iPod/iPad Week

My kids can't wait for next week because the entire week is going to be devoted to that amazing invention, the iPad!! October 23, 2012 is national iPod Day (because we need to have a day of celebration devoted to it) so we are doing a week of activities that can be found on the iPod/iPad. 

My district is great enough to talk about iPad apps at our speech large group meetings, so a bunch of the following apps I am going to talk about have been recommended by my fellow speech therapists.  Thanks so much for the recommendations!!!  Some of the apps I am going to try to use I have played with, but have not used them on kids yet, so I don't know how successful they will actually be.  I will write a separate post after next week to talk about which apps I loved and what issues I had.

So here is the plan:

Articulation/Voice/Fluency:

There are a couple of articulation apps that I am going to try with my younger artic kids: Articulate it! and Minimal Pairs Academy, both by Smarty Ears. 

The creator, Barbara Fernandes, M.S., CCC-SLP, came to the THSA convention last year and I went to her class.  She talked about how to use the iPad in therapy and showed us a bunch of her apps, so I made a list of them and purchased some with my speech budget.  I have used Articulate it! and I like it for my young kids, but I am excited to try out Minimal Pairs Academy to work with my kids who have phonological processes goals. 

Thoughts on Articulate it!:
This app is nice because you don't have to pull out five card decks to work with different kids on different phonemes.  You can have the kids say their sounds in words or sentences, and you can work on multiple phonemes in the same session.  The kids can touch a speaker button and the iPad will say the word or sentence for them to repeat, then they can monitor their progress by touching the green check or red "x" after they have said their word/sentence.  The app keeps track of their progress and then gives you a report card when you have finished the session.

I had a few issues with this app.  Well, not exactly issues, just things I learned the hard way because I am not really a "reader or watcher of informational 'how to' manuals or videos" girl.  I am more of a "just start playing something and figure it out as I go" girl (at least when it comes to apps).  So, here are my "issues":  in order for the data tracking to work correctly, they child can only say the word one time.  I normally have them say all of their words five times each to get as many correct productions of their sound during their turn as possible.  If you are using it for one child then it is fine, but when you have more than one child, it makes a difference.  So it is more of a speed thing for me.  I have them take several turns before I let them take a turn at what ever activity we are doing so that we are still getting a decent number of correct productions.  There is not an "end" to the app, you need to stop it yourself when your therapy session is over.  I like this about the app because it will go through the word list again and again for more practice, I just didn't realize this when I started working with it so I kept trying to figure out how to finish.  My bad.

Playing Games with Drill Bursts:
Several of my speech sessions are drill and kill so I let me kids use iPad game as a reinforcement for the last two(ish) minutes of their 15 minute speech session.  It is amazing how hard the kids will work for this short time on the iPad, but they do.  Some kids have even started requesting games for me to buy (Spy Mouse was one of those).  As long as they are free, I don't mind downloading them.

Glow Coloring:
The Glow Coloring App can be used to go over the speech man for your voice and fluency kids.  I just took a picture of the speech man and then wrote the different parts of the body in the app.  The kids think it is fun because you can change the colors and they can write on it as well.  You can use this app for any activity that can be written on. The best thing about this app is that is it FREE!!  I love free stuff!!

 Facetime/Skype:
One of my fellow SLPs had this idea last year when I did not have an iPad so I am SUPER EXCITED to try this out.  Use Skype or Facetime to work on articulation/voice/fluency skills across schools.  I have already contacted two SLPs in my district to see if any of our times match up so I can try this.  I'll let you know if I can do it and how it works. 

Language/Social Skills: 

Categories:                                          The ABA Receptive Identification-By Class app is a really great app to use for categories.  It asks the student to pick a member of a category from a choice of four pictures.  When they get it correct, an additional question (for them to list other members of that category) is asked.  It uses real photos which is nice and after every few correct answers, the app rewards the kids with classical music and a ball that they can move around the screen by tilting the iPad.  This app is FREE during Autism Awareness month (April) but it is $1.99 otherwise which is not to shabby.

WH Questions:                                         

 Another great app by Smarty Ears is the WH Questions app.  This app has questions to work on why, how, where, who, when, and what questions.  You can pick and choose what questions to focus on, or just work on them all.  As with all of the Smarty Ears apps, you can take data as you play.  I haven't used it with the kids yet, so I will let you know my thoughts on it later.

Prepositions:
 Prepositions Remix asks your kids to touch an item using a preposition by giving your kids a choice of two photos for whatever question they are asking.  I like how realistic the photos are but one issue I do have with this app is that after the kids touch the correct picture, someone else says, "You're right, that is the blah blah blah."  I feel like that takes time that you can be going onto the next question.  That might just be me though, I'm sure the kids like that much reinforcement.

SuperDuper Card Decks:
Super Duper has a bunch of card decks that they have made into apps.  I bought one last year because I had a student working on grammar.  The kids can play against each other by swiping along their name at the top to get to a new payer.  The great thing about all of these apps is they take data and are only $1.99 a pop.

Idioms:
A bunch of speech blogs have been talking about Phrase Stress recently.  It works on idioms, which I like to work on for all of my kids who have figurative language goals.  There is not really a way to take turns on the game (that I have figured out) so you can either have the students try to guess idioms until their time runs out or take turns per idiom. 

Opposites:
A great way to work on antonyms is using The Opposites app.  It was FREE a couple of weeks ago so I snatched it up then.  If you haven't heard of AppShopper yet, GET IT!!!  You can make yourself a wish list and it will send you notifications when they go on sale!!!  In fact, it is still FREE right now so get it.  Anyways, this app has the kids pick words that are opposite in meaning by matching balloons of what the boy and girl are saying.  At first all of the words they say will match, but soon the antonym to the given word will not be next.  That's ok, the balloon words will just hang out at the ceiling until their match comes up.  The words get harder as you go so this app works for several grade levels.

Paragraph Comprehension:
I plan on using three different apps to work on paragraph comprehension.  The Kids Reading Comprehension apps come in a level 1 for younger kids and a level 2 for older kids.  This app consists of short passages that you can read to your kids and then a few multiple choice questions to see how much they have comprehended from what you have read.  Most of the stories are non-fiction (which is great for me because I have a hard time fitting that genre into my planning mainly because I like picture books so much).  Another app I plan on using is BrainPOP (it's FREE people); this app shows short (non-fiction) videos and then asks questions about them.  You can pick a video from any school subject to watch that are narrated by a boy and his robot friend.  They also have videos relevant to what is going on right now for you to watch.  You may need to purchase some of the videos, but there are a few free ones in each subject area you can choose from as well.

Creating Sentences or Narratives:
I plan on using Story Dice to give kids prompts for expanding sentences or creating narratives.  Each kid will get a chance to "roll" the dice and then all of the kids will need to create their own sentences by adding verbs, adjectives, and adverbs to the nouns the dice show.  They can then share them and see how each child can create different story lines with the same prompts.

Following Directions:
I am constantly working on following directions goals.  Two great apps for this are Splingo's Language Universe and Auditory Workout.  Splingo's is great for younger kids and give you options of 1-4 main words in the direction the kids have to follow.  Auditory Workout gives you the option of following basic one step directions, or to become more complicated with different concepts and using before and after in different parts of the directions.  Before and after always seem to trip up my kids so I love that feature.  Splingo's uses cartoon pictures and after every few questions the kids get build Splingo a spaceship as a reinforcer.  Auditory Workout uses a cartoon pictures as well and the kids get to play basketball as a reinforcer.  

Cooking:
You can now cook on your iPad.  What will they think of next?  I have not used these apps yet but my fellow SLPs swear by them.  I guess I will find out.  I believe the first app was Cookie Doodle, but now there are a bunch.  Cake Doodle, Candy Doodle, Tie Dye Doodle, etc.  You get to "bake" cookies by virtually mixing together the ingredients, sifting flour, beating batter, etc.  Looks cute.

Emotions:
Kids on the Autism Spectrum normally have a difficult time recognizing emotions.  I found two great apps to work on those: Touch and Learn-Emotions and Feel Electric!.  Touch and Learn-Emotions gives your kids a choice of four beautiful photos for them to match an emotion to.  It is not as easy as it seems, some of the pictures can be very close to the emotion that is stated.  My sweet intern was getting pretty frustrated as we were playing with it today.  Feel Electric! has a a few games where kids have to pick the facial expression that corresponds to a stated emotion (these are more fun to play than just pointing to a picture).  One of the games, Pets vs. Monsters, has the student move a pet holding a baseball bat to hit the pitched correct emotion while moving away from the wrong emotions.  There is also a place for students to state their current emotions (sort of like an emotional diary) in the Moodasphere; and you can give them types of emotions to build on a Mood Dude using different eyes and mouths. 

Inferences:
The last social skills activity I am going to do is drawing inferences from photos.  Jenna over at Speech Room News posted a while back on how to turn Pinterest boards into an app using the Tapikeo app.  To get her tutorial go here.  I follow PediaStaff and they have a bunch of boards devoted to different internet pictures they have found that would go with particular focuses.  They have one for action words, facial expressions, and inferences (which is what I will be doing).  They even wrote questions that went along with each picture.  All you have to do is copy the pictures and create a board on Tapikeo and you have an activity. 

  

If you don't have an iPad, do not fret.  I just found two activities on Speech Room News that are iPod related you can use to at least bring a little bit of iPod day to your kids.