Book Creator Templates (including Thanksgiving!)

Book Creator has long been a stellar app/webtool and recently I discovered that they have templates to "remix." You can add templates to your app and do a collaborative work on your iPad among students, or if in a Chromebook environment your free account will allow you to share with students' Google accounts easily. This is an attractive option because, well, they are attractive and you don't have to design the book yourself. Richard Byrne describes the magic ink and autodraw features here.

These "activity books" are filled with language underpinnings like storytelling opportunities, semantic knowledge and vocabulary. You can easily copy and modify any page to cater to your students before starting the activity. For example, on this page below, you can zoom in on a map and have kids in the group find out where others live (generally) for spatial/academic/biographical knowledge of others. Additionally, with this template, gratitude is literally good for your brain to practice all year long.

Tiny Tap adds Tap N' Type

Please excuse my brevity and non-productivity, website-wise, but I have been doing a lot of local presentations while at the same time recovering from a pretty bad shoulder injury! At least I can see the humor in a fall up the stairs and shoulder dislocation, which, after the pain, has kept me busy with doctor and PT appointments. I should mention that the Calm app provided me with a little cognitive relief in the emergency room- you can picture me staring at my phone and groaning. Anyway, I am on the mend.

I wrote about the Tiny Tap app some months ago as an example of an app to author interactive activities, with virtually limitless contexts. That (free!) app became even more useful with a recent update allowing for addition of text fields- think labeling of items and categories and pictures, among other things. Check out their demo video for some ideas, and my original post as well.

 

Make customized interactive “apps” with Tiny Tap

I’m just returning from speaking at a two-day conference in Florida for the Center for Autism and Related Disabilities hosted at Nova Southeastern University. The topic was “Apps in Context: Aligning Technology with Methodologies and Clinical Objectives for Students with Autism,” one which Dr. Carole Zangari and I put together for the varied (and terrific!) group of SLPs, OTs and teachers.

It was great seeing and working with Carole! Carole and I also wanted to honor Dr. Robin Parker, also a professor at Nova—sadly, Robin passed away last year. To me, Robin was a wonderful friend and supporter and force of nature, really, who had a passion for putting resources in people’s hands, including technology. We thank the many app developers who donated codes for participants in Robin’s name, including all4mychild, Mindwing Concepts, Mobile Education Store, Tactus Therapy, Bump Software, Bee Visual, Smarty Ears, Irmgard Raubenheimer, and LessonPix.

One “module” in the conference that I really enjoyed developing was the use of “authoring” apps: apps for you to create interactive activities in any context. Participants really gravitated toward the versatile Tiny Tap (free for iOS and Android), which allows you to make “apps,” so to speak, following a very simple series of steps!

Use the visual tools in Tiny Tap to create a "slide" or array. We discussed that though the tools are fine, and include text, drawing, image addition, etc, that you can create a visual in Pic Collage or Keynote (and screenshot it) perhaps easier if you are doing something more complicated for your slide.

For the context of the demonstration I used a Five-Point Scale activity (aligning with The Zones of Regulation), adding a screenshot of a scale I made in Keynote.

You can then "add an activity" to your slide/image- these include:

-recording audio questions which are answered by tapping on an area of the slide

-recording audio/sounds that play when an area of the slide is tapped ("Sound Board")

-cutting a Shape Puzzle so that the image can be used for categorization or sequencing

-and more "presentation" elements such as playing a video or recording a message to be played over the slide.

These options, like everything else in the app, are nicely explained as you go:

An example of cutting a Shape Puzzle to be put back in order by the student:

After recording an audio question, e.g. "This type of problem may ruin your day, and you probably need to ask for help in solving it," you trace an answer area that the student must tap to get the item "correct."

Upon saving your work, your lesson can be played and also shared if you create an account. Tiny Tap also gives you access to a library of many activities, some of them created by SLPs (some at cost). Though you see it demonstrated in a particular context here, hopefully you can think of many ways to use Tiny Tap! Be sure to check out Tiny Tap enthusiast SLP Ellen Weber's column on the app for ASHA Leader. Let us know some other ideas 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.