditory spin.
https://www.ahplibrary.org/2019/09/23/board-games-are-here/
I love to adapt popular games and create Game Changers™ for auditory rehab almost as much as cochlear implant users enjoy playing the games.
Game Changers ™ are motivating and result in auditory practice different than contrived lists or online programs. They allow for real-time modifications based on the players' auditory skills and naturally foster self-advocacy skills. The game format encourages practice at home with family and friends.
Why Game Changers™?
Over the years I have frequently been asked for recommendations and protocols when providing auditory rehabilitation for newly implanted older children, teens, and adults. Questions range from adapting the hierarchy of listening skills for those learning to listen AGAIN to aspects of working with the teen and adult population and how it is similar and contrasts with auditory verbal therapy. My biggest inquiry is about the teens and adults who have worked on self – guided online and computer home-based AR programs and have fallen short. Secondly, some audiologists, speech language pathologists and teachers of the deaf feel underqualified and do not know where to begin.
I surely do not have all the answers but I have years of experience. I began working for CI rehab with adults in about 1896 and with kids and their families about the same time but during the clinical trials before the device was approved by the FDA for use in children in 1987. I think of the brave families back in the day to choose to implant their children. At the age of five, a little girl I saw for auditoty verbal therapy was the first child to be implanted with an Advanced Bionics Clarion device in the state of Illinois. Today this young woman is a successful business person living and succeeding in the hearing world.
More recently, I was a Rehab Specialists for Advanced Bionics, LLC and consulted as part of the BEA program. Out of this opportunity and due to a great need Game Changers™ evolved.
In 2016, at the AG Bell Convention, in Denver with the mantra “INSPIRING OTHERS TO DO GREAT WORK”, I introduced Game Changers™ at the “Inspiration Station”. Presenters shared favorite ideas, activities, and materials they used in LSL intervention and auditory rehabilitation. The conference room was packed as attendees flowed from table to table presentation. It was like a hands-on poster session or an old school Make-It – Take – It Workshop
I was honored that my Game Changers were given freely to all the audiologists within the Veterans Health Administration of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) in 2018 at their Association of VA Audiologists (AVAA) national conference. Valeri (Austin) Le Beau, Senior Rehabilitation Program Manager at Advanced Bionics spoke on the topic of auditory rehab and shared my resources.
In October of 2019, I opened Listen With Lynn™ an online shop with downloadable Listening and Spoken Language tools for Parents and Professionals. Game Changers™ are activities I have used successfully in auditory rehab. You can find Game Changer in my shop and I plan to add more soon. There is one thing to play games in rehab and an entirely different task to put the theory into practice.
Level 1 Battleship https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Game-Changer-for-Auditory-Rehab-BATTLESHIP-4987127
Level 2 Uno https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Game-Changer-For-Auditory-Rehabilitation-Uno-Card-Game-5079701
Level 3 Guess Who Soon to be launched
Level 4 Scrambled States https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/GAME-CHANGER-FOR-AUDITORY-REHAB-SCRAMBLED-STATES-OF-AMERICA-5149430