TERRE HAUTE, Ind. — Bradyn Bennett stepped away from a game of bowling to introduce himself.
Using an iPad, the 9-year-old Dixie Bee Elementary third-grader pressed a series of buttons to form a sentence, which an app verbalizes for him.
“My name is Bradyn Bennett,” the program’s text-to-speech function announced.
The conversation came as Bradyn was spending an afternoon at the Terre Haute Bowling Center with fellow participants in Camp Bruce, a week-long camp for people with complex communication needs.
Children ages 3 to 17 are partnered with 22 graduate-level speech and pathology students from Indiana State University, giving campers the opportunity to strengthen literacy and sensory skills and providing students with a hands-on learning experience.
Seventeen children from the Wabash Valley are enrolled in the sixth annual camp, the largest ever. Arc of Vigo County sponsors and funds the camp, also supported by the Wabash Valley Community Foundation’s Larry C. Archer Memorial Fund.
Vigo County School Corp. speech pathologists Tracy Goff and Karen Oxendine have also helped facilitate activities.
Most of the campers use some kind of device, like a mobile app, to help them speak. The camp concentrates on augmentative and alternative communication, or methods other than oral speech.
“A lot of the kids are in schools where they may be the only one that has a (supplemental speech) system, so it’s exciting for them to come and see other kids that are talking on their same device,” said camp director April Newton, who teaches ISU’s augmentative and alternative communication course.
