Name: Activity Trainer
Brand: DT TRAINER
SKU: Activity Trainer
Availability: InStock

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The Activity Trainer is a powerful software program that makes the research-based, effective Video Modeling teaching method practical for the classroom and home. The Activity Trainer is a versatile teaching tool that enables teachers to use videos to teach almost any targeted activity or skill – from simple to complex – and includes a library of activities with options to customize, modify, and create new activities.

Video modeling has been shown in numerous studies to improve acquisition rates across a wide variety of tasks for individuals with autism and other learning disabilities. Unfortunately, because video modeling is a difficult process, few of our students are benefiting from this powerful teaching method. The Activity Trainer in the first tool designed specifically to make video modeling easy.

Valuable Benefits

Coloring Triangles with Activity Trainer

First Software to make video modeling practical and easy for at school and home. No more fumbling around with video tapes, CDs, or DVDs trying to find a section of the video to play or replay.
Research Based: Almost 2 decades of research showing Video Modeling to increase acquisition rates for wide variety of skills for individuals with autism and other learning disabilities.
Activity Skills Library provides hundreds of videos with still images, audio, text, and worksheet resources to teach hand-on skills including Academic, Daily Living, Communication, Social, Recreation, and Vocational Skills. You will get many more activities that we create for the Skills Library as part of the free updates in the first year after purchase.
Unlimited Students with individualized videos and resources with prompt levels targeting specific student needs. The AT remembers where each student is on each activity to make it easy for us to work on many skills across a classroom of students.
User Library: Create your own activities
Data Collection includes automatic date/time stamp and run count of videos, provides for addition of notes, and allows for easy recording of results for prompt level required for student success on each run (Independent, Shadow, Gesture, Verbal, Physical) with choice of intensity levels 1-5.
Expert Task Analysis is built in to the activities so that teachers, teaching assistants or parents can implement powerful teaching methods with a few clicks of the mouse.

Activity Schedules can be created to help student use newly learned activities and skills in a structured visual schedule format. Schedule is configurable to meet student needs. Classroom view allows for students to take turns completing their specific schedules.
Add Your Own Videos to the Activity Trainer under the User Library under the Activity Library Tab. This feature allows the user to customize targeted activities for specific settings, procedures, and materials.
Help Videos are available from the Main Menu or by clicking on the Red “?” on each page.
Robust and Affordable: Priced as a cost effective solution for a wide range of students
- $199 Standard Home Bundle or $149 Single Student Bundle
- $499 Standard Institutional Bundle (Single Computer, Unlimited Students)

Powerful Environment to Teach Skills

You use the videos to teach new skills, and then transition the student to less supportive prompts like images or text. Prompts include Video, Images, Text, and Audio and can be tailored to meet individual learning needs and levels. The activity trainer allows you to play portions of the video, view snapshots from the video, view related text, and associate alternate audio instructions. The video, images, text, and audio can be changed or tailored to accommodate individual student’s needs.

Next Generation Video Modeling

By allowing integration of video, audio, images, and text into predefined presentations, the Activity Trainer takes Video Modeling to a new level of capability.

Simple to Administer

Once students are created on the AT, and activities are selected for the students, teaching skills is simply a few clicks away. No more scanning through videos to find the portion to play. The task analysis is already done so even a person not trained in task analysis (breaking down an activity into steps) can easily perform systematic teaching of complex tasks for the student.

Data Collection

Data collection features allow the user to track student performance. The AT automatically collects the activity name, the prompt, when played, and how long it took. You can add the result and any associated notes while the trial is going on or afterward.

Visual Schedules

Getting Soap from Dispenser Autistic Education

You can set up computer based schedules for the student to use learned activities. The Schedules can be set to allow the student to self-select activities or to follow a set schedule. Student photo image, icon, or symbol can easily be incorporated into the visual schedule. With the computerized schedule system, you can easily control how many times the student gets access to an activity and how many times the student can cycle through the entire schedule. You can also print off the images to do off computer visual schedules.

Activities Library

The Activity Trainer comes with a library of ready to use activities and one year of updates and support. Customers can download additional activities for a year as part of the purchase. We shoot our videos mostly from the student’s perspective which means the student does not have to translate the skill into their own perspective. This perspective allows a lower functioning student to learn the skill while also working for higher functioning students. We also model self talk which allows the student to associate the language corresponding to the activity or step. As of March 2008, the Activities Library activities were mostly preschool and early elementary level and included:

Academic: Coloring Activities, Copying Lines and Shapes, Activities with Clay, Connecting Links, Stringing Beads, Tracing Lines and Shapes, Sorting Blocks
Communication: Identifying Left and Right Hand

Daily Living: Folding Towel and Washcloth, Wiping off surface, Wringing out Sponge and Towel, Washing Dishes, Opening and Closing Binder Rings, Putting Paper in Folder, Folding Paper in Half and Thirds, Straightening Papers, Stapling Papers, Removing Staple, Getting Piece of Tape, Taping Rip, Open Re-closable Bag, Open Bottle, Buckle Belt, Button and Unbutton Pants, Snap and Unsnap Pants, Zip and Unzip Pants, Tying Shoes with Single and Two Loop Methods, Brushing Long Hair, Identifying Clean and Dirty Hands, Setting Time Timer from 1 to 30 Minutes
Nonverbal Imitations: Bouncing Ping Pong and Rubber Ball, Arms Up, Clap Hands, Touching (Head, Knees, Nose, Shoulders, and Toes), Sit Down, Stand Up, Turn Around, Oral Motor (Bite, Blow Air Through Lips, Kiss, Lips Together, Open Mouth, Pucker, Smile, Stick Tongue Out, Tongue Side to Side, Tongue Up and Down, Top Teeth over Lower Lip, Touch Top Teeth with Tongue)
Recreation: Positioning Bike Pedal, Stack Blocks, Finding Straight Edge, Separating Straight Edge Pieces, Playing with Toy Car
Social: Initiate Hello-Hello Standing and Walking, Respond to Hello-Hello Standing and Walking, Initiating Hi-Hi Standing and Walking, Responding to Hi-Hi Standing, Initiating and Responding to How Are You – 3 Part Exchanges
Vocational: Bag Parts

Build Your Own Activities

Putting Large Can in Bag Activity Trainer

The Activity Trainer has a User Library area for customers to create their own activities. Create from simple video activities that are just played in full, to activities that include predefined task analysis and transitions from videos to images and text. Activities can also contain one or more versions of printable worksheets.

Affordably Priced

The Activity Trainer is priced affordably so that it is a cost effective solution for a wide range of students, and not just the most expensive to educate. This is a large and robust package with one year of updates at a modest price point. Our pricing is intended to help make the Activity Trainer a standard package in appropriate classrooms and home settings.

Training

The Activity Trainer comes with training videos and there are also prerecorded and live web based training sessions available.

Pre-sale and Product Information FAQ

What does the “DT” in “DT Trainer” stand for?

DT stands for Discrete Trial, which is the primary teaching method in a number of behaviorally-based interventions used in teaching children with autism. Discrete Trial Training is used with Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) therapies.

In DT Training, tasks are broken down into short, simple tasks. A discrete trial is a single cycle of the instructional program. A particular trial may be repeated multiple times, sometimes in succession, several times during the learning session until the item is mastered.

Using the DT Trainer, a learner is able to work independently and target skills selected for her specific needs. The DT Trainer is an affordable, very effective learning tool that allows a child to learn needed skills without an adult’s direct assistance.

Is the DT Trainer based on Research?

Yes! The DT Trainer (DTT) is based on methods evolved by research and practice over decades. Computers are now powerful and cheap enough to make what has been done in labs accessible for parents and educators. From those foundations, the DT Trainer is being evolved by feedback from researchers, academics, ABA professionals, speech & language pathologists, teachers, and parents. Computers are a natural fit for ABA methods since computers can deliver fantastic reinforcement, are great at collecting and calculating data, can modify behavior based on settings and data, are tireless, and have infinite patience. Computers can mimic various styles of ABA, and can be adjusted for teaching preferences and learning needs. Since ABA methods use data to determine progress and adjust teaching accordingly, there is a record of progress when implemented by people or computers. By simply looking at the data, the teacher can easily determine if each specific student is progressing with the program. The benefits for the student can be initial learning, increased fluency, generalization, and maintenance.

The preliminary results show the DTT not only doing what we expected but in some cases even doing much better than expected. For example we wound not expect the DTT to teach a student faster than 1-on-1 ABA with a trained person and we would not expect the DTT to teach a student where 1-on-1 ABA therapy had failed. We now believe that these results happen when a student is uncooperative or inhibited when working with a person but does not have the same barriers to learning when working with the computer even if both are using similar methods. User’s have also seen initially untrainable topics by people, taught on the DTT, and then using the images from the DTT to transfer the knowledge to performance with people.

There are various research projects seeking to quantify the observed benefits of the program. Some of the results from the first studies should be presented and published in 2005.

For the research foundations of the DT Trainer, see our Supporting Research page.

My computer skills are not good. Will I be able to use the DT Trainer?

Yes! The DT Trainer was designed to be easy to learn. There are some adjustments available that allow the system to be configured for a large range of students and for some students that have very specific learning needs. To help you, there are descriptions in the administration to teach you about the buttons and other controls. Also most settings have a default so you do not need to change them unless there is a specific reason for that student. We have a great manual, but since most people are not much for reading manuals, we have digital videos that also show you the DT Trainer.

The DT Trainer is not hard to learn, and for the relatively small amount of time you will spend on learning the product, the DT Trainer will pay back that time by being a virtual teacher for a large amount of content. Most students, even very low functioning ones, can learn to use the program independently so you will generally not have to sit with a student while he is using the program.

Also, should you need help, you can call or email AES for support.

I have installed the Discrete Trial Trainer. Now what do I do?

The best way to get started is to view our online training videos. The videos total about 1 hour, range from 30 seconds to 7 minutes, and have a browse menu and VCR style controls to allow you to skip around, pause, and play the videos. The videos will provide you with the background on the methods used and show you how to view all the content programs and reinforcers and how to create a student. Some users find the DT Trainer so easy to use that they did not need the training videos, but viewing the videos will quickly get you more proficient at using the software.

Once you have viewed the training videos, you will then use the DT Trainer administration to preview content programs and reinforcers and then create students. Once students are created on the system, then those students will be able to use the DT Trainer.

Do I need a touch screen?

Although a touch screen is not required for use with the DT Trainer, it is an excellent enabling device for people above the switch level but below a mouse. The most cost effective touch screen is one for a 15 inch monitor. You can get one for in the $160 or $180 range. We recommend the touch screens from KeyTec due to their superior (will not fall off) design and competitive price. Go to http://www.magictouch.com/ and look at their resellers for the best price (look at the bottom of their page… “Where to Buy”). You need to get the “Add on kit”.

We are not doing a DT or ABA program. Can the DT Trainer help?

Yes! The DT Trainer (DTT) can be used for lead teaching, practice, generalization, or maintenance. For autistic individuals, the DTT has successfully been integrated into traditional ABA/DT, VB, TEACCH, and eclectic educational programs. In school districts, the DT Trainer is also used widely outside the autism spectrum with trainable, educable, and cognitively impaired students. There has also been some use with typically developing but young children.

We have made the DT Trainer configurable to accommodate the needs of a wide range of autistic children. We have extended that approach by incorporating universal design principles to support the low functioning child to a high functioning but young child.

Can the DTT help my non-verbal child?

Usually! The child or student does not have to have expressive language (speech) to use the DT Trainer. In fact the child does not have to have much receptive language either. The lower content programs specifically work on basic labeling and simple instructions. The DT Trainer primarily works on receptive language, early academics, and life skills. None of these program areas require expressive language.

Of course receptive language is needed for expressive language to develop and we do model a lot of spoken language through the DT Trainer. Occasionally, although not designed to initiate speech, some children will even speak when working with the DT Trainer. This behavior is probably because the trainer is not threatening to many children, whereas they find working with people intimidating.

As you know, however, every child is different and not all will respond to our software. This is part of the reason we offer the 30 day trial – so that you can try the software – the full software – with your child to verify he will benefit.

Do I need to register for the evaluation period?

The full DT Trainer will automatically run for 30 days without registration. You only need to register if you purchase the DT Trainer or need an extended evaluation period. If you need an extended amount of time to evaluate the product, please call AES at (803) 403-1336 and let us know how much more time you need. After the 30 day period, the product will continue to run except for direct instruction (version 2.0.6.4 or later). You will be able to use unregistered (un-purchased) installations to learn the program or for support or assessment purposes.

Can more than one child use the home version?

The home version does not limit the number of students/children. There are usually one or sometimes two target children, but many parents let their other young children use the DTT. The program can be configured to benefit the siblings and they provide roll models for our target children. The home version license limits use to within the family and is not for situations like a group home.

What do I do after the trial period if I’m not interested?

If the DT Trainer did not meet your current needs, please feel free to provide us with feedback. For example, let us know if you need higher level content (give age or grade range), specific content, other features, and so on.

What is a “Bundle”?

We offer several bundles like the “Standard Institutional Bundle” and the “Standard Home Bundle”. A bundle consists of the software, downloaded from our website, a license, and upgrades & support for one year. For more details see the Home and Institutional Pricing pages.

Can I run the Discrete Trial Trainer on a Mac?

Currently the DT Trainer is only available on the Windows operating system. Fortunately, computers are no longer 2 or 3 thousand dollars and can be purchased for as little as $400 – $500. If you need to run our software on a Mac, we recommend looking into virtualization options (see this article for examples: https://www.howtogeek.com/187359/5-ways-to-run-windows-software-on-a-mac/).

Our revenues will dictate how quickly we will be able to do a Mac version. For now, school districts are generally running Windows-based computers or a mix of Windows and Macs. Some districts are strictly Mac, but many are in the process of incorporating both.

To keep our prices low, we develop for the systems that most of the market have. The volume of potential customers with PCs allows us to charge lower prices.

Activity Trainer

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