A good app to take self-data

Streaks is an award-winning app (Apple Design Awards) that allows you to keep track of up to 12 good habits/intentions and simply mark on the calendar when you have completed the task (e.g. read for 15 min). The app is designed for the "don't break the chain" concept, but you can indicate how often you intend the habit to be completed so that you still construct a streak.

This type of app would be helpful for us as clinicians who need to practice self-care routines in the New Year (decade). It also would be a tool for use with older clients who may need to practice speech exercises or positive social/language activities.

The same principles could be enacted using Google Calendar as a (free) data-taking tool; the benefits here would include the ability to add more text/data for tracking.

Happy New Year!

Considering your professional development schedule? Check out Sean's offerings for training sessions.

Teaching in Social Media Contexts

Social Media is part of life--and a good context for targeting social cognition and narrative language. In general, social media is now one context for us all to be sharing our stories through words and pictures, and also is a way we send messages about ourselves and interact around them. Of course this should be self-monitored; I've shared with my students that I set an intention of at least 2 hours daily in which I don't look at Facebook or Instagram (if you have a goal, you need a measurable action plan). Don't always make it, but I'm trying.

A few contexts in which I have used social media in the last several months:

GCF Learn Free has great simple tutorials on social media outlets. These are good if you are working with individuals who want to begin to use social media as an interactive outlet (learning more about others and making connections).

Related to this, I have been working with a wonderful SLP who uses Instagram photos (mine and many others) to help students "get the story" (situational awareness) implied by a photo, make inferences about relationships depicted in photos, etc. Identifying a few resources you can use with students (screenshot, perhaps, instead of showing them your feed) make for great lessons. These students have also stepped into sharing on Instagram with parental guidance.

There are a number of good resources you can use to make mock text conversations, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat posts. These can be great for presenting narratives and exploring expected and unexpected social media behaviors. Just google and you'll find ones like Status Clone- they produce an image of a fake interaction that you can use in an activity. ClassTools.net also has student-friendly versions of these for you to use for co-creation (see their FakeBook, Twister and SMS Generator).

Here's an example (note: that's not an actual spoiler). 

On iPad, I haven't always found similar tools. Social Dummy performs similar functions but I would never use it in front of students because of its horrible name (Dummy meaning fake, not in the way it might be interpreted)! You can use this app to make teaching images saved to your photos app, however. A recent free tool is Texting Story Chat Maker, which allows you to make a dynamic video of a text conversation unfolding. These are additionally good contexts in which to explore the use of emoji, which are easily accessible on mobile devices.

Make a "BIG" Visual Support

Visual supports are key to our work. A takeaway I always emphasize in my workshops is that we can use technology in simple ways to engage. Fact is, a visual support displayed via a screen as opposed to a piece of paper has a cool, glowing factor we can't dismiss.

Make it Big is a simple, free app for iPad that allows you to type in a message so that it is displayed in color and, naturally, big. Bigly if you want to go there.

Make it Big is therefore a tool for:

-Displaying a strategy to be targeted in a session

-Emphasizing a vocabulary word

-Presenting articulation targets

-Conversational repair/AAC for those with intelligibility issues.

At times the simplest tools can have a "big" impact.

More on mapping expository texts through tech, Part 3

In the past several posts I have been discussing resources for visually mapping expository (and by extension, narrative) topics. In the last post I outlined the use of Kidspiration's Super Grouper feature for sorting ideas into categories--it can also be used for sequencing. Kidspiration and its older brother Inspiration (again free to try, $9.99 for full app, also available for Mac or PC and even on the web) are better known for their mind-mapping or diagramming features. Like Popplet (described in this post), these apps can be used to create graphic organizers showing the connection between different ideas. Unlike Popplet, however, the text within the idea bubbles can be exported to other apps so students can see planning activities as being helpful toward actually getting their writing done.

In Kidspiration, create diagram activities by selecting Diagram from the home screen. It's fairly self explanatory to map connections between pictures and symbols using this feature. The diagram can be used to create a discussion web as displayed below. Discussion webs in language intervention are discussed in Hoggan & Strong's excellent article The Magic of Once Upon a Time: Narrative Teaching Strategies (and also this "how to"), which has served as an inspiration for my "Pairing Picture Books with Apps" presentations. A number of other narrative teaching visuals demonstrated in the article can also be created with Kidspiration and Inspiration.

Inspiration in all its versions is particularly appropriate for upper elementary through adult learners, and is often recommended as an Assistive Technology (AT) tool. Inspiration shares many of the features of Kidspiration including the picture library, ability to add photos, and helpful templates; Inspiration does not have the Super Grouper feature described in the last post.

Both Kidspiration and Inspiration allow you to create a graphic organizer with students and export the contents in outline form to a word processor, thus bringing the initial planning work to a place that it can be continued (e.g. a word processor such as Pages, Word, or Google Docs). The blank-slate nature of these apps as well as the availability of connecting bubbles and arrows make it ideal for instruction in the methodology of using expository text structures to plan writing and show the flow of ideas in a topic--making these both comprehension and expression tools. See Teresa Ukrainetz' Strategic Intervention for Expository Texts: Teaching Text Preview and Lookback (another good reason to have an ASHA SIG membership so you can access Perspectives journals) for another helpful discussion of expository text structure and other strategies.

Be sure when using Inspiration and Kidspiration to avoid creating webs unless your topic is a descriptive one. Create an organized structure by adding new detail bubbles to your topic heading shape (see above with List, tapping on the arrow button will create new connected bubbles you can drag into position). Naturally, you will want your detail bubbles to contain content related to the topic as opposed to just key words for organization. As below, switching to Outline view will then make your work result in a useful outline rather than too much hierarchy. See below, tapping the Share button will allow you to export.

What does an image lead to...?

I've always been a firm believer that all students benefit from visual supports--but providing images or other visuals provides a path to language. That's the V--Visual--in the FIVES Criteria.

An image leads to:

...understanding of a vocabulary word or concept.

...associations.

...expansion of categories.

...description.

...connections and narrative.

...causal, conditional, or other structural language forms.

...engagement!!!

(among others).

The above reasons are why I am constantly endorsing the use of the free, versatile and multiple-platform Pic Collage. This app hit a bump this past fall. The Web Search, which allows you to add photos to a thematic, contextual collage very quickly and in a co-creative process with students, lost its connection to Google (Web Search allows you to search for photos and add them from the app). The developers were communicative about it and made efforts to develop their own search tool, which gradually improved over the following months, but it was a tougher sell.

A few months ago, however, Pic Collage struck a partnership with Microsoft's search engine BING! So the results are back to being as good as they ever were.

Additionally, Web Search has JUST added "suggestions" which might help you in your in-the-moment creations with students. The suggestions are specific items within the category you would be searching for, or associations related to your search. How wonderfully language-enhancing!

Results and suggestions for "trees" and "national parks" depicted above. Tap on the suggestion to point your search in a specific direction and bring up new possible images to add to the collage (tap images, then the check mark in the upper right to add images to a collage).

This past year I was involved with a productive assistive technology and language consultation regarding a student who LOVED to be in all of his classes. He just needed support to participate verbally. My advice was focused on taking some of the language "out of the air" and giving the student more visual support as conversations and topics unfolded, Pic Collage being a key tool we discussed. For example, as his consumer education class discussed forms of payment, Pic Collage could be easily used to visualize cash, a credit and debit card, check, and cell phone.

For some of my previous posts on Pic Collage, look here, here and here.

Video Tutorial: Using Sketching Apps and Comic Creators for Comic Strip Conversations

In my recent column for ASHA Leader, Apps that Help Teach Social Perspective, I discussed the engagement and sharing factors of creating Comic Strip Conversations via iPad. First, on what Comic Strip Conversations are:

Another approach that expands clients’ narratives, if/then thinking and perspective-taking is Comic Strip Conversations, developed by Carol Gray. Comic Strip Conversations visualize social situations with simple sketches involving stick figures, situational elements, word and thought balloons, and color coding for different emotions and verbal behaviors. A comic strip can be developed to exemplify a five-point scale or for reviewing or previewing a relevant social situation.

And the tech tie-ins:

The sketching involved with Comic Strip Conversations is made at once easier, more engaging and colorful (no array of markers needed!), and sharable with apps such as Doodle Buddy (free for iOS) or Drawing Desk (free for Android). To make a conversation stretching across several pages, check out Paper (free for iOS), a sketching journal that also incorporates subtle effects to make your sketches look neater. All these apps allow you to add text for captioning, scripting and illuminating perspectives, as well as photos for additional context. For example, you can sketch over photo of an important location in your client’s daily life.

In this new video tutorial I demonstrate a quick how-to with Paper by 53 and the text-friendly Comics Head. You might choose one or the other based on what your context is!

O*Net Online- Help Students to Look Forward

O*Net Online is a resource introduced to me by a vocational coach and I have found a number of uses of it since then. Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Labor, the site features career interest questionnaires and lists of skills, work activities, and equipment for different professions.

Skills needed for Video Game Designers:

The site is therefore a great tool for working with older students (MS, HS, young adult), for designing specific language activities that will facilitate buy-in, insight and development of their professional goals.

I recently shared with a colleague whose student was resisting "coming to speech" and she was able to discuss with him the communication skills needed to succeed in his desired occupation, which helped him build rationale around their work. She then included video clips from YouTube about the job, which provided further visual support and context to work on language. 

The site is accessible at the link above and works nicely on computers and mobile devices.

I will be presenting in the Washington, DC area in September for the Center for Communication and Learning, LLC- hope to see some of you there! Click here for details.

Lists for Writers is also useful for SLPs

Lists for Writers ($2.99 for iOS/Android) is a resource of exactly that--lists of narrative elements that writers can use to jumpstart ideas. However, the same lists are useful as jumping off points for all kinds of language and social cognition lessons, or for exploring within a session themselves. I recently had fun with two budding writer clients (they are all over deviantart.com) exploring a list of phobias and how they could serve as a "kickoff" for a story, leading to much narrative and conversational practice within the session.

Some ideas for quick language lessons:
-Use the list of Modern Occupations and generate a list of equipment and actions relevant to a variety of occupations (think of Sarah Ward and Kristen Jacobsen's model of Situational Awareness as Space-Time-Objects-People).
-The list of Modern Locations provides fodder for constructing setting maps.
-Sort the list of Dialog verbs into positive and negative behavior categories, or align with the list of Emotions.
-Apply Personality lists to material students are tackling in ELA or Social Studies to build descriptive skills and comprehension.

I am sure you can think of many more- let us know what you think of in the comments!

I will be presenting in the Washington, DC area in September for the Center for Communication and Learning, LLC- hope to see some of you there! Click here for details.

ASHA Healthcare and Business Institute 2014

I had the great opportunity to present at and attend the ASHA Healthcare and Business Institute at Green Valley Ranch in Las Vegas this past weekend. It was a great learning experience, and as you know, Vegas is no fun at all.

I presented three sessions: Inside and Outside the Box Apps for Pediatrics/Adults (2 sessions) and Tech Up! (a sort of day-to-day incorporation of technology to increase productivity and engagement in private practice settings). All went well, and the audience was terrific!

On the first day, I attended several sessions before mine, and especially enjoyed Audrey Holland's presentation on new directions in aphasia therapy. She discussed the value of contextual, functional group therapy (including narrative, which I am all about) and applications of technology- here was my tweet from her session.

#hcbi14 A. Holland: mobile tech is most important development in aphasia tx in past 10 years: apps, Skype, youtube, Skype, games #slpeeps
— Sean Sweeney (@SpeechTechie) April 11, 2014

Oops, I said Skype twice. I guess I thought it was important.

Now, my background includes a clinical fellowship year working in adult neurogenic rehab, some work helping with the initial offerings of Boston University's Aphasia Resource Center (specifically, what was then known pre-iPad as the "Aphasia Computer Club), and development of presentations including apps for adults. I work extensively with adolescents in transition from high school and some adults with autism, but I am primarily working in pediatrics and with kid-related topics and interventions, so the "refresher" was certainly welcome.

I especially appreciated Dr. Holland's reference to a VERY recently published issue of Seminars in Speech and Language (February, 2014) dedicated to the use of mobile tech in aphasia treatment. As electronic access to journals is not so easy for those of us not-in-school, I immediately texted my graduate intern from BU and asked if she had time to download and send me the articles (she did- thanks, Lauren!). One in particular, delightfully co-written by Elizabeth Hoover, my graduate placement supervisor back in 1999, and classmate Anne Carney, ended up providing me with the following additional slide for my presentation:

What I loved about this new information was that it provided a powerful context to demonstrate some of these tools, particularly Keynote, Reader (which provides a clean, uncluttered view of many test-based webpages in Safari), and Speak Selection (which is one way to access text-to-speech) as tools for clients to access text.

On the matter of Keynote, it is really one of my go-to apps whenever I need a "blank slate" to work with when creating or displaying visuals, which is exactly how this article framed it. Keynote ($9.99, free on new iPads purchased after fall 2013) is in short Apple's version of PowerPoint, though in many ways I like it more. Look to Keynote as a way to create a slide or two to break down a concept, display pictures, or even create picture stories. How do you use Keynote? It's as simple as this image I created for a recent workshop:

So, the conference went well, and I hope this information is helpful for clinicians and educators working with clients of all ages and populations.

I may have a few more posts related to this trip, but for now, I will leave you with a #selfie of me waiting to see Olivia Newton-John! I did make it to the strip a couple times...

Phrasal Verbs Machine

It's great to find an app that is focused on a particular skill, but also very contextual. Phrasal Verbs Machine (free) is a gorgeous example dedicated to building understanding of phrasal verbs- a verb paired with a preposition. These are known to be challenging to ESL/ELL populations but also are quite figurative in nature, and so are helpful to target metalinguistics for our more literal thinkers. The context of the app is "the circus world of The Amazing Phraso and his friends." Using the app, you can manipulate an old-fashioned "machine" to pair any of 100 phrasal verbs with prepositions.

In Phrasal Verbs View, you slide wheels to align verbs with paired prepositions, then tap view to see a terrific short animation of the phrase:

The animations play quite quickly but can be replayed. This activity is great for developing prediction and visualization skills by asking students what they think they will see in the machine for each combination.

In the "Exercise," the reverse situation is involved. An animation is played and you are asked to choose from a few choices to describe the animation, thus also working on main idea.

I hope you enjoy this unique and generously free app from Cambridge University Press- another example of a nicely designed app for older students!

Thanks to Richard Byrne at iPad Apps for School for pointing this app out.

Wikiweb Shows Connections Between Topics

While Wikipedia is far from the gold standard of research sources, it does give a good general overview of topics and in my experience is quite well-written. It therefore is a helpful resource for developing reading comprehension, background knowledge and use of strategies for vocabulary and breaking down expository text.

I discovered Wikiweb, which displays articles as semantic web connections between ideas, because it was free at Starbucks, but at $2.99 I think it's still fairly priced. It's got a beautiful look and feel and the added feature of displaying visual connections between topics is potentially very useful for therapy. The articles as displayed can be selected in order to activate Speak Selection, so they can be read aloud as well.

This video from Wikiweb is a bit strange, and makes it seem like you should use the app just so you don't become Claire Danes in Homeland, but it gives you more of an idea how the app works.

mARch: Create Rooms with SnapShop

SnapShop Showroom (free) is a fun little app that allows you to create and save rooms using furniture from many well-known realtors such as IKEA and CB2.  You can use their limited background library, a saved picture from the web (as I did below) or a picture from your camera- the fact that you can snap your current surroundings and then put furniture in it is what makes this app augmented reality:

This video shows an earlier version of the app in action. The above shot shows it works great on iPad as well.

Language Lens:
This would be a nice app to use with older students or adults as well as young ones. The category of furniture can first of all be developed with this app, as well as descriptive attributes such as size, shape, color and function. Additionally, as the app is essentially for shopping (don't worry, you won't accidentally purchase a sofa during a therapy session) pricing information is provided, which would be a great context for a life skills activity around budgeting.

Appy-Picking Month: Live Street View

There seems to be a slight theme here of righting a few of the wrongs (though there are many rights) of iOS 6. Many may remember that I am a Googlephile as well as an Apple Fanboy, so I am not so pleased to see Google's near-exile from iOS 6.  One of the niftiest features of the previous Maps app, which I avoided writing about in past months since I knew it was going away, was Google Street View. With the new Maps app, this feature is gone, but I wanted to show a very cool "for now" replacement.

Live Street View (Free version has minimal ads, $.99 gets you an ad-free experience) allows you to touch-navigate the globe, or search specific locations, and simply tap to enter street view. From there you can tap on the arrows to move down the worldwide and extensive database of streets and turn onto adjacent streets.

However, this app improves on previous Street View experiences by using your device's gyroscope.  When you move your device in different directions, it will change the view accordingly, providing more of an augmented reality experience!

Language Lens:
Geographic visualizers such as Street View are fantastically motivating ways to tie in with social studies curriculum at many levels, from local community to world geography, while targeting descriptive language and spatial concepts.  Apps such as this also have uses for working with adults!

Common Core Connection:
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.L.4.3a Choose words and phrases to convey ideas precisely.

Blog Awareness Month: Zite Personalized Magazine

All month I have been singing the praises of blogs as a route to professional development and therapy planning, and I am ending with a bit of a twist- Zite Personalized Magazine (Free, iPad only for now) an app that allows you to subscribe not to blogs but to topics. Select topics of interest and Zite will pull in posts from various news sources (including blogs) that correspond with your selections.  Here's my Zite home page:

Zite works somewhat like music app Pandora in that you can then further customize your feeds by giving a thumbs-up or -down to articles that appear or request more from the author, source, or subtopic.  It is easy to share articles by email or send to Twitter, Facebook or other services, making Zite a great tool for participating in your Personal Learning and Sharing Network.

Zite is somewhat more of a leisurely experience than using Google Reader as you don't have a number of unread posts to contend with; just read what you want! Because Zite allows you to set up multiple profiles within the app, it could also be a tool for helping older students do research or explore topics of interest and work on comprehension and language strategies.

This will be my last post until 2012- hope you all have a wonderful holiday season and Happy New Year!!

Blog Awareness Month: Mindpop

I bumped into Mindpop when a friend of mine (a friend of the author) posted it on Facebook. The author, Nina Mitchell, introduces her blog: "I am a quirky young woman whose Mind went Pop. I was 26 when a stroke took away my limbs and speech. This stroke comic book is designed to make you think. Mindpop. Strokes are hell. They have dark comedy too. I live in Boston, just finished grad school, back to work." Mindpop is a good blog for SLPs to follow in order to fully understand the perspective of our patients who have had CVAs, but also possibly to recommend and/or use in counseling these patients.

Smyface! Explore feelings and responses...

Smyface is a simple interactive website you can use to emphasize feelings vocabulary and the connections between real-world events and internal responses.

Use the slider to view a huge variety of facial expressions, match them to emotional vocabulary, and work with students to link feelings to events. Smyface is a great stop to use in conjunction with a storybook or chapter book in order to target story grammar: the relationship between characters, initiating events/problems, responses and even plans! Bonus points to this site for having such an emphasis on causal constructions!  Your completed smyface can be shared in a variety of ways, as seen above.

Thanks to Larry Ferlazzo for highlighting this site.

Book Review: The Ultimate Guide to Assistive Technology in Special Education

If I were to make an FAQ page--I can't think of questions that I get asked frequently enough to form a critical mass--one that would be there would go something like: "We just got an iPad. What do you recommend?" This is an understandable but unfortunately sort of prohibitively broad question. I usually point people in the direction of the collaborative SLP Apps List (top of my blog), but from now on I am also going to be recommending Joan Green's The Ultimate Guide to Assistive Technology in Special Education as a great resource book for those starting out with iPads (or other technology) for clinical use.

The Ultimate Guide begins with a consideration of UDL (don't miss the discussion of this topic in the recent ASHA Leader, and in my post) but quickly gets down to its main purpose, which is to provide a wide-ranging list of technologies (free and for cost, mobile and desktop) within specific categories.  Green's resources span the domains of communication-verbal expression, auditory comprehension, reading and comprehension, written expression- as well as cognition and memory, and provide something for every platform (web-based, PC/Mac, and an impressive array of specific iPod and iPad apps).  I have generally felt that books about technology are bound to be as up to date and relevant as a newscast about that breeze you just felt, but I was really pleasantly surprised at the currency of information in this volume, published in March 2011.  SLPs who work with adults with aphasia, TBI or other diagnoses will also find many great suggestions of software, apps, websites and uses of technology that you already have at your fingertips (e.g. accessibility features available within MS Office or iWork).  There is really something here that can help all clients on your caseload, as the resources span age ranges and levels of ability, from those who require switches to those who would benefit from high-level interactive websites.

Joan Green is an SLP herself, so she brings a key perspective to her descriptions of these myriad tools.  I am sure to be mining the resources in this book for some time to come.  Check out her site and newsletter for a preview of what you will find in this great book!

Note: author was provided with a review copy of this book.

B-Movie TV

B-Movie TV is a fun site that features clips from old, silly American commercials and films that are overdubbed in another language.  You can type in subtitles narrating or dialoging the scene, and can also choose to use text-to-speech or record over the clip. For more fun, you can switch to Bombay TV (see "switch channels") and do the same with Bollywood movies, which, not to be culturally insensitive, are notoriously over-the-top in terms of costumes, plotlines, and even frequent choreography.

Language Lens:

-B-Movie TV is an engaging way to explore inferential thinking, story grammar and exposition (for the ads), humor and interpretation of body language when you are choosing a clip with your students and mapping out the "plot."

-The opportunity to write or record the language for the track can target vocabulary, sentence formulation or speech production strategies.

This site is Flash-based and therefore is NOT iPad-friendly.

Thank you to Larry Ferlazzo for featuring this website.

Clouds...

Ah, summer.  A great time to laze on a hillside and look up at the clouds.

Clouds are an interesting context for language development as well.  One can list the different kind of clouds and what comes out of them (categories).  The process by which clouds are made, the water cycle, is a key curriculum topic (sequence).  They are also just sort of fun, because they are shapes and different people see different things in them (description).

Check out the Cloud Dreamer activity, part of the Invention at Play interactive website created by the Lehmelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation, part of the Smithsonian Institution.  The key thing you can do with this activity is to create a cloud by clicking and dragging points, then send it to float across the sky. In addition to much descriptive language, SLPs could have a child describe how they plan to make a cloud look like an object before they ever touch the mouse.

I made an iPad cloud.  Sort of.  Apple probably will be making one of these too.

Cloud Dreamer could be put in the context of a classroom weather unit or used with engaging books (for younger children) such as Eric Carle's Little Cloud or It Looked Like Spilt Milk by Charles G. Shaw.

Cloud Dreamer is Flash-based and is therefore NOT iPad-friendly.

Check out the other interesting activities at Invention at Play that also have language potential.

Hyperbole And A Half

Hyperbole and a Half is a narrative/comic blog created by Allie Brosh that will likely make you giggle quite a bit.  Allie relates her experiences in her own unique way, and draws very funny pictures.

...that I can relate to.

I first thought of posting about Allie's blog because she has a few terrific posts on social interactions that could be great for a teenage group:
The Four Levels of Social Entrapment humorously details various situations in life where we have to "fake it" socially, and could be very useful if you are covering this skill as part of instruction in The Hidden Curriculum and/or Social Thinking.
Simlarly, The Awkward Situation Survival Guide offers what NOT to do in six different prickly moments, and is a fun way to start a discussion about dealing with tough social moments.

Allie's blog is also a masterpiece of personal memoir, as exemplified by stories such as The God of Cake, which describes her attempts (with great visual supports on narrative structure and sequence) to get at a cake made for her grandfather's birthday.

CAVEAT: Ms. Brosh sometimes includes choice words in her posts.  You would not want to set students free to poke around, rather, choose some selections to review with a group.

Another reason I mention this blog at this time is I spent a good amount of time enjoying it last summer.  It looks great on your iPad!