Okay, great. Thank you. Okay. So I will press the record button, and I will pass it to Shirley.
Alright, Shirley, you can go ahead.
Okay.
This will be the fun. Now.
I'm I'm sharing my screen.
But I'm not getting much. So it started.
So give me a minute. It's not behaving the way I expected to.
So I need to first see my zoom again. I didn't get all the links, I expect, and this vision is going to really slow me down.
Okay, that's okay. Do you need a minute?
You could start the we could stop the sharing just so that you could sort of maybe.
Well, it's the sharing part. It's.
I think you were over a keynote.
So if you click on keynote, and then is that what you're using as the slide?
No, are you? Are you seeing that?
Okay, yeah. So you, you were down there at the your menu.
And I can tell you when you get to keynote, and then you just click it, and then you say.
Okay, just a minute. When you know when you usually share your screen, you get a chance to choose the one you you know what I mean.
I've chosen my keynote. Let me know if that works.
Yup, that's great!
Yeah.
Okay.
And now you can choose play if you'd like.
Yeah.
Now, are you seeing the Major?
Welcome!
Yup!
Yep, you welcome.
Good good, because I have my large screen taking my note, showing my notes so I can hope to read them I do apologize whatever I've never been so long in recovering eyesight, but this has been a bad day, so I would like to welcome you all and my one regret is that we
didn't record. The initial introductions. I was hoping to have them on record, so I would remember all those people.
But anyway, welcome to all of you and England, and I know South America and Europe.
So it's great. It's the way blessed stand all along. So it's nice.
It's that way as I planned, the first hour will be devoted to the some history.
An introduction to bliss, symbolics, and the second hour will be more.
Some of my dreams, for where it would go in the future, and with the infinite possibilities that AI is bringing to it.
I produce the welcome in blue symbols are primary.
Welcome is of extending feelings to someone who is entering their home.
But I needed a special one for today. So I'm welcoming you.
To my thinking and thinking I'm what I'm wondering is, do you see my pointer?
No!
You won't see it, so I have to describe. Yeah.
No, we don't.
So the second welcome has 2 little circles like marks on either side of it, which is indicating this is a symbol that I have created for the occasion, and I'm welcoming you with an arrow that's going into my mind which is as an action indicator.
Over it. So my thinking so I welcome you to my thinking.
Today, I want you to know that it's my personal thinking.
We have lots of various platforms of view in the Blue Symbolics community.
And so I wanted to take credit, or or the responsibility at least for what I'm saying today.
So my ambition for and I'm saying Triple B.
It's easier than all of the the the ends with bought bliss.
Yeah, I prefer to do the ambition for the triple B.
So I'm starting with. My desire is intense for an outcome, and I'm not going to describe these symbols at this point in time.
I'm going to show them to you at the end, and see if that's they make a little more sense I'd like you to just look at them and get your ideas.
But I'll talk about them more at the end. I'm hoping for as many as possible for the capabilities of our bliss symbolics community to be part of Triple B.
My goal is to provide information to you who are involved or could be involved in the Triple-b project that will enable you to help persons who are non-specific, to express what's in their mind as effectively as possible responding to the needs of persons at different developmental levels
from different language situations with different experiential backgrounds, and for different purposes.
This is me, and I'd like to introduce myself with these 2 pictures, because these are what express where I'm at.
In my life right now. I always enjoy best interacting with a bliss user who has.
There's symbols in front of them. Usually a wheelchair tray, or it can be on a table where they're pointing, and where we have.
I do. I contact at all times. We're close in proximity to each other.
I can feel what they're feeling. As well as what they're saying.
We can share a joke. That's my coveted place with.
Us users. Now we have a lot of other ways to communicate, but this is my favorite and most comfortable, and then the other side of my life, since Covid, at least, has been in my little corner of a one-bedroom Condo, where I have my keyboard.
Behind me. I have a computer, and I have an ipad for making music.
And it's become a real obsession with me now.
Making videos and using music in them and spreading our words in that way.
I prepared for another presentation just the people who have influenced me in my life, and just a summary that I've been influenced tremendously by the colleagues.
The people I've worked with, and they've come from a variety of professions.
Most comfortable profession for me is psychology and education.
But I learned so much from linguists, technologists, occupational therapists, speech pathologists.
It's a wonderful environment I've been able to live in and I've had a family and still do have my 2 sons who are both in the field of Aac, which makes me very happy.
I lost my husband in 2,015. So it's been a long time now and then all of the users and family members of the users in the Bliss community.
I have a profound influence on what I do, and then my reading and some of the authors and mentors I've listed here just discovered.
Antonio and I have Bagotski in common, and that's always nice to find out who the people are.
Who've read the same books as you.
And lastly, it's the writing of Aac users, and there are there's an opportunity for you on the Vci website.
To visit some of those authors, and see what they are doing.
I did my thesis in, completed it in 1998.
I did it the opposite way round. I had my whole professional life first, and then studied for my Phd.
At the end of it, so I could ask the questions that had bubbling up all the time I was working.
I wanted to share the dedication with you, especially because it would be the same dedication.
I would have for Triple B it is hoped that this work will have an impact upon on.
In this case it was a reading instruction of those for whom it was written, and that it will be judged by them as offering both dignity and hope.
They deserve no less bringing dig dignity to aac users.
We have that in common, and hope for those 2 projects. And now I want to introduce you to the other bliss folk who are at this time part of the triple-b project are Margaret is here with us today.
So the little bit I'm going to say you can find out more if you want to ask her questions at the end.
Margaretta with her background, a speech pathology, but very capable in linguists and linguistics as well, has brought a great deal to the Bliss program, and she continues today as the Bci division director for aac and education.
Margaretta has this experience of having LED list, symbol, development group sessions.
We call them panel meetings and small group meetings, but in the Margaretta has chaired.
I wouldn't want to count how many, and has an excellent knowledge of the symbols that we currently have in our authorized vocabulary.
Russell Galvin, who, I hope, will join us up at some point today.
Russell has been involved since 1989, when he foolishly volunteered to do just a little work for surely ended up with many, many projects.
And is our link to the technology world, because also is into it.
Very, very deeply, and has a lot of background in the Aac.
Application of computers, and then anew. Waller, who, I had hope might make it today.
Analu has been involved with the symbols since the mid eighties.
She introduced lists to South Africa. Then she went on to do her studying in computer science at the University of Dundee, and is there to well, she's retiring from there today.
So has now time to join the Vci board, and we'll be functioning there as division director for the Technology Division.
All of these people love to share what they know. They all bring a unique perspective, and I hope after this meeting today, if any of you wish to be in touch with them, you can get directions from me or from Russell as to how to contact them.
Now I put a group of symbols here, and these are just symbols that I will be thinking about as I do.
This presentation. And again, I'm not going to give the meaning of any of these.
The breakdown, but I'm going to just read.
I want to talk about the purpose we have in communication with a little incidental knowledge about reading.
My knowledge is primarily with children, which means I care a lot about their development as they move into language and and reading, but I've also interacted with a lot of they are now adults.
So I'm interacting with them to this day. But we had some adults join us, and it's been fascinating to have their perspective as well.
We have the symbol for non speaking, and this is with the mouth, and what the most is capable of being crossed out, and we are trying to provide the.
Parallel, it will never be equal, but as close to being equal as possible.
I will be focusing on teachers, on the language, capabilities of lists, symbolics.
I value very much the time and the knowledge that all of you are bringing to this.
It will need all of our knowledge to do it well, and I wanted to remind everyone.
It belongs to the person's so it belongs to. Yeah.
The persons who are, non speaking.
I'm going to be asking questions today about the AI is thinking I'll be seeing what I'm thinking, and I'll be hoping at the end in discussion to find out where that takes the people who have the background in AI I have as my purpose.
Something broader than what our bliss symbol for goal is.
You can see the blue symbol for gold. It's a pictograph.
It's showing a ball into a net or some place where the ball lands, and it's a metaphor.
I'm focusing more on purpose than this type of concrete goal.
And I'd like you to be thinking about that as well.
I'm going to show you a an illustration.
That I hope is meaningless to all of you. It's has an old limit.
It has some straight lines, and it has a small circle.
I want to show you how, when that is broken down, it will have more meaning.
The oval with the 3 lines is a pictograph in our terminology of a 3 legged stool.
I wanna talk about those 3 legs as we moved through the program today on the top of it is the symbol for baby, the blue symbol for baby.
It's the thickness of its lines or not.
According to the rules, but I made them sick to fit into that image and I'm going to tell you where that comes from.
It isn't ho, so if that was the first thing you saw on it, take that out of your mind.
That symbol comes from a group of symbols that are based on the primary symbols of a flower which is a picture graph, a very simplified image of a flower.
And that symbol is being united with the symbol for little and the symbol for big.
The symbol for a little is half the size vertically, as the symbol for big.
They both have a little indicator over them which says, This is a description of something the we would say, an adjective.
But Mister Bliss called it a description. He got that shape from.
You can see my hands. Yeah, from the shape of a well of the, but it's of a cone that is an unwieldy shape, and Mister Bliss chose that to do.
You know that whatever we say when we're describing something is something that is personal.
It's the way we perceive that thing, and it's unwieldy.
He's trying to differentiate between that kind of symbol and the symbol.
That would be concrete and would not be acquainted with the one we can see or touch or feel something.
I'm bringing all these out because our challenge, just to make sure that we keep all the legs strong.
We want the learner to be strongly involved, and, Yuda, I thank her now on for always.
This is certainly the goal she has. This learner, and the user will be involved.
We will know enough about the language of the symbolics to make sure we deal with it responsibly, and then, AI is going to be the third leg in this stool.
I like that.
The symbolics. Historically, it had a an exciting beginning.
I think you would say Mr. Bliss for many years tried to sell the symbolics.
He sent his book out to many people around the world, many of whom returned them to him.
He did not have people understanding what he was talking about, and he became very strong in the way he spoke to people and described what he was doing.
I took this clipping here just to show how he would be pretty dramatic in his claims for the symbols we had a film produced.
And anyone who wants to know more about the man, Mister Ck.
Bliss. You get a wonderful picture of him in Mr.
Symbolman that was produced in 1974. It also introduces you to I.
Children, and we may see a little. I'm not, I may have a little twip from it, and what we're seeing today, the other source of the symbols that tells you about Mr.
Bliss a little bit is signs and symbols around the World, by Elizabeth Healthman.
It's available 2 for anyone who would like to see the beginning of a more rational description of bliss symbolics published.
And then the last book that gets into the nitty, gridy.
I've moved ahead quickly, but that is the one in the land of invented languages.
By Erica Orant, and she has more of our history.
Erica came to Toronto, had access to all of our correspondence with Mr.
Bliss, which was a big box, and went through it, and then described our history personally, are busy with Mr.
Bliss since 1971 is book cemetery.
So from we tried to find it. Starting in September of 71, and did not actually locate the book until February of 1972.
We had to work with just the symbols we could find in Elizabeth Healthman's book.
But I wanted you to see Mr. Bliss's aspirations.
Of logical writing for an illogical world. His dream was that he would bring of a semantic, graphic way of communicating, communicating that would bridge all spoken languages, and his dream was that this would bring peace.
I think we've learned through the years of how complicated that entire area is, and I only wish it were that simple.
I'm afraid it is not.
I'm going to go back to the symbols again and say a little more about the.
The bliss symbol component, which we call the bliss character.
It can sometimes be a bliss word, but not always. We've been using the symbol for baby.
Here's the symbol for a child. We, a baby is a child, but laying down, unable to set up.
And I'm going to be describing that a little more fully.
But the the I want to see which part I want to go to here the teenager.
It's an interesting one. This is the child between being little and big.
So they're right in the middle, and I think it's a great way to describe teenagers.
There you have the adults. Who's the flower?
But they are right from the earth to the skyline in height.
So, they're full grown. They're big. I wanted to introduce the terms of classifier and specifier.
Here we have the baby symbol on its own, when it follows the symbol for an annual, it's the specifier when it falls, the symbol for a bottle.
Again, specifier it follows the symbol for a carriage.
It's a baby carriage. If it follows the symbol for a room and extended room for medical purposes, then it's a baby clinic.
And if it follows this 2 symbols, or a person who protects, which is a a protector, or as once it gets a symbol for a baby child after it, we say babysitter but really we're looking at the semantic, and you always do, it's really the babysitter it's the person.
Who protects the child. And here's an example with countries of the classifier.
The classifier is country, the country with the maple leaf.
It's Canada. So now we have the classifier country.
The specifier is the maple leaf. Ireland is the country of the Shamrock.
Israel is the company of the star of David. Sweden is the country that has as its Logo, or the the 3 crowns, and the last one is the Uk, which is the Union Jack.
Here we have oops. Oh, I'm doing that again!
I don't want to going going too fast. The the baby can be adapted to make it.
The baby boy, and here we're taking the symbol of action which we'll see more about.
And the baby girl, which takes the symbol for creation.
Again. We'll hear more about it. So the symbol components are combined in many different ways.
Sometimes with a pictograph, and sometimes sequenced as a separate unit.
The meaning of the shape is critical, and that's what needs to be preserved.
The semantic base of the language is so important, and this is just to introduce you to an indicator.
We'll see more of them. The plural indicator appears over the symbol for boy.
And here's that flower symbol aapted to have the action indicator at the bottom of it.
And here are the plural indicator is added for boys.
Similarly, we have the girl with that creation symbol under it, and we have the plural.
You can find out all about the details of this in the fundamental rules.
They're available through the Bci website. We use the term pictographic, ideographic, and arbitrary symbols.
You've seen pictographic symbols. They look like the thing they represent.
Videographic represent the idea for the concept behind a symbol arbitrary or symbols I used to say in workshops, they're that way because Mister Bliss said so he chose that shape.
We've adapted it. We've adopted it, and it's an arbitrary shape.
But that arbitrary shape gets meaning as well, and it's important to distinguish these arbitrary shapes that have meaning from what our call sometimes radicals.
The do not have meaning, and we can deal with that a little later.
In the fundamental rules. There's a lot of attention given to the graphic representation, the way in which symbols are drawn.
I will not spend much time on that today, but I know you talk a lot about that when you're talking with Russia.
I wanted to just place in the perspective what was in Mr.
Bliss's mind as he was creating symbols which Margaret Beazley, our occupational therapists, discovered in talking with him.
He had this box, this square in his mind, and the square went from an earthline to a skyline.
He had the meaning of a symbol. Refer to this square. He thinks about the earthline, he thinks about the skyline and the meaning that he had attaches to symbols need those reference points, if you if you move them, the symbol itself and go outside that box or over it, or under it, you are no
longer getting the meaning that you should get from the symbol. No, also relating to this box is the indicator line, which is the line for all of the those adjectives or adverbs or descriptive.
Symbols, and you're gonna see? Quite a few of them.
They have a location with reference to the square, which is well, you can see it's half it's half the distance from the earth to the midline above the square.
Again. That's your indicator line, and they hang from that line.
In some cases we have symbols that for their meaning need to extend beyond the square, and when they do, they have it's called the tall indicator line.
But they get a new indicator line. That's half the space of the square above them, and then you have a descender line below the square, and again, it's for meaning purposes.
The whatever it is, is better described under the earthline.
And here's an example of well, that's the onion with the ball of the onion is under the earth's line.
And there's the the STEM of of the onion.
It's important to know that it's under the ground, and therefore it's positioned there.
The pineapple is a pictograph, and this pictograph ended up with some of it being above the skyline. Again.
This is an arbitrary decision, but there is meaning attached to it, and the meaning depends on its location.
Here and here's an example of a a valley is another.
It's a pictograph, but it also has meaning elements in it.
So it has the symbol for mountain on either side, and it has a pointer pointing to the valley.
He's doing. Rules were interpreted, inherited from Mister Bliss.
They've been with us since 1971. They are adapted to the way in which we've used the symbols in the 50 years we've used it.
But they are a result of our usage, and I think we need to keep an open mind during our discussion today.
How many of these rules apply beneficially to AI?
Some of I hope many of them will, but we need to be aware that they are rules that were developed from usage, and Mister Bliss gave us the guiding ideas at the beginning, and then we've adapted them through usage so here when you're creating a sentence with the
symbols. You have the full, square, you'll know now what I mean by square between the words, the bliss words in the sentence, when you have a a bliss word that has 2 list characters in it.
Then the space is a quarter of this full space.
I know much discussion is going on about the representation, and this is just the way in which we use the symbols.
Russell, and Anelu are the ones to talk to about how they get represented in AI.
I wanted to use this chance to just give you the background for the symbol.
I!
It's the first person, Mister Bliss, attach the numbers as we would do when we're speaking grammatically.
But he did not want them to be referred to as grammar.
So person number one is the first person. If I am number one, you, the other person is Number 2, and he and she are number 3.
The months get numbered in the same way. The month plus 7 is July.
The days of the week, Monday, and then there's some discussion about that, and there has to be more than one day of the week when they're numbered, because we have different ways of referring to the days of the week.
But one of the ways for this. If Sunday is presumed to be day number one, then Monday will be day number 2, and Saturday would be yeah. Sunday's number one.
Saturday would be day number 7.
I'm moving on to the way in which I find it very valuable to think about.
Lists, symbolics. And this is a term that was introduced in 1990.
At an Isaac Conference, and I think it's the International Society for Ourmentative and Alternative Communication that was formed in 1983.
It holds biennial conferences every second year, and at the Conference in 1990, Lynn Bloom, who is a Swedish linguist, spoke, and he introduced the term duality, which I've used ever since because I really liked it it's the
combinatorial use of discrete units at 2 levels of structure.
At the word level, where we have discrete units within the word which are the characters, the bliss characters.
And it's the second level is that of the sentence where the bliss sentence is formed from less words.
The impact from duality on communication.
Is that list symbolics can support independent sentence construction.
And it can support vocabulary development, and we're going to look a lot.
I want to emphasize a lot. The strategies which are listed there in blue, and we will look at them further on.
But I think the possibilities that I see in the Triple B is for us to make strong use of these strategies.
My thesis was on literacy, so I was very interested at that time on the impact of duality where bliss symbolics prepares for print in advance, because when children are reading print, they begin for many begin with sight words looking at the whole word and they're doing a holistic kind
of processing at that point. List symbols allows prior to reading the chance for them to do analytic parsing of words which is much more flexible, and offers many more opportunities for someone to read in a in a generative sort of way so having this duality within both the words
and the sentence have as great importance for reading, and anyone who would ever want to talk more about that.
I would love to do it with them anytime.
Okay, so I'm saying through guided use of lists, symbolics, the learner gains, expand, guided is the important thing in constructing words and sentences, thus applying the duality of a meaning-based graphic language in parallel with the experience in the language of their
communities. And there will be something a little later dealing with the complexity of language.
But it is its very complexity that gives it its value.
When children are using just pictures, it's like someone being stopped at the holistic site word stage of reading.
And they're not benefiting from all of the benefits that you get from being able to.
Analyze and reconstruct the parts.
Okay. There are in our early days we had a 101 characters today.
I believe it's going to be 1,200. There are votes that will be available in the Unicode character set.
We had a 101. We organize them in our teaching in a way that when a child was introduced to a symbol shape, we could also introduce them to the way in which that shape, with its meaning, could have strategies applied to it could have indicators applied to it and its meaning.
Would change according to rules that they could learn. I'm going to just go through these and see.
How some of them will be, I think, obvious for you once you're into the set of the way in which the meaning counts.
This the symbol? Here is the eye, the most, the ear, simple pictographs.
This is the legs and feet.
This is the note. Hello! I'm seeing a double line, and I don't know whether that's my vision.
But if you, if you do see so extra lines, I'm dealing with the greatest line here. This is a symbol for the the face.
And yeah, another symbol for the face. Here. I'm oh, sorry.
Sorry sorry sorry going back , and this is the symbol for the hair, which is an example of the pointer pointing to the hair onto head.
This was head, that was. This was a difference. I knew there was something there.
This is the head, and then we get the face with the eyes being added, and this is the hair on top of the head.
This is the symbol for hand, and I know now what's happened.
On this I took these screenshots from a film and I'm getting the the movement of the the 2 things.
You're seeing the the symbol. That is just preceded.
So, if some of these are a little confusing, it's just the shape of the hand.
You see mine? Yeah. And this is the second one is the symbol for the arm, the muscle with a pointer pointing to it.
The body. And where are we? Here we're standing, and we're pointing to the.
I need Margarita here. What's Cisa Neck or the back? Margarita?
I think it's the neck.
Okay, good. And here we have the symbol for bone being.
It's the way it's represented.
You can put the pointer to the hand and get the finger.
If, you can put the pointer to the R.
And get the the top of the arm and the elbow.
The wrists that would be, and the album.
The indicators are used in another way, and this is the smallest indicator shape from the symbol for a thing, and it denotes something concrete.
So Mister Bliss used indicators to move from the heart which represented feeling to the physical heart in your to represent the heart in your body.
The thing indicator was added over it. Here's the symbol for the mind, and it's taken from the shape of the top of your head.
You put the thing indicator over the mine and you get brain.
No, I'm having trouble seeing this myself. So the words are there. So I'm going to leave that to you to read what the words mean, for all of these symbols.
I was telling you.
It is a real disadvantage, not being able to see my own slides, but the activity.
Symbol it used in the man Mister Bliss described.
I have to tell this joke, because it's always appreciated.
By the women in the group. But for Mr. Bliss, and if you saw Mr.
Simbalman. He says the man is a person of action, and there's the action, symbol, activity, symbol in the symbol for man, in the symbol for woman.
He has the symbol for creation, and he would say that the primary feature for a woman is the ability to create life.
I always found it helpful for me to think of that woman symbol as the person of action, but with her feet firmly on the ground.
And so, when I was describing that symbol, I did it that way, and it was always appreciated by the women in in the audience.
Here's the much multiplication as a derivation for that indicator of plural.
That we looked at. It's also used in the symbol for possession.
We have ownership, possession, and then, when that follows a pronoun, you get the possessive form of the pronoun.
The symbol for 2 is used along with pronouns in order to get to recipient of something.
So in the object form of I, which is me is, you get to that through using that too.
I'd like those who are muted. Unmute yourself for a minute, but I'd like some guesses as to what this one is.
We've got the 2. So we know it's subjective form.
We've got the plural indicator. We've got the person number one.
So what will what will the word be for that one?
Us!
Yeah, thank you. So the logic is there. You just need to stay with the some of the semantic meaning of the symbols, and you will.
Then you're giving people the very best in bliss symbolics.
Here's the ownership and the positive and subtraction which also in its smaller form, becomes without.
And here you have the symbol, for I me, and I wish you're the one that I did.
It's there. So here we have person plural number 3.
So just another look at the Classifier modifier.
For a minute. The classifier. Here's the person it looks a person who gives knowledge.
For teacher, and I always discuss that one, too, because Mister Bliss use that for teacher, he for a university professor or lecturer.
He exchanged the knowledge. He didn't just give it.
I prefer that symbol for 2 as well, because I think it perjains at all levels of teaching, not just at university.
So we have the class bar being the person, and we change the modifier.
There's a rule in the fundamental rules that says you can do that without creating a new combined symbol, because you're using a principle you're following the rules, and you're able to create another symbol.
In this way, in this example of a person, and who is medical, and that's just replacing the specifier.
And here we have the building being the classifier again, and it goes to whoops.
I accidentally hit the most all the time.
The school is the building where you give knowledge, where we've substituted the classifier.
But we've maintained the 2 modifiers, and here again we've done that with hospital.
So specifyer, or modifier and callifier.
The classifier nearly always comes first, except for a few exceptions, and those exceptions are listed in these fundsal rules.
I wanted to just use a few symbols here for greetings.
Really important when you're doing.
I'm just gonna check the time here. Yeah, I've gone over.
But then we had a little extra. I'm nearing the end here before the break.
The breeding symbols. This is the using the feeling symbol, and this is the symbol.
For please thank you, and sorry. A feeling of being down about something in the past.
This is a feeling of giving when you're saying thanks.
You're giving your feeling to someone. Here's the use of the positive and negative.
The yes.
And the known. You're seeing a shadow symbol here again, and I'm sorry.
But this is the no, and maybe is being. That's question.
And here's the derivation for being a symbol for life is the individual standing upright and getting all of their energy, energy, and nourishment from the sun.
So that is the symbol for life, the small meaning. This is introducing the idea of big and little meanings.
This little meaning, for life is being, and from that we get the verb to be so.
We get.
See which ones coming first. Yeah, we get is first and then in the past indicator we get was.
And I don't know why we got through there, but for the future we've got the future symbol, and here are the time symbols.
A parabolic mirror, looking backwards for past, looking forward for future.
And right in the middle is the present.
I've just taking a picture showing how we might introduce one of the time words to a learning child.
This is a picture of the Moon River, that many of our this community know, because they visited this site.
The word for hurling point in print, moon, river, chair, dark trees.
We can do the same thing for just symbols.
And this symbol is the name that begins with H. This is the symbol for moon and river flowing.
This is symbol for tree, and then it's I'm purposely leaving 2 out for a minute.
This is the symbol for chair. All of those symbols are in the authorized vocabulary.
But when I went to do this slide they we did not have the symbol for Doc.
Nor for point. So I had to create them, and one of the ways in which I, just to show that it there are different ways that you can denote what you're doing.
This is the would be a combined symbol if we were printing it and putting it on a display.
But when I'm using this technology I'm able to show the grid behind it and say, this is something that I have.
I have written, I have created. It's an enclosure on the water for boats.
That's my personal definition, and I've showed the grid behind it to denote that in this situation, and I would explain that to anyone and hear the the point is part of the earth, the points into the water.
So that shows the.
The way in which you can use the symbols to create new information.
And here are both the list symbol and the text is there to bring it together.
The best place that we published, symbols that they could be looked up in more than one way by the text attached to the symbol, or by the symbol part.
Itself was in the book list symbols for use, and it is available in the digitized archives materials so you can look it up.
You can go through it. You can see the section that says, finding meaning, which would group all of the symbols.
By the way in which they relate to a topic.
So the body, for example, you could go to the section, find all the symbols that really to your body, your head, your feet, your body, your hand, and for teaching purposes that's extremely helpful, because the child's looking up one symbol in the and they're looking up the symbol for arm, and when
they're there. They see a whole lot of related symbols.
And you're teaching opportunity, is there? You're using that zone of proximal development.
If they are interested in those other symbols you teach them, and they look up one symbol, and they may lead that page with 5 symbols, because they were ready to take that information in in the technical world, we have 2 very valuable resources.
The one is the one that's most valuable for teachers, and this is bliss online.
We we learned the other day that you have to have a subscription in order to see all of its capabilities.
But they are available for people who would like to purchase it on in the the symbols online.
You have the different sections to work with, and I'm doing this from memory.
But we have the making your your own symbol chart where you're given a grid, and you're given the chance to put the symbols.
Your choosing onto the grid. You have a section where there is a of this chart of available to you and those 2 ways of doing symbols are good way of understanding how the symbol program developed, because in Canada we started with standard displays.
We had first of 30 symbol display, and a 100 symbols, then 200 symbols, then 470.
We had 3, 40, for a while, and then 400. We found that that worked for many of the children, but again it did not work for all the children, because some of them did not have the physical capability to extend their hand to reach what would be a very frequently used symbol symbol for I or mean so we
developed after a couple of years, a way to have this. The charts developed by the instructor.
We produce blank grids and books of stamps, and we produce the stamps.
Either. Color coded for black and white. The it was up to the user to decide where they needed the stamp to be placed so that the usage that student had could be made as easy as possible for them.
I point that out because different programs develop in different ways and there's advantages and different advantages to both.
Very helpful to the teacher. If it's everybody has a standard display, and they can tell from a distance where the child's pointing.
But for the individual. Who's that outline? They need the stamp and the blank grid.
An example of this is for this online, which I thought would describe something I wanted to share.
And this is the symbol in the Authorized vocabulary, for dreams is thinking and sleep.
To dream. But when I look up on my version of lists online, I forgot all of these paper clips.
They are the symbols that I've been playing with for different purposes in different situations.
And that's something I think it's valuable to maintain into the future.
I'm nearly. I'm near ready for the break here.
This is the only time since the symbols for use where you could look up a symbol by its component part, and this is in excelify.
So you can go to excel phones and say, I want all the symbols that have mother in them, and I could just copy a couple.
But any that any symbol said at the mother's symbol would be grouped and made available to you.
That was a wonderful breakthrough, and we all appreciated it so much.
Now an example of a sentence. Before we nearly finished this late start is showing the time here, but I hope it works for everyone.
This is an example of a bliss symbol sent sent to us by John James in 1984 from Cardiff White.
And one of his students. He was collecting examples of their sentences.
So this gives an example of what would be a very symbol sentence.
I want to know a question. I want to know what thing.
I want to know and so I'm reading the wrong one.
I want to know why the host why, in the house mother's upset this morning he's giving a pretty full sentence, but we still need to know a little bit more.
If it were a full English sentence likely in the house rather than just house, might have, added my mother, and if it was this morning we might want to want to have said was upset this morning, or maybe it was the house.
Mother, and maybe in a residence. So we need to have that kind of feedback which you get when you're talking to a child.
We need to find a way for that to happen when they're producing a sentence.
We have asked that the question be placed at the beginning of a sentence.
This is used in some languages, anyway, but it's not in English, but we teach that in order that the person you're communicating with is in knows their.
To process what you say, not as a statement, but as a question.
We do the same with the command symbol with. We're telling them to do something that comes at the beginning as a signal that we're giving a command.
And this is, I just put this one in because it's a nice example of the use of flying and if we're talking about between languages, it might be helpful sometimes to indicate slang.
Not just take for granted that when you say someone is sick a little like that example of Mr.
Bliss and the press. You need to have the background, meaning to be able to interpret that fully.
3. Examples from books as to how teachers use the different levels.
Of symbol communication. They used it as a single symbol, and that would be the earliest stage of less learning.
So there'd be a sentence in the book, but one symbol would be presented to the child.
The next level was what we call telegraphic communication, and this was in the book.
Something whatever can't read it. Oh, and here telegraphic communication, the important symbols to get the message across.
We're included in the book to give a model to the child who was at that stage of development.
And then the the last is when there's a symbol for every.
Word, in the, in the book.
And now it is time, for oh, I use the word break but I'm going to use the symbol.
August period. It's time, the purpose for the time is to rest, and I believe we're having 10 min.
Is that right, Jonathan?
Sure, actually, yeah, 10 min.
Thanks, Charlie. That was great.
Yeah, I do wish I could see everything I'm showing.
But never mind.
Yeah, I've gone way over there, but we had a lot at the beginning.
So I don't. Where we be closing at 3 on the I'll try to get.
I wanted to show some examples.
Well, we'll be recording. So people that need to leave at 3 can watch the rest of it in the recording.
Oh, good idea. Okay. I'd like to, because I have a few quotes.
I'd like to show.
Okay.
That's why I didn't recognize it as a back.
Okay. We won't put we won't put that on the recording, but it isn't.
No, I just stopped.
It's interesting. It is interesting. Yeah, okay.
So they were drawn differently.
There are a couple of interesting things I found, yeah, okay.
Of course, there are interesting things.
So is everybody back I've and is everybody seeing this?
The slide.
Yes.
Yup, we see. Welcome back!
Welcome back!
Okay. Okay. Well, thank you for hanging in. And what I hope to do in the next hour is, share some examples with you of the list community and things happening.
And people observing things. So the first I'm going to begin with music in case it's a couple of latecomers, so they won't miss any content.
But I wanted to play this piece because it is music that we've had since the eighties at all of our list games.
It was a song that was based on the poetry of one of our first list, symbol users, and those who have seen Mr.
Symbol man, Carrie Harrington, who talks with Mr.
Bliss in the film, wrote the poem. 2 poems, really, and they were combined into the song, take the time, and it's being sung beautifully by the woman who did the music part of it.
Nancy Givens. So I'm going to play that, and then we'll talk a little bit about it.
Oh, dear! Now I've got to find out how I make it play.
Oh!
Surely there's this weird thing in zoom that you have to check the box to let us hear the sound on your computer.
Oh, good!
I did that. Oh, yeah, I did that at the beginning. But this is not a second click.
Is supposed to make it play, and it's moving on instead of.
Oh, hear it now!
Take the.
Here!
My son!
To.
The.
Take the always.
Take the time.
And.
To.
Me!
Patience!
To.
Return.
The.
Take the.
Day to the.
Way, up!
No! My turn!
90'clock.
Spring rather than la!
We can, you?
Second.
A!
God.
Pray, the me!
To.
Tank, the James, me, the!
Change.
Day.
The.
Are!
The.
I hope, in watching that you saw the people on the stage behind Carrie, and they were all list alumni except for one, and he was a bliss friend.
So those who did not have this, for whatever reason in their childhood, have become part of the Bliss community, too, because they're friends of people who, useless.
And next I wanted to show you a short clue.
Oh, Stephen, von Tetchner, talking about the symbolics.
Stephen is a professor in Norway, and you know psychology and his.
He summarized some important things about this. I just wanted you to hear a little bit of him.
There will be in the future his entire lecture available. We're working on a series no.
I'd like you to hear the summary and overview that Steven von Tetchner's able to provide, and some very practical results that are being reported by Christine.
My name is Stephen from Tchnell. I'm a psychologist.
I'm a professor of Developmental psychology at the University of Oslo.
This symbol was more or less. I think the first system that we learned about everything which was picture like was regarded as easy, and if they were not picture like, was not regarded as easy, and a today we are using this expression, that language for action, and and I don't think we often forget that particular for the children who are
motoring, paired language is their best skill. What is A/C for?
Well, it's for communication, and and you know, we use the term augmentative alternative communication.
We don't use the term augmentative alternative language, which we could do, because the whole idea is that it should for many purposes replace spoken language.
You know, when we cannot use the spoken language, we do it in in some other way.
So the question is more, what can you do with it? I think the essence of it is that we are going to use.
Any system, so that the other will understand the meaning, and there are some inferences.
But it's the inference is not only from, you know, knowing the gloss you know, that is written on the symbol.
But it's to put the meanings together. And and and within this situation, and this is like, you know, in in spoken language.
But we have been so concerned with iconicity in this.
Is it? And can I recognize the meaning of this symbol without knowing the symbol system before?
And in most fields we would say you, you should know something when you have learned it.
And there we come to. The second point, in my opinion, is that we are so concerned about the speed of learning.
And obviously, if you learn something fast, it is also quite simple, and in language that might mean that what we learned fast has limited usage, you know, because it's it's it's not so complex. We have learned it easily.
And you know, if I'm a tourist in a country, it's nice for me to be able to say a few words.
Always get me good treatment, you know, by everybody. Thinks it's nice that I'm trying to say yes and thank you.
Ask for a beer, or whatever I might ask for in in the local language.
But that's the easy. The thing is that a also the spoken language takes quite a long time, and that is, of course, because it's such a useful and complex system.
We should not expect it to be first. My name is Christine.
I'm a neuropsychologist. The project I have been heading up the better life with lists.
We had a total of 8 children included. It was an intervention project, one part of the group was the sort of classical, if I may say so, please use the group.
And the other group was actually a group of children with speech.
But who had some of them, had a diagnosis of developmental language disorder, and they struggled very much reading and writing and sort of given up, I think, and we're disillusioned.
And I think, to be honest, some of the teachers for a bit.
The solution to, and all of those actually approved to, and all of those actually progressed learned to read and write, and had very much use of having introduction to bliss and learning the bliss symbols and learning it in a very traditional manner, using a lot of paper and pencil based approach where we grew the symbols
to together, and talked about what are different parts of the symbols, and how they were combined, and particularly also the indicators, for the grammatical functions.
In 2, 3.
Here!
Crossing and a me. Oh, me! The to break we're you are going to!
I I left that little bit of music there for you to see how different people are using what they're able to use to play music.
The same thing goes for communication. We need to go to what their skills are not.
Expect them to make all the adjustments to do what technology provides them.
So I just left that little bit in and I'm just reviewing again the impact of duality on communication.
It supports independent sentence, construction, and I would like to for this next hour.
Think a bit about independent vocabulary day development, making full use of things like the combining strategy.
But there are a lot of strategies that should be researched to find out how they can apply to bliss in with AI both symbol strategies and word strategies.
And I'll summarize a few of them. Now, here's an example of a teacher teaching the semantic importance of the way in which the arrow points.
This is for Rush, and she's whoops.
These 2 blue symbols allow students to gain a deeper understanding of language concepts, and the world about the and yes, and then I'm going to draw the water going up.
And I'll draw the water coming down.
Does anyone here know which one of those means, Ray? You do alright.
Is it this one, this one? No! Is it this one? Yes, good!
Nodding. There, Glenn, good talking, that's great.
Rain is water that comes down. We need to write the words a I pen.
We know that this is feeling you can help here.
Walter, this is because it's pointing there.
Does water ever grow up? That's right. Yes, it does.
Remember the steam from the kettle, tiny little drops of water that gives us our gradually they acquire an understanding of each symbols.
Basic component parts, and learn how they are using in the system over and over to form new.
Ideas and meanings, bliss symbolics is like mathematics.
2 added to 3 equals a new number 5. In the same way bliss component parts are added together to create.
And the next short example. Here is the same teacher.
With chain who was creating a new symbol. So just the interaction that went on between the teacher and the student as he was creating a similar.
Maybe you don't have what you need on your board.
Combine, because there is a logic to the way in which bliss symbols are sequenced. Skilled.
Bliss users are able to construct their own symbols and to expand the vocabulary on their displays to an infinite level, using the combined indicator.
This word. So what are you going to do? You don't have the symbol.
You need.
You're going to combine.
Make.
Picture.
With!
With machine. What kind of machine I want that flip smooth.
See what else?
Combined all that's it all right to make pictures with a camera.
Would you mean filming? Right? That?
So that's the kind of interaction that goes on when a the encouragement that's given to a child to keep giving the components until the listener knows the meaning that they're creating.
Here's a summary of some of the strategies that we learned from the children.
They, they use the. So we had to catch up with them.
Oh, the route for the the similar sound!
Similar is the small, almost symbol, and then equal, almost equal, so it's similar to sound is one similar to what you see is another and just similar.
Yeah, similar to the eye. So there are 2 examples in this excel of dictionary.
Some of these symbols are there, but we haven't envisced their availability and their value to communication to the extent that I think we could, and I think AI might give it the opportunity to do that.
Just thinking of the kinds of strategies that could be available through the sentence level of symbols.
We've in in the lectures that Margaretta would give, and in the books that we've written we've given, and in the fundamental rules we've given an ordering of the symbols that is most important for interpersonal communication, it's important to say, that
it's a question, for example, before you start. So those rules are they?
But there could be more attention given to the expansion from what the child is able to produce, or the adult musing gloves to.
A wide repertoire of strategies that they could start to select their favorite ones, and I have a story about one of our students.
He was in my class in the first year. Dave, who I was trying to teach office, meaning to, and I introduce the symbol for opposite, and it has a half of a narrow head going up and another half of an arrow head going down.
Explained it, and then I started asking him some questions. And we were also learning inside, outside.
So I said, Where do you brush your teeth? And he said outside, and I said, Where do you go for?
Ride in the car inside. He did the opposite. Every question.
I asked. He gave me the opposite meaning, and then laughed at me, and it was like, you know you didn't have to take that much time explaining that to me.
I got it. Yeah. So these strategies, I think, could be very valuable if someone could go into the program at the beginning and saying, I'm Buddy.
I'm someone who notes doing offices, or I do. The sounds like strategy.
Very well. They could have their own route to a wide vocabulary.
Everything. So in the sentence level, we do have the fundamental rules we have.
Mr. Bliss has a syntax that he suggested, and it's based on a thing acting on a thing.
And it's there as a reference. We did ours, and then I think, the interesting thing that you're going to be discovering, as you here bliss users in 2023 or the alumni.
They've done a combination of their own language background.
What they're hearing. Others say to them, and what they've been taught, and it would be very interesting to see which things different people have latched onto.
I hope that kind of questioning occurs in the triple-b, and then, in the word, level.
Of course we have the one that you've seen demonstrated.
Classifier, first followed by the Specifiers. All of those strategies that we've been talking about sounds like it goes at the beginning.
A group of symbols something like, How are you?
Goes in advance of the classifier, and then, of course, the combined strategy and the metaphor metaphor is extremely important, especially between language groups, and at this point I wanted to share something that's proving to be very helpful and useful to our blue sideband members and it's a program
called cordified. We we've started using this program because it allows a person to go to any piece on Youtube and get the cords.
The are part of that piece you can, once you get the cords downloaded, there's a bouncing ball kind of thing.
The square shows you where in the piece the the you know what cord you're looking for and we're able to play any piece that anybody wants to bring to the music time.
We're able to get the cords immediately, and then watch this bounceing square.
It is, and play with it, but we've been discovering along the way that there's ways to speed up this program to change the key, to change the volume of the cord.
So if you want it to stand out in what you're playing from Youtube, you can hear it.
We're seeing that there's all kinds. Oh, and then they have.
You get a reward of. You can see these badges things. They're mine.
I say, I've got some badges, but you get badges for playing a piece of certain number of times so there's reinforcement for your activity.
There's a way of sharing what other people have done, and then there's a human side to this, where, if you have an improvement of the program, you are able to write to.
I think they're volunteers, but there's people who are strong folders of cortify, and they're there to help people.
So a health thing. So as we're, we've been using this program, I just thought, Oh, wouldn't it be nice to have some of those capabilities for Bliss?
And this next one shows you they the way you see the chords.
And there's this black box which I didn't capture.
But this is where you can adapt the key that you're in.
It can be the key that you're in.
It can be Major Minor can have a 7 to the cord.
It's quite fantastic. So just a little challenge.
So I want to summarize a bit here. There really are not 95 slides by the way, I should put everyone's at easier. There are not 95.
They're my resource ones. But we had this team, and just to reinforce we had speech.
Psychology, occupational therapy. We have engineering myself, teacher, with bigtails, an administrator, secretary in those States.
You're needed one, and a linguist. We together created the program, and then it was delivered in the classroom.
And by the parents. And I think more and more today. Anything done in bliss will have to be delivered by the parents for a friend.
It will not be through the traditional school system, because it takes time it's that time Kerry was talking about.
But we cannot get teachers to come to a workshop.
We can't even get teachers for one student in their classroom for one year to the vote.
A lot of learning time on the web. So triple B is coming just at the right time.
I want you to know that there are examples of all I've been talking about in the formative evaluation study.
Which is in the archives so ways to look that up.
Certainly my thesis is on the web as well, and then I just wanted to do a summary of the ways in which vocabulary is developed today, and we're struggling to keep even near the number of requests that come in so this is we were in South Africa at this point we met all around.
The world, groups of people coming together and working on symbol development.
Here's Margaretta visiting Toronto after she was delivering some stuff.
But here's me with a small group of people in Brantford who will be coming to the Town Hall on Monday.
This was us, and I think where we were.
Pittsburgh, I think busy, you know Pittsburgh.
Here we are in St. Catharine's, Ontario.
Here's Margarita, the typical way where she has her large experience Chart.
All the ideas get put up on the chart. We all contribute what we think would be the best way to semantically spell the bliss word the English word end of this, and then we have to choose one.
And that is very disappointing to me, because I know there's more than one way to you.
Interpret many, many English words we need to find some better way that our personal way of associations that we have with a spoken word can be expressed to the person we're communicating with, and this was our group in St.
Catharine's a reminder of the people we serve.
They use every kind of way of communicating.
This was one large symbol display that served 2 people.
I made it for one woman in her residence. When she passed away she gave it to left it for someone else, and it got used by a second person.
The close interaction that we no longer have today. These are old pictures, but these kinds of interaction getting as close to it as we can.
As close as we can with AI.
It's important to remember we're trying to have the strategies to access spoken language.
We want to give as much as we can of the equivalent of spoken language, and I really think, looking at all the strategies and then making it possible for the individual to individualize the information for their strategies, for that's the way any kind of speed would be created by making their search easy and
I'm finishing with 2 slides here. One is my symbol for a B loose, and then the BoT.
I made a plan. That's that's digital.
That's independent. What I'd like to do after this one last slide is open it up for discussion, and one of the things I hope you would bring into the discussion is the way in which you would symbolize the triple B that would show your intent this is like, a hey?
Concrete a way of saying a literal translation, just plain old baby and list spot.
But I'd like to know your aspirations for it.
How that might be put into a list symbol, word that would be your way.
Of finding triple B, and my last slide is just something that I watched this last week, and it is a thing by Tristan Harris and Aza rascin talking about the they call it a dilemma, but it's a dilemma that they're very concerned
about. And that's when the AI technology does something not predicted by the developer.
When there's a huge change. I think of it as a on the computers. Part.
But this a new class of responsibilities that I think.
Given that whatever we're doing today will be a long time before it's finished.
We need to be thinking about that, too. So I'm going to stop sharing.
I hope.
No, I did, but nothing happened.
No, you did stop. We now!
Oh, okay, I haven't stopped for my, it's okay.
I'm not seeing you, but I will. I'll find you.
Okay. Thank you.
Okay. But to start with, I would like just some ideas about the blue symbol for Triple V.
Anybody, Scott, any ideas while I find you.
Surely you showed us the symbols for different forms of teaching.
Could you tell us about the symbols for different kinds of learning?
Well, I think it's the one standard is receiving knowledge.
But I would I would apply that, exchanging right along with it.
This is ridiculous!
Oh, I I know!
Stop playing.
Oh, just needed escape. I just needed escape. Okay, yeah.
So learning could just as easily be taking in and giving out.
You know the exchange? Oh, no!
You got other ideas, how you'd like to say it.
Oh, I did for me. I've been thinking so much about the different types of of learning that might inform how we try to re purpose machine learning in a way that's valuable for this community.
And so I had to think about it a lot more. But I would love a symbol that encouraged the learning symbol into the baby blisspot configuration.
But I don't have a good idea of what that looks like yet.
Certainly, the other person being involved, a community.
As being part of it is there? I think.
Yeah, and given the history of bots and chats and things, the responsible raising.
So a. The your last slide is to the new responsibilities.
This idea of responsibly, ethically exchanging, raising the BoT.
Right.
Yeah, that unintentional. The new things are occurring in their programming, that they didn't anticipate you know, that's kind of humbling.
Nothing else.
So we have Monterey with us today, and if there are any details, the symbol questions, you know, she's the authority on that.
I took. What bliss head and work with people teaching in Margarita worked with people developing the language and developing the vocabulary, and it was a a very active, I should say one of our bliss users that you're going to meet on Monday went to
oh, several, quite a few of them did go to the meeting in St.
Catharine's, but I remember a Lane drover had some contribution to make to some symbol.
They were developing and the pride she had when Margarita came back to the big group and said, and Elaine wanted this, and she persuaded the others. I think she won.
Didn't she, Margaret? Yeah. So it's really great.
When there we know they're capable of producing new list symbols.
If it's an easy, it needs to be an easy world that they enter in order to do it, and to be easy, they need to have input into it.
And it has to focus on their their strengths. And what you know, their background.
And then that has to be protected in some way, too, you know.
So it's so built in.
Antonio had a chance to talk with Elaine a bit.
Would you like to share your experience, Antonio?
Sure they have, thanks to Cheerley for this wonderful compact navigation entry.
Point for me I've been looking at many of the documents, and, you know, tried to learn, but I felt today in the classroom, and I kind of really liked that, and started to by association, and I guess, as after a while you I felt that I could guess an inference of
what you were explaining, and so yeah, so I'll say more other questions I have, or maybe topics. I would like to expand.
But if yeah, what the conversation? With Elaine was very, very interesting from the perspective of first standard.
Get to know her in that little you know, moment that we have, and it was surprising to me something I knew.
But I had to more confirm, and is how, although people with that don't have the ability to speak, they do understand what you're saying as fast as you're speaking.
So there is this expectation all the time to accommodate, especially from you, to to wait until she can elaborate, and sometimes she might have a lot of things to say, but for the sake of time, and I guess sometime for some times for the sake of a new person that you
are not sort of used to interact with. So she would say just a few things, and then repeat it again.
And even I realized that will surely help me to understand that she was joking.
And so things like that. It it was. It was very valuable.
And there is one thing that we, it is related to what Shirley was talking about about individualization and put it in context.
And so if we are going to bring all this machine learning that, don't ever forget that this language is usually, or it's most valuable for those that are using the language in a particular context with family members, with people, they know.
So it was suggested, at least maybe it's just a topic that came up with share.
This conversation after, and it's a some challenge that I thought, we will put to the machine learning crew, and is how to help.
Lane in this case, or any other, to tell her story, and in order to do that, what about selecting vocabulary, including family and home, or things, are for to their surroundings and environment?
And I thought it immediately on those sort of out of completions.
There are very familiar today with Google search or other things that oh, that's that's kind of even Gpt as a prediction of what it comes next.
But how we could think about those things in helping, and perhaps maybe allowing.
Last week we were so it this week.
We were talking a about refinement of this vocabulary language models, or you know what would involve to create something from the scratch.
But just I will leave here at the what if we are thinking also in a way of it, allowing users to even individualize and customize that bliss?
But whatever comes out with their own language, we don't context with.
The words are familiar to them, and well, I have a lot of more things to say but that or ask, but I don't.
I think all that other thing that was very important and came up today is that sometimes from the machine learning, I mean, I work.
I come from sort of philosophy and psychology background.
Then I moved to computers and then back to philosophy and psychology and carried a bit kind of going that circle where learning is for me the most interesting part of this project.
As a teaching tool, as a training tool, as a communication tool.
And and if you, if you come from, I think Shirley, come from from this idea of the son of proximal development, which is a whole cognitive space between what you can are capable and what you are not, and always scaffolding that occurs through people, and through tools.
and so I see I would love to see that too. Maybe I will create my own B. 3.
I call it not triple B, but B 3 for even more.
An icon that could collect that.
The idea of the scaffolding role of technology and cognition.
Maybe surely will help me to come up with the right.
Can I make one comment while you're gathering your?
Picking of that there was, yeah, yeah, I will say just that. Yeah, go ahead.
Yeah, so I would. I mean, this is just a tangential but there is this inclination to try to disambiguate or to predict in order to speed up communication.
But one of the things that you'll find is when people augmentedative an alternative.
Communicators, become more skilled in their communication systems. I'd actually is quite distinctive.
Because if you think about it as we write, and as we speak, we don't need to completely reorient and find out what is being predicted that takes us out of the thought process.
So while there, I mean, fluency is one of the things that we should explore, and another piece of the communication and the interaction is the the process of finding the thing you're looking for.
Pointing to it, and and determining that that's what you want to select, and I love the emphasis on individual, because there's this individual journey as well from being a novice communicator with some communication system and becoming a skilled communicator, and certainly when you become
skilled, it becomes unconscious, habituated form of communication, and anything that is coming is initiated from the outside is disruptive to that flow.
So it the assumption shouldn't be that that we will, that everyone will benefit from speeding up by disambiguating.
Not that I'm implying that you're saying that, Antonio, but just I wanted to put that insertion point in there to be cautious about what you think might be of use to a different individual, because some individuals have become very very adept at
and it becomes subconscious in terms of the selection of the vocabulary.
And that you should see. Yeah, especially as well. If you're using an indirect selection method.
So that the kids that you watched with the bliss boards were able to directly move and point to but there's quite a number of individuals that are not don't have direct selection, so they have to use indirect selections.
So they are hitting a switch which causes a cursor to move, which, and then picking a row and a column, and once someone becomes skilled at that, it's they're not watching where it is anymore.
It's just they know bp, peep! And there I am right.
But you disrupt that. When do you change the display, or when you have a dynamic display where things are thrown up as the possible next prediction?
Sorry. I just wanted to say that I don't mean that we should speed communication.
I'm actually terrified with these summaries.
By Gpt. 3. Because people just think that, okay, I just need to ingest this information quickly.
And and I think that's hugely problematic in terms of how cognition occurs, and the very timing.
Yeah.
And I just wanted to emphasize the speed in terms of the expectations in terms of both, but not for speeding up there.
But thank you, Utah.
No, I think Cindy wanted to comment. I see a hand up, Cindy.
Yes. Yeah. I put my hand up. I have questions. So when we use show your words.
For dreams for our dream. These were for dreams. You have like 6 versions of dream that.
I don't remember when I did all those, but I must have to say we're there. Yeah.
Yeah, for like different contacts, different environments. So what?
So I'm thinking, like, when you create a new police vocabulary.
How do you explain this to these users like a lot of example?
Is you created the word for dog. So which is like something floats under water for both.
So, it's still. It's a combination of 3 police symbols.
When you create this kind of like a combined word. So how do you communicate to other people?
What does this mean?
First of all, you tell them that that's what's happening.
You say I'm creating this, and then you give the classifier first.
If you've been taught how to do it. So I'm making up.
I haven't got a voice symbol on my board. I need to talk about adult, you know, in your mind, you know, you want to talk about a dog, so I'll tell the person just as Shane told Bar Grush.
He was. What I've forgotten now what he said, but he told her he got the idea of a machine and picture. He used symbols.
He did have in order to get the idea and it's a back and forth, as she understood what he was saying, he elaborated or went to another symbol.
But you're you learn how to describe the idea you have in your head, and then it's for the listener to think, okay, this is Alain talking.
She's from Newfoundland. She likes to make jokes.
There's a possibility that Elaine's making a joke when she makes this thing, you know, double meaning that kind of thing.
So, it it relies on the listeners. Knowing something of your environment, which is what Antonio and I were talking about.
And then being able to take your your saying your meaning, and I think this is a huge strength of the symbolics.
And it's where I viewer a bit away from our current way of developing vocabulary.
I think it's one way, but I think there are other ways of developing vocabulary, too.
That doesn't rely on a consensus, because we're relying on a group of people all saying, Yes, you know, we agree that we can use this way of of actually defining.
Yeah.
What that word is, and when you look in any dictionary you get more than one definition for many, many words, so you know it's a a thing for the future.
But I think there's something to be explored there.
Yeah, thank you. Yeah, thanks for.
I should. We did one little thing of although, and it's in one of our books I can remember now.
But where children were asked to describe the washing machine. And, you know, are more mature.
Students were able in their combined indicator, say, machine wash clothes or machine clean, close.
But we had one student who said, Mother has one.
Now, that's where they were, and that needed the first in their environment to say, Okay, your mother's got it.
Do. All mothers have it, or what room is it in, or you know, so you help the child come to something that's more understandable.
It. We felt it was a great way of doing it, and intelligence, assessment or developmental assessment, because it tells you where the child is at in their mind, and sometimes that is a satisfactory symbols.
Sometimes it isn't.
It's a whole area. It's not. Yeah.
Yeah, thank you. So. But when? But it also indicates that when we create a new vocabulary, there's a like logic behind it, and most of time it's contacts, dependent or environment dependent.
Yeah. No.
So yeah, this just makes me think like for police BoT.
So when police bought in the future, when police board can create some sort of new vocabulary.
Yeah.
So there would be some logic behind behind it that the bots learned from the past like symbols or sentences, and those kind of things so yeah, I'm just trying to make association train like a like the technology generated symbols with like human generated symbols.
No!
So, yeah.
My interjector. I what we're looking at is not for a blisspot to produce a new symbol.
It's for it's like the familiar facilitator that we're that we frequently talk about, or the like.
The family member or the the listener who knows the context.
Who knows the the known vocabulary of that individual, and how they've expressed things before, and is able to help to to offer the symbols that the person is familiar with and interpret the context as opposed to something that so when an
Aac. Communicators is trying to communicate something. Then it they don't currently have the symbol or the word.
They're attempting to get a meaning. And I think what we want to to do with this particular effort.
Using a the bbb, or whatever we land upon, is to be that same sort of facilitator.
Familiar communicator help in negotiating the meeting, and in the expression is, that is, that.
Just as you're speaking here to the other thing is our Aacu users know how to adapt what they're saying to the listener, and we have to keep that in mind.
Exactly right.
And the skill to learn, but they do learn it.
Yeah.
So I user will talk about from me. See for music, familiarity, kind of.
So do you mean like we? We also want to use this BoT to help people who use police symbols and people who want to understand what that person talks about to communicate with each other.
So it's so like, if someone types in lists, there's actually no way to types, any symbols into the into a BoT. At this point.
So. Yeah, so. But it's sorta like acts as as a like a facilitator for pretty simple users.
Yeah. So if you watch the teacher interaction, the child shows said Combine, which indicated to to the instructor that that they're about to make up a word, I I could see some form of interruptions like that where what we're doing is I mean
ultimately, when we don't want to have a BoT that replaces the committee that was determining by consensus what the what the correct symbol is for a particular meaning.
I think, to Shirley's vision. We want to open it up a bit more that there there would be like.
There are so many different ways that semantic versions of dream that there, if we are working on this dbb, that it would the most useful and functional if it were like the familiar facilitator like the instructor, this to understand the context, understand the the individual
vocabulary, and and the conversation that's being that is being participated in, or the both, the the 2 sides of the communication are the multiple sides of the communication.
Does that. That makes sense. Okay, sorry, Stephanie. You have your hand up.
Yeah, thank you. Utah. And surely this has been so instructive and helpful.
And I'm so sorry because I'm gonna have to hop off for another meeting at 1230.
But I just wanted to ask. I wonder if there's a way to think about the individualization?
At a really technical level. And I'm thinking about the ways that I have a Google Android phone that does.
That's swipe version of texting where you just slide your thumb on the letters, and it guesses where's your trying to create?
But for all kinds of privacy reasons, and for some technological ones, each person's phone is unique in that learning.
So the way that my phone learns to read and anticipate my needs in swipe doesn't get centralized in Google's databases.
It's federated. And each phone sort of learns differently.
And I wonder if conceptually we might want to think about that kind of radical individualization as a technical part of what we might be building, so that there isn't one bliss spot.
But maybe it learns in a sort of localized way to integrate with specific users. Or if that's too ambitious, I'm just wondering if that kind of individualization might be helpful, or if it would work against some of the other goals of the project.
Well, you've landed there on the dilemma of I mean, basically, if you have a disability, you're different. Right?
And more different. And so individualization, customization, personalization, whatever we want to call it, has to occur to some extent the other half of that coin is that you're also then more vulnerable to data abuse and misuse.
But the there are, I mean that. So that's part of of the discussion which I will include within the the message that was sent out when we were asking people for vocabulary.
The the unfortunate reality is that usually people with disabilities who require the type of assistance we're talking about have already bartered their privacy for assisted services and the privacy protections don't work so privacy to some extent is not as huge a issue.
I mean you are living your life often with a lot of strangers who do very, very intimate and private things with you, because you can't do them yourself.
So the the the notion of privacy is also very differently, contextualized by the lived experience.
So there is frequently a lot of external concern about that.
When in fact, it that's not the biggest priority.
It's hard to communicate that to people who are worried about those issues.
But yeah, you are right that we'd whatever we do has to have a multiplicity, a plurality of approaches.
It is not going to be a singular sort of thing.
Thank you. Utah. No, and I wasn't suggesting we may want to build an individualized spot for privacy reasons.
It's just that's the reason why it's done that way.
Yeah, yeah.
And the Google learning context. But it's very helpful that we might be thinking about something that learns in a sort of federated way on individuals, unique devices rather than something that's learning in a centralized way, just from a kind of technical approach.
Right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, no. I can see, we get from, yeah.
I think Margarita was trying to say something. Where are you, Margarita?
I have actually many more questions that I have. Yeah.
Yeah, we all we.
Well, well, yeah, I have a difficulties. Figure figure out what the result will be and what it cost.
But if you talk individualizing, and will this individualized process, or whatever grow with the person who use it, I mean, if we know that the concept development in a child is a developing process from Miss Shirley says the environment my mother has won towards a machine that can wash so
it's a definition of concepts that grew all the time.
And you. You will probably find that in a child. So the typical little child will just associate us to the environment or so for expressing something.
But but we have, I mean a system that would help. The child has to grow with the child, so it doesn't.
Yup!
Exactly.
So it doesn't keep the child on the on the low level which we think pictures does.
On that one question, Margaret. That's what we ask of the AI people to.
Consider how that could happen. That's what a teacher does.
So is that what this will do? Or, yeah? And also the yeah.
I mean, if you throw the whole thing open just in their mind, how much of what a teacher does and a parent we change the way we speak to our children across to what they are yeah.
Exactly. Yeah.
But if you.
But I mean we're throwing out all these things as our challenge to this huge AI world.
And some, they'll say, is totally impossible. And so they'll say, Well, there's seems to be a way that you can do some of that.
But the individual having control at every stage, either through their parent helping them.
But as they get older that's going to transfer from the parent or the teacher, or the supporting friend to the individual, and that they can go, I mean, pretend that the answer was that I have a I have your mother has one if at age 10 the child, said that was a strict way.
To say it you know and they can go in and change that.
They have control of. What's the route is for them.
That was the point I was, and somebody up in the top corner.
I don't know who it is it's got there.
It's me!
It's yeah. And and yes, part of that individualization would be the growing with, go ahead, Andrew, Nick.
Yes, and I wanted to resonate with what Stephanie said about necessity for individualized learning, which, of course, has been a strong theme of our work at the Idrc.
For longer than it's existed, I mean, Utah has been speaking of the one size fits one model that under pins everything we do and I mean, I think it's interesting setting that against how AI is traditionally experienced and built in in the commercial context that
it's built. And I think it's important for us to be able to step back a little and take a slightly wider view of how what we're doing is indeed a little different to the to the goals that but AI is traditionally set.
You know, as he was saying, you know it traditionally.
It, it digests its centralizes, it smooths out differences, it finds centers of meaning as opposed to assisting individual development.
Individual expression and contextualized communication. So you know, we might well find in this project for the AI, we develop per se is perhaps not the most important part of it.
So I think we should be just prepared for this slightly unexpected looking outcome.
Given. This project is sort of positions being about the AI.
But you know, as we work through these amazing conversations that Shirley, Antonio, Margarita, and others have with with bliss users, I think we should try to think of how we might start to distill what is individual about a list users use of bliss
symbols and I think it might be useful exercise to simply go through many of these textures resources that we've got, and just see, how could we effectively learn from from what is already there.
But at the same time, of course, of experimenting with with AI, but being aware that you know, as as Stephanie says, you know these ais traditionally meant to run in the opposite direction from the direction, we feel we want to run in, we don't want to
digest, to centralize, to smooth out individuality. We we want to create a structure for resources to follow, to follow the child, as Margaret says.
How, how could we imagine a bliss vocabulary following a speaker following a user on their journey?
Because you know the main thing about Gpt we know is, it's uncanny abilities to forget if we, have every interaction with it is afresh, you know, if and even if you give it the same prompt, it may not give you the same answer it may not even know who you are the second
time. And so, whilst there are some abilities as experts like David have told us, to find tune ais.
These are sort of expensive processes that can be done by experts, and I think we should give thought to to how we we could support.
We could support for the child that Margarita is talking about, who will pass through very different stages of being a bliss user from the my mother has got one or 2 to hit, hit, wash his clothes.
How can we assist memory rather than forgetting which is with which seems to be the hallmark of AI.
Jonathan has got his hand up. Yeah.
Actually thank you, Stephanie. Yes, so actually, mine is more of a just to go in nature on.
I have to bunch shortly to to another meeting. That means I will need to stop recording.
But you are all welcome to continue to converse and chat, and have discussion.
It's just that those it won't be recorded on video or audio.
So there is that Google document that could be used to record those conversations are encouraged to do that.
Sure, I wasn't implying you needed to close.
Would I close the meeting?
You could continue. It says that I personally need to need to hop off.
No, no, but I mean, yeah. But as co-hosts, couldn't we keep recording?
And I could close it.
Yes, I could actually. What I could do is I could stop recording.
I could give. Yeah, someone else could bring locally on their machine and pick it up.
Yes, let let me just stop that. And then we could try that.