Talking with Tech Podcast Appearance(s)

Back in May, I had the wonderful fortune of recording with Chris Bugaj and Rachel Madel for their terrific podcast, Talking with Tech. They split the conversation over two episodes which came out in the past few weeks!

I have been lucky to know Chris and Rachel personally over the past years, seeing them IRL most recently at ASHA Convention in Washington, DC. It was great talking with them and the conversation flowed very freely. Rachel and Chris centered the convo around my Jeopardy! appearance but had many brilliant tie-ins to issues of accessibility and generally about language, so it will be fun to listen to even if you are tired of hearing about [that game show]. They also include their own segments with some great discussion of AAC topics, and we go into my FIVES criteria for evaluating technology resources as potential SLP tools as well. I hope you'll listen and keep listening to Rachel and Chris--also be sure to see them present if you ever get the chance! 

The episodes are available below via Spotify but you can also listen wherever you like to hear podcasts (Apple Podcasts, etc)

Clifford- A Dog's Life Activity

You may have noticed that the Flashpocalypse occurred at the beginning of 2021. Flash was long fated to disappear eventually and a number of your favorite websites or interactives would have become inaccessible after December 2020 as web browsers stopped supporting Flash. This happens, and is part of the life cycle of technology. We grieve and move on. PBS Kids, however, is generally cleaned up enough that you aren't going to run into disappointments as you search for interactive activities. I have been working to update a spreadsheet developed by Waldo County General Hospital in Maine, the folks there you may know as longtime collaborators of mine and telepractice mavens! 

The original spreadsheet was presented some years ago by Nathan Curtis in a session we did that many viewed at the beginning of the COVID emergency under ASHA's free Learning Pass. As I mentioned I am working to update it but that work is in progress (some links may not work). Please do not request permission for the spreadsheet, you can make a copy or download if you wish but that would not reflect the updates I plan to make. Click here to view PBS Kids resources spreadsheet.

Let's take Clifford- A Dog's Life, a game that has 4 parts. Emily Anne greets us and asks us to take care of Clifford awhile (character, setting, initiating event...). There are four activities we can engage Clifford (and our students) with including playing fetch and washing him. Looking at the language contexts for Fetch, it's a beach setting we can observe and describe, and we can throw different objects (function talk) near or far. Sometimes something cool happens besides Clifford retrieving the object, such as a crab catching it (WH-questions). The bath activity has neighborhood helper characters and spatial concept contexts such as needing to go high/low/left/right to rinse Clifford!

I'm all about the Pairing Picture Books with Apps/Interactives thing, so see this resource from Mindwing Concepts detailing how Clifford's books can be used for story grammar!

A quick "Mining" of Smart Exchange for Useful Materials

Piggybacking on yesterday's post, I just wanted to demonstrate a brisk look at Smart Exchange. We need not focus only on ELA categories in any material but can be looking also at content areas and consider a) would this activity be Fairly Priced, Interactive, Visual, Educationally Relevant, and Speechie/Specific, i.e. you can identify specific objectives you can target with it and b) what can you do AROUND the activity?

For example, look at Fairy Tales and STEM- my plan for a social group today is to use a book about engineering and failure, then use Google Slides to have them design one of the options and share.

Here are 10 more I found on just a quick search:

Spring Calendar- Time concepts and building the macro of time for executive function!

Verb or Noun

Adjective Noun Riddles - These two follow along recent research for later language development especially that metalinguistics is important. Not only are parts of speech a curriculum area but our understanding of them helps us unpack complex language for comprehension.

Dressing for the Season 

What is Weather? - These two are similar. Weather is always one of my favorite educationally relevant language areas-- it's so tied up in categories, description, time, causals, conditionals, functional decision making. Think about pairing with the MarcoPolo Weather app.

Animal Classification

Five Food Groups- These two are based in categories, essential to semantics and description, as well as science.

What a Plant Needs to Grow

Animal Homes- As in this pair, science topics can also be contexts for sequencing and sentence formulation.

Park Map Skills- Maps are wrapped up in our understanding spatial concepts and executive function mind-maps of space and its layout. Pair with the free app Beep beep Alfie Atkins for map-making.

Remember from yesterday's post, Smart Exchange requires a free account to sign in, you'll need Smart Notebook Basic (also free) and you can edit files as you see fit.

Sharing your iPad Screen during teletherapy

iPad apps can still be very useful in teletherapy even though you cannot really give cursor control. I discussed one workaround for this in this post using Bluestacks- an option you can experiment with. But since many iPad apps are Fairly Priced, Interactive, Visual, Educationally Relevant and "Speechie" (see my FIVES criteria info), and some of them are your go-to tools, there is still a lot we can do by showing them on screen (with the techniques in the video below, then screenshare in your teleplatform) and having conversations about what is seen, and having students make choices.

A reader and experienced teletherapist, Maureen Harper of GlobalSLPTherapy, put this very well and I am using her quote to me in an email with permission (she also contributed to a resource list I will be writing about tomorrow):

You are correct that using ipad apps limits the client from being able to directly control the app. As I have used ipad apps though, I have found them to be extremely motivating for the client to give me directions on what to do. They love being the "teacher". They have proven to be a great asset in expressive language development.

So, I'm not a great video-maker. I forgot even to shoot this in landscape, but it does the trick in offering a few updated options for showing your iPad screen in teletherapy. Email subscribers, here is the video.
For Mac: use the built-in free QuickTime application
For PC: Look at LonelyScreen, Reflector or AirServer (note these last two also work for Android devices)

ASHA Webinar Free through ASHA Learning Pass

About 3 years ago, Nathan Curtis and I did a webinar for ASHA, Apps and Web-Based Materials for Telepractice. It is now offered through ASHA's Learning Pass, which they have made free through July. This post serves to notify readers of this opportunity offering .15 CEUs, but I am also receiving a lot of questions about it, actually a lot of the same two reasonable questions, so I wanted to provide a quick link to those answers. Also some of this would be useful even if you haven't seen the webinar

The webinar being 3 years old, some info and resources are out of date or no longer available.

In the webinar, Nathan provides great information on how to use simple tools such as PowerPoint (see also Keynote and Google Slides). He refers to available quick videos (one created by the equally brilliant Amy Reid) now up at:

How to make authentic materials in PowerPoint (with several examples)

Using animation and making templates in PowerPoint

Nathan also discussed work that WCGH had done in task-analyzing websites such as PBS Kids, I also used this as a model for a recent post on ABCYa. A visual was provided as a model of how their staff did this in a spreadsheet. The spreadsheet is no longer available, and PBS Kids has changed significantly since then, so that many activities are no longer there. My suggestion if you are interested, you can view the list (please do not request access, File>Make a copy or File>Download to save your own copy), the links are not clickable but you can Google to see if the activity is still available, like this:

In any case, the list provides a good model of task analyzing to build a library of possible activities.

Look for Language Underpinnings for Any Web Activity- ABCya

Sites like ABCya are filled with possibilities when we stop and consider what makes them potentially "Speechie" (see FIVES criteria). Ask yourself:
-Is there an inherent language process in this activity (e.g. categories, cause effect).
-What kind of conversations can I have with students that are NOT prompted by the screen (e.g. a description, commenting)

Take, for example, Bandemonium:

We've got categories, naming, the potential to make sounds corresponding to each instrument, later possibly finding songs where particular instruments are prominent and discussing them, looking at the language of lyrics, considering the narrative of songs,  I could go on...

This site would be useful regardless of whether your could give remote (cursor) control by having students verbalize choices as you screen share.

Here are some other examples from this site:
The Calendar Game: categories of activities, temporal concepts, following directions, executive function
ABCYa Paint: Create a story, follow directions, draw vocabulary words
Input/Output Devices: Describe by function and have awareness of how equipment is being used in the telepractice process
Latitude/Longitude Treasure Hunt: Sync with curriculum concepts and spatial reasoning.
Make a Treehouse and any other "Make a" game on skills pages: Describing, integrating parts into a whole, pair with a book like in this case If You Give a Pig A Pancake which involves a treehouse, also see Create a Car paired with If I Built A Car (lots of opportunities for complex IF sentences)

This is just a sampling from the "Skills" page. I hope you'll continue looking at this and other sites through this kind of language lens for telepractice opportunities- I didn't even mention the specifically targeted word games available by grade.

Note: there are ads on this site unless you go premium but I encountered only one pre-activity ad while writing this post and it seemed one I would use for discussion (a cool toy).

On Technology Training

I highly recommend checking out a recent article published in ASHA Perspectives (yes, you need to be a SIG member, by which you get access to the unified SIG Perspectives journal) Technology Training in Speech-Language Pathology: A Focus on Tablets and Apps (Edwards & Dukhovny, 2017). The article is specific to technology integration in clinical training programs in universities, but the information is relevant not only to those in higher education, but clinical supervisors and clinicians in general. A few key points:

• The authors site many rationales for integrating apps in intervention, including "client motivation, streamlined data-capturing, potential cost savings compared to printed materials, and the particular intervention advantages of visual, dynamic, and interactive presentation."
• The goal of their work was also avoiding tech integration pitfalls such as "unclear paths to generalization," distracting features within apps, and focusing on implementation at the expense of client needs, as well as our field's tendency to utilize word of mouth and lay user reviews rather than more clinically oriented information.
• The article recommends that "students and faculty need structured educational opportunities ranging from explicit instruction to guided exploration of relevant technologies."
• It is noted that limited documentation is available on apps (at least within developer-provided information) and it is unlikely that studies will be conducted on low-cost resources. Consider also (my note) the recent death of hundreds of apps with iOS 11 and our need to always race against obsolescence.
• Through a process of pre/post surveys and an AT "open house" at the university, the authors describe a process of instructing student clinicians on available resources and provide a rubric by which clinicians need to request new apps be made available with specific detail on their relationship to client needs.

Overall, the article represents an important (peer-reviewed!) comment on the state of technology integration in our field and outlines strategies and the need for training within clinical education programs. Of course, like all of us I would like to see more research emerge on apps, but continue to think it is unlikely for it to be widespread given the reasons sited above (low cost of resources, cost of research, transience of apps and their discrete functions). I can see why the authors would feel the need to say that evaluation rubrics do "not substitute for peer-reviewed intervention research." An additional point I would make is that the use of rubrics should be expanded beyond app requests and be made less "optional" than within the context described, though providing workshops and app request procedures for students is a great start. Truly, education within each course area should include information on technology and critical app evaluation (see my FIVES criteria). A use of rubrics in this way would promote alignment with clinical expertise and client values, the other prongs of EBP.  The authors also briefly mention how clinicians repurposed apps such as Quizlet, and I of course endorse the clinical opportunities connected to these apps, as this is the primary focus of this website.

See it at:
Edwards, J. & Dukhovny, E. (2017). Technology Training in Speech-Language Pathology: A Focus on Tablets and Apps. Perspect ASHA SIGs, 2 (SIG 10), 33–48. doi: 10.1044/persp2.SIG10.33

Haunt the House

Many games meet the FIVES criteria for being highly interactive, visually supportive of language formulation, and geared toward addressing "Speechie" objectives such as categorization, sequencing, and interpretation of body language. Some additional factors I take into consideration are language neutrality (does the app work like a wordless picture book as a context to elicit language) and pace/timing (can the action be stopped by pausing or taking the iPad away for a moment to discuss?).

Though this is almost too late to make it useful for Halloween use (you can of course continue the app into the following week for "Halloweeen season"), I wanted to feature the app Haunt the House ($1.99)! Sort of a stepped-up version of Toca Boo!, this app has you act the role of a ghost attempting to scare people out of various settings including a village, mansion and train. The ghost can "possess" items in each room, prompting predictions about object function.

Using apps such as these with students is a good opportunity to target executive function and Social Thinking® applications around monitoring time and turns. My students yesterday posed that a fair turn would be 6 minutes! We limited them to 1-minute turns (with a timer) and then asked "how long that felt" to play or wait for a turn--it's plenty. The timer or clock can then be faded or facilitated for independent use.

We used this app with several pre/post activities:
-A mini lesson about "thinking with the eyes" and physical proximity (body in the group). You know you are being successful at scaring residents when they "notice" the object's movement with their eyes, and the best strategy is to move to rooms where people are present.
-From memory, I asked my students to create a map of the house, thereby targeting the story grammar element of setting and the executive function skill of mapping a space one is to navigate (see the work of Sara Ward and Kristen Jacobsen). I scaffolded by placing a few "anchor" rooms on the map so the students had a model of how to sketch, as well as a place to start.

Storest!

Storest ($2.99 for iPad), a superlative app, is one I have been exploring in therapy with my students. The app, from the makers of the fun Foldify series, simulates a store in ways that make unique uses of the iPad as a tool. Check it out in the video below:



Storest from Pixle on Vimeo.

The app works in two modes: a traditional drag-and-drop interface allowing you to shop in the different departments and pay with virtual money, and an innovative activity that requires you to print out paper items and money to play via a virtual cash register. Each item used in the cash register activity has a QR Code attached so it can be scanned by the "register," a great engagement factor for kids.

Storest is a nice app to look at using the FIVES Criteria:

Fairly Priced: At $2.99 Storest brings you many of the features of a (generally much more expensive) play cash register, and more. It can be used flexibly in two different activities and with a wide variety of age ranges.

Interactive: The interesting interface of both activities allows students to make choices as they engage in scaffolded play, and I love apps that bring students beyond the screen to interactions in the real world. In this case, the register becomes "part of the table" and you can arrange the other aspects of the activity (departments and products) to promote interaction among students.

Visual: In the traditional mode, departments are arranged visually in categories so that students can name items and work on identifying their association. The register mode well-represents a register and visually represents the items as they are scanned.

Educationally Relevant: Consider the following classroom tie-ins and educational standards that can be addressed with the app:
-Math, obviously, with the cost of items and use of play money for counting. This great set of cards can be used for following directions and math tasks.
-The MA Curriculum Standards in Social Studies include the following:
Kindergarten
3. Use correctly the word because in the context of stories or personal experiences. (History)- I find that an interesting one as an SLP!
7. Use words relating to work, such as jobs, money, buying, and selling. (Economics)
8. Give examples of how family members, friends, or acquaintances use money directly or indirectly (e.g., credit card or check) to buy things they want. (Economics)

My students loved scanning the items- note the clock and "shopping baskets" used

Speechie or Specific to clinical objectives:
-The app lends itself to working on categories and describing functions of items in a store, as well as reasons one would buy them and associations between them.
-Once printed, the "store" can be arranged in a space so that students work on Social Thinking® concepts such as managing one's body in a group, following a group plan and playing roles of shopper and cashier. I often note my students struggle with the sequence of events when visiting a store (e.g. when to pay) as well as the arrangement of the store itself.
-The arrangement of items can be paired with post-activities such as using pictures of real supermarket aisles and describing their arrangement. I take a cue from executive function specialist Sarah Ward and use such pictures to describe the features of each section; take the bread aisle, which can proceed from stuffing to store breads, flavored breads, rolls, english muffins, etc. EF can also be promoted by presenting real-life tasks such as buying items for a party, and monitoring time for shopping using a clock.
-Pair the app with a picture book for further context and narrative language development. A Chair For My Mother by Vera Williams is a good one, though I am sure you can find many others.

Enjoy shopping!

Pic Collage, Revisited

Pic Collage (Free from Cardinal Blue for iOS and Android) continues to be one of my go-to apps for all sorts of visual tasks. With it's ease of use, unlimited opportunities to help our students "see" language and social concepts, and again, freeness, it's just gold. You can read my column on the many uses of Pic Collage for ASHA Leader here.

I have also been very impressed by the developers' responsiveness to questions and concerns as an educator. They were very quick to clarify for me that the iOS Settings for the app (Settings>Pic Collage) allows the turning off of social features (which were also linked to ads) and videos if need be.

The app's Web Images search is a unique feature that allows us (and students, who take to the app very quickly) to build a visual very quickly. These searches are based on Google's most restrictive search settings; recently, I was working with a group of teachers around the app and we searched for all sorts of dirty words and found no results (something might slip by, so monitor what your students are searching for).

Creating Pic Collages can be part of a sequence of activities, as in the above example. Students interviewed each other to work on asking wondering questions, then added images to a "People File" (Both concepts targeted within Social Thinking® and specifically the comic book Superflex® takes on One-Sided Sid, Un-Wonderer and the Team of Unthinkables)

I recently learned that Pic Collage has released a Kids Edition, also free, which automatically turns off social features, so enjoy that without having to navigate to and switch off any settings.

Pic Collage has also added GIFs to its image search. GIFs (pronounced JIFs, so you don't seem uncool) are briefly animated, looping visuals--kind of like a Vine but shorter. This image format has gained popularity in social media because of its ability to show movement or more of a story.

I initially was a bit annoyed by the ability to add GIFs, as I thought they were too distracting, and I sometimes restrict doing so by directing students to go to the Images tab within Web Images. However, for language therapy goals such as describing actions or formulating an action sequence narrative, well, GIFs are actions! See for example this quickly-created collage of all the actions a cat might perform (note that you don't have to save your collage as a link but tapping on the share button and Share Link allows you to do so). When reviewing a collage in the app with a student, you can pinch out to zoom in on an image to make it larger and screen out other distracting GIFs. Note also that when creating collages that are designed to be printed, you should avoid GIFs as they won't print in action mode.

Thanks to Richard Byrne for pointing out this new edition of Pic Collage- his blog is a great one to follow!

FIVES Criteria Update!

I definitely missed out on posting this on 5/5! For FIVES, get it?

The FIVES Criteria frames this blog as a tool for evaluating the vast world of repurposable technology resources in terms of factors that make them useful in speech and language development: Fairly Priced, Interactive, Visual, Educationally Relevant, and Speechie/Specific to learning and clinical objectives. Over the past several years, I have been weaving this into all my presentations as well as a tool for people in our field to think about apps that were not designed for language development, but are nonetheless very applicable to what we can do with an app. I often say that it doesn't matter what an app does, it matters what we do with it--in the same way we use books, games, toys and other tools to elicit and shape language.

I was very excited to recently co-author an article including FIVES, and can now say that it is "peer-reviewed!" Dr. Kerry Davis, a longtime colleague and friend and frequent contributor to the ASHAsphere blog, joined me in writing Reading, Writing and AAC: Mobile Technology Strategies for Literacy and Language Development for SIG 12 Perspectives on Augmentative and Alternative Communication. As I often disclaim, I am not an AAC specialist. However, when approached about the article, Kerry and were excited to collaborate; her perspective as an AAC expert is that many of the same applications can be used to promote communication with or without AAC tools. As such, apps that are within our budgets, promote interactive choice-making, visual scaffolding, syncing with classroom curriculum, and specific speech and language objectives are discussed in the article, as is the FIVES criteria itself. I hope you have the chance to check out the article. My "Perspective" on ASHA Special Interest Group membership is that it is valuable not least of all for the access to the journals regularly published by the 18 divisions (and membership in one SIG gives you access to all Perspectives journals).

I recently also created a FIVES criteria worksheet that you can download from this link. I hope that this might spur discussions in your professional development meetings as you take a look at apps that might be helpful in your work. Consider great resources such as Yapp Guru, featuring both dedicated and repurposed apps, apps such as Kindertown, a guide to apps for young learners, and educational technology blogs such as Teachers with Apps, iPad Apps for School, and Smart Apps for Kids. Put these blogs in your Feedly app for one-stop shopping for information on new apps.

Happy FIVE(s) Month...it's one of my favorites!

SpeechTechie is Five Years Old...Looking Back!

Next week marks my 5th Blogoversary! This is always a great time to look back at how this blog has affected my life- putting me in touch with all you great people via these posts, and sometimes in person! Thanks for reading!

Again looking back, I often like to compare analogue or even "retro" tools to the tools that are available to us today. "Sticker book" apps- those that let us make a simple visual scene- provide a good example. I always ask groups, "Remember Colorforms?" I certainly do- those low-tech (and Farily Priced) visual scene sets were often given to me as a reward for enduring some kind of epic shopping trip as a kid. Apps that let you assemble characters and objects within a scene are often FIVES-Friendly- Fairly Priced, Interactive as a creation tool, Visually representative of language, Educationally Relevant to Curriculum Contexts, and useful towards speech and language objectives, or "Speechie"

I have pointed people in the direction of the Buildo or ClickySticky apps for these purposes but was recently pleased to stumble across the free, simple, but context-rich Colorforms Revolution app.

Check out the app and consider the following "Speechie" activities:

-Create scenes with visual contexts for language targets (pronouns, verbs, elaborated phrases, causals). 

-Structure action sequences within a setting or add an initiating event or "Kickoff" in Story Grammar Marker® parlance (perhaps an absurd element from another set, as these are accessible in the app) to develop narrative skills. 

-Analyze the scenes and objects for articulation targets.

-Screenshot your scene and then use the image (App-smashing) with an app that allows you to add text (Pic Collage) or audio (Book Creator, Screenchomp). 

Talking about the Weather

Having just dealt with a tremendous blizzard, I am going to be a stereotypical New Englander and talk about the weather. Again. Weather is a topic that naturally lends itself to eliciting language in our students as well. Not only does this topic pop up repeatedly in science curricula across the grade levels, making it relevant to the Educationally Relevant "E" in The FIVES Criteria, but discussing it requires a number of language skills:

Sequencing-seasons, processes
Categorization-seasons, months, precipitation
Schematizing/"Main idea and details"-describing a particular day's weather involves attention to features such as temperature, wind, cloud cover, and precipitation
Stating Cause-Effect- within weather processes and explaining why certain clothing would be worn in certain weather conditions.

A great context for eliciting and working with language around weather was released recently in MarcoPolo Weather (Free). MarcoPolo Weather is a "sandbox" app allowing open-ended play by bringing characters, setting elements, clothing and weather conditions together and observing the effects. MarcoPolo has here continued their commitment to developing apps that address Science, Technology, Math and Engineering (STEM) skills (also found in the MarcoPolo Ocean app), including, according to the app description:

-Observe and describe different weather conditions including temperature, cloud cover, and precipitation
-Identify ways in which weather affects daily routines, such as dress and activities
-Determine how weather affects the natural landscape
-Learn about the water cycle and how clouds are formed

Check out the video below to see how MarcoPolo Weather works. It's a ton of fun!



MarcoPolo Weather would facilitate a natural language connection to
-a concept map or graphic organizer about weather conditions
-sentence strips or other print contexts to construct causal sentences about observations in the app
-picture books dealing with the weather
-creating a weather journal with Evernote by stepping outside, snapping pictures, and consulting the Weather app for data

Stick Around: The Spectrum of Repurposing

Much of my efforts in writing and conducting trainings is geared toward helping SLPs and other educators see the potential use of apps and tools they might not have recognized initially as language-based. That has been the focus of this blog since its inception- "looking through a language lens"- even back when we were talking about interactive flash-based websites and webtools, way before apps.

I found great validation of my advocacy for "repurposing" in an article by Jessica Gosnell in the ASHA Leader in 2011, and consistently use this quote in sessions:

“A search focused only on a specific profile of dedicated apps (speech production, targeted language goals, augmentative communication) could miss many well-designed apps that offer motivating and fun learning opportunities. Using creativity, clinicians can reach beyond an app's intended target audience and purpose and adapt it to support interventions.”
-Jessica Gosnell (Children’s Hospital, Boston), “Apps, an Emerging Tool for SLPs,” ASHA Leader Online, October, 2011

I think as we progress in incorporating technology into our work thoughtfully, we are getting better at seeing these connections and potential uses of a wider variety of apps. Recently, I was presenting on apps for pediatric populations at the ASHA Healthcare and Business Institute and included a great recent release called Stick Around. This educational app allows the creation of puzzles featuring "stickers" that can be dragged on top of an image or array in order to develop labeling, sequencing, or describing in just about any context. As I was showing it with other apps that could be repurposed for language therapy, a participant asked, "Is this really even a repurposed app? It seems like language heaven!"

I replied, "Good point!" But the fact is, many in our field might not think to look past the icon and description (or even stumble upon it in the education category of the App Store), and it wasn't designed specifically for speech and language pathologists. So, while on the spectrum of repurposing, it's not such a stretch as using Bobbleshop- Bobble Head Avatar Maker for developing descriptive language, we all could use a push to see what a valuable app Stick Around could be.

Tony Vincent, an amazing resource on technology integration and the author of Stick Around (in partnership with Explain Everything creators Morris Cooke), definitely sees these connections between language and learning, and has presented for our peeps at conferences such as those held by the Center for Autism and Related Disabilities in Florida. He designed Stick Around ($2.99, very Fairly Priced and meeting all other points of the FIVES Criteria) to be a blank slate where educators--and students--could create these self-checking puzzles for learning in all contexts. So let's take a look at it.

Stick Around may first look a bit daunting, but this is just because its interface allows for such a large array of options and customization. I figured the process out in about 10 min, but there are also great video tutorials available should you get stuck. Though it might seem strangely dairy-specific, in the shots below I am showing how to set up a puzzle that could be used for life skills and executive functioning ("feature teaching" ala Sarah Ward). You could think up all sorts of other contexts for puzzles (In Las Vegas, I modeled a puzzle labeling the casinos on the Vegas Strip from a screenshot using Google Earth- you need Stick Around on your iPad to access this file)!

Start with deciding the image you would like to use as a puzzle (the app also has templates such as Venn Diagrams and sequencing frames). In this case, on a community trip to the supermarket, we snapped this image of the dairy section. You can also save an image, but just be aware of copyright should you plan to share your puzzle (see my next post).

Using the Stick Around app (see above the array of sample projects to spur your imagination- try not to be intimidated by how beautiful their graphics look), begin a new project.

I created a blank project so that I could use a photo background. Tap the + to add this from your Photo Library or other source.

Your next step is the stickers. These can take various formats (Text, Image, or Drawing Sticker). Double tap the sticker to write the label, and you can also add a description via text or audio (a great feature for SLPs). Arrows can be added as well.

Create your Answer Key by drawing each of the "regions" where the sticker, if placed or pointed, will result in a correct answer when the puzzle is played. Make sure your regions don't overlap. While creating the Answer Key, you will want to place the sticker or its arrow head in the correct region to link the sticker and its region, as seen above.

Finally, you can tap Play and try out your project in puzzle form. As a great example of continuous improvement in apps, Stick Around recently added the faces indicating correct or incorrect answers when you tap "Check."

When you are done with your project, save it (when navigating back to My Projects, you will be prompted to give it a name and save, or you can give it a name in the Info tab). The Export button (arrow into box) allows you to send the project to the Puzzles section of the app (from Projects) so that it can be played but not edited.

One of the best features of Stick Around is that puzzles you create can be shared with others who have the app. From My Projects I simply exported this one to Dropbox, and if on an iPad with Stick Around installed, you can click this link to add it to your Projects and play it!

So, what are your thoughts? What can you imagine creating with Stick Around?

As always, Happy Repurposing!

iPad Essentials: Window Shopping in the App Store

While recently conducting a few "iPad 101"-style workshops for educators and clinicians, including a webinar for ASHA available on-demand, I have been talking a lot about finding and getting ideas about helpful apps. I discussed this in a post a bit back mentioning resources including Smart Apps for Kids, Yapp Guru and Apps Gone Free, but it's also worth noting the "window shopping" one can do in the App Store app itself.

Although the information the App Store provides is far from comprehensive (I always recommend looking at app demos on YouTube before purchasing) and reviews can be quite skewed or unhelpful, it gives you a good visual "first pass" to new ideas. The App Store has also recently improved in its organization, which primarily is what we'll focus on in this post.

I use the term "window shopping" because the App Store is essentially a storefront from Apple and an avenue to display things that look attractive together-- collections! Upon opening the App Store, the Featured tab is an area that is a good idea to check out about once a week, primarily because Apple's "App of the Week" is always free. If Apple has singled an app out in this way out of the zillions available, you can be assured it is pretty neat-o, and many of the Apps of the Week are kid- or education-related.

Note also that the menu at the top of the App Store leads you to some relevant areas for SLPs and language interventionists. Tap Kids (and then an age range) and this will bring you to educational, creative, or game-based apps that may be repurposed for therapy and learning activities. 

Under the More tab, there are several areas to explore. The Education area has great curriculum-based apps that can be used to provide visual and interactive experiences with content...

...and includes terrific Collections, among them the Apps for Every Grade Collections- especially helpful for those who struggle to find relevant apps for Middle and High Schoolers.

The More tab in the top menu also brings you to the Medical category, which has many apps relevant to clinical work.

Exploring the App Store will lead you down new avenues and provide a great opportunity to hone your evaluation skills: which apps seem to be FIVES-Friendly: Fairly Priced, Interactive, Visual, Educationally Relevant, and "Speechie" or Specific to intervention objectives?

Happy window shopping!! Let us know if you find something good...

mARch: Play with Plants in Cactus AR

Cactus AR is a simple, free app for iPhone and iPad (camera required) that provides you with a context to engage students in "taking care of" an augmented reality plant. After downloading the free app, you can email yourself and print a "marker," a piece of paper that functions like a QR Code. Many AR technologies function this way, by scanning a marker that brings up an image- it's very cool and will give you a "wow!" factor with your students!

In addition to providing an animation (a funky-cute little cactus), Cactus AR is interactive! Each day you can check in on your cactus and give it a water mist and fertilizer- just don't overdo it! A meter shows you how much to provide:

Ultimately, Cactus AR is a simple use of augmented reality that replaces the messy process of having kids take care of real plants. In either case, they have an interactive and visual experience that reinforces the categorical (sun, plants, water), causal and quantitative concepts around plant life, a key aspect of the science curriculum. A good, though small example of FIVES- Fairly Priced, Interactive, Visual, Educationally Relevant, and Speechie.

Common Core Connection:
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.L.1.1g Use frequently occurring conjunctions (e.g., and, but, or, so, because).

mARch: Augmenting with Aurasma, Part 1.

In yesterday's post, I introduced the topic of augmented reality (AR), which can be used to add visuals such as animation, images, video and text to many contexts. We'll be looking at some stand-alone apps that do their specific AR thing, but I wanted to start with Aurasma, the app that was featured in yesterday's video.  This video showed Aurasma applied in schools to give kids a way to link, say, a bulletin board to related images and video.  Aurasma is actually pretty easy to use!

Note: Aurasma is available for free for iPhone, iPod and iPad 2 and above. This is because a camera is essential to the function of this app and many of the others this month. My apologies to readers with an iPad 1. This app is also available for Android, but I can't attest to how it works.

So, first, a context. Let's say you read a picture book with your kids, which I hope you do occasionally because there are so many skills you can build around picture books. What if you could then (after reading) make the picture book an interactive experience with the students, allowing them to scan the book to view, discuss, and respond to images, text, or video associated with the book? What if they could record videos and make these other visuals pop up themselves? They can.

In this post, we are first going to see the steps of creating just one "aura" with the picture book The Big Orange Splot, by Daniel Manus Pinkwater. The steps flow really easily once you see how it works. The Big Orange Splot is a great story about individuality. A man lives on a "neat street" where everything is the same. One day, a seagull drops a can of orange paint on his roof. Instead of just cleaning it off, he allows it to inspire him to make all kinds of interesting changes to his house. His neighbors are at first outraged, then experience the same inspiration.

In this series of steps, you will see how to make an image aura from Aurasma's own library of images "float" above a book page when the page is scanned. Specifically, through these steps a seagull "aura" is accessed when the book's cover is scanned. What could you do with that? It sure is a fun way to prompt retelling and understanding of an initiating event in a narrative. You can think of doing the same type of thing for another visual material, such as a printed or drawn picture, a poster, a flashcard, etc...

When you open Aurasma the camera will be activated:

Give it a try! These 8 steps seem like a lot at first, but you'll see they are a quick, logical series after practicing a few times. 

See my other posts detailing other features of Aurasma:

-Part 2: Augmenting visuals with your own images/video

-Part 3: Making text "auras"

Oh, and by the way, there's a Common Core Connection:

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.SL.2.2 Recount or describe key ideas or details from a text read aloud or information presented orally or through other media.

3rd Birthday and New FIVES Booklet!

SpeechTechie is 3 years old today! I am always amazed that this blog I started kind of on a whim has changed my life so much.  Thank you all for sticking with me! I was telling my other half that my blogoversary was coming up and asked, "How long do you think it has been?" The answer I received: "10 years." LOL!

Photo licensed for reuse by Soapylovedeb on Flickr

To celebrate, today I am releasing an update on my original FIVES Criteria booklet.  The FIVES criteria, a model evaluating technology for use in interventions, is one of the central themes of this blog and the presentations I have made. It is meant as a filtering tool for all professionals working in special education, in order to look at all of the wonderful resources available to us and decide if they could provide contexts for intervention according to the criteria of Fairly Priced, Interactive, Visual, Educationally Relevant, and Speechie (hence, FIVES). This model has changed with our shift from web platforms to mobile apps, and the new booklet describes how to look critically and reasonably at "Fairly Priced" and make your own decisions.  There are also new examples for the I, V, E, and S. I am really excited to share it, as I have been working on it for a few months!

There are two ways to access the booklet.

Particularly if you are on an iPad, you may want to use the Dropbox link (no Dropbox sign-in needed).
-Tap the link
-Tap download
-Then tap the center of your screen and, if you have iBooks installed, you can tap Open in... and select iBooks
-The document will be saved to your iBooks and you can zoom in and read all you like.

You should also be able to download and print from that link, or, if you have trouble, it is embedded below. You can also click through and download/print from Scribd on a laptop or desktop. Email subscribers- please click through from your email to the post for this.

FIVES Criteria: For Evaluation and Selection of Technology Resources in Speech-Language (and Other) Interve... by speechtechie

Enjoy!

A Great Group of SLPs' and Educators' thoughts on FIVES

A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to present a day-long workshop for the EDCO (Greater Boston) Collaborative about using interactive technologies in speech and language interventions.  One of the main ideas as always was that language skill-building opportunities and contexts are everywhere if you know how to look for them.  After reviewing the FIVES criteria as a framework, the participants spent some time "mining" a site that features many many many interactive resources, looking for nuggets of gold.  The site we used was the Utah Education Network- click on the "Student Interactives" links on the left.  The UEN is a great page to bookmark and mine for curriculum-based "Speechie" interactives across all grade levels and abilities.

As the peeps in attendance "mined" the site, we used Wallwisher to share ideas.  Wallwisher is a simple resource for collecting information from a lot of people!  I thought it would be fun to share the results here (feel free to interact with the wall by moving posts around so you can see them, also you can click through to the Wallwisher site):
  Thanks to all the participants for sharing your great ideas!

The FIVES Booklet

Blog posts are kind of ethereal- they are there in the feed for awhile and then buried under a series of "older entries" clicks or somewhere in the Labels cloud, or your bookmarks, or where ever.  I wanted to do something a bit more permanent with my posts on the FIVES criteria for selecting good tech resources, as that whole schema is pretty much a unifying statement for this site and my work as a whole.  So, I have compiled these posts, originally published on the ADVANCE Speech in the Schools Blog, along with some new graphics I made on my iPad (fun!) and some NEW content and resources (see especially Appendix I, which has 5 resources you might not have heard about that are good examples of the FIVES criteria).  This booklet is going to live permanently on a new page I have created up in the top menu bar, called "The FIVES Criteria for Tech and..." the "and..." teasing something else I am excited to put up there starting on Saturday!

The FIVES booklet is available to you for free on Scribd, where you can view or download it (and print if you like).  Hope it's helpful!  Here it is embedded below:

Fives Booklet