Simple visual engagement resources for youngsters

Whether doing tele- or in-person therapy, you should be aware of the cute, simple and useful resources of Dr.  Karen Fried at Oaklander training, such as the online sand tray and dollhouse interactive activities on the site (go to the tools and resources tab). There's apparently a whole approach to using these tools as psychological therapy with young children, but as a sort of stickerbook they have specific linguistic opportunities. Consider vocabulary, concepts, syntactic expansion, and storytelling!

Chateau Meddybemps

Chateau Meddybemps is a rich site with many activities you might consider in teletherapy, particularly for young students and for those you are experimenting with incorporation of interactive websites. Activities on this site might be ones you screen share and have the student observe the visuals and verbalize choices, or offer many opportunities for remote cursor control. For students who need buildup of skills in using the mouse in therapy, there are simple mouse skills activities. Also, there are a number of PDF based printable "activity centers" that you may be able to use for play on both sides if you've got willing parents.

Check out the Super Menu for activities like this one in which students can organize a zoo, thereby targeting naming, animal sounds, describing and using causals.

Enter Vacation Mode with Toca Life: Vacation!

Toca Boca's "Life" series aims to reproduce real-world settings as a context for play with characters and the objects they encounter in indoor and outdoor places. As a result, the series provides a visual play space for us to work with students as they tell stories, make connections, and enact everyday sequences. The latest, Toca Life: Vacation, is another wonderful, visually rich, and highly interactive app you can use to take students on imaginary trips to this beach-y location.

The app contains a number of settings including an airport, hotel, beach, and boardwalk, the many spaces within each setting and interactive objects providing great opportunities to role-play, propose problems and solutions, and consider if-then scenarios (important for executive functioning!). The trailer is below:



Language Lens:
-Consider recommending Toca Life: Vacation to parents as an interactive way to preview an upcoming vacation, complete with the travails of navigating airport security, riding on a plane, checking into a hotel, and sharing a bed with a sibling.
-For your part, the record feature of this app lends potential planning and role-playing a bit more of a purpose: let's make a vacation movie together!
-I am just beginning to absorb the huge amount of ideas and resources for developing language and social interaction through play provided in Social Thinking®'s new We Thinkers: Volume 2 Social Problem Solvers Kit. The manual details a model for scaffolding play with fading adult involvement, and the "GPS- Group Collaboration, Play, and Problem Solving" framework can apply to the use of these open-ended sandbox apps as well as offline play. For example, the program's "Group Play Plan" form could be used for the adult to choose a scene and assign roles to form a story (Level 3) or for kids to collaborate in this process (Level 4). One good strategy is to screenshot a scene or two within Toca Life: Vacation to use as a visual support as you make a "Group Plan" for play.

I hope you have fun going on real or pretend vacations this summer. I'm going to take off for a few weeks myself, heading to Cape Cod and, later, Acadia National Park in Maine! See you in August!

"Diagnose" with Dr. Pet Play

The iPad is such an engaging gadget that we sometimes can be too focused on its screen--kids especially. For this reason, it is helpful to locate apps that provide context or creation, but let us break away from the screen to focus on the communication and learning aspects of the activity.

Dr. Pet Play by Pretendasaurus is an app that supports just that kind of context, turning the iPad into a pretend "medical device" that can be used in a play-based interaction with children. Just add a stuffed animal and the screens of the can be used to prompt questions and record answers given in play between kids, as in the video below.




The "examination" can be used to target many language concepts and vocabulary including feelings, body parts, gender, age, weight, and action words, as well as pronouns:

The app includes some fantastic interactive elements such as the ability to activate the camera and snap an image of the "patient," annotate the "X-Ray," and scan and control heart rate and temperature.

Language Lens:

-In addition to concepts and vocabulary, interactions using the app could be used along with Braidy, The Storybraid or Story Grammar Marker® to have students tell stories about why they came to the vet that day.

-To add more context and sequential/causal language, including "treatments," other props might be helpful. I have (and love) the Pretend and Play Vet Set.

-Interactions around the app can support social development, including Social Thinking's® concept of "sharing an imagination," important across all age levels.

This app can be downloaded in its free version, which has only a template for a cat, or the full version ($2.99), which has templates for 10 animals (chiefly different in the X-Ray image and the prompted questions).

So try Dr. Pet Play and take your kids way beyond the screen!

Disclosure: author is a consultant for provision of blog content to Mindwing Concepts, Inc, creators of Story Grammar Marker and Braidy the Storybraid.

Interactive Books and More with Collins' Big Cat Series

Harper Collins' "Big Cat" Series of apps for iPad is not to be missed- you should be sure to download all 8 of the apps while they are free! These interactive books are great for your early learners or those working on developmentally lower skills. Each book consists of a short, simple story which can be read to students via audio, or students can read themselves, activating small interactive elements (animations) which boost engagement along the way. The books contain rich illustrations without many words, so that clinicians will have the opportunity to stop and elicit language, which can also be recorded and played back to the student for engagement and auditory feedback.

An illustration from "Playing"- a contextual means to elicit pronouns, verbs, causals, or other targets.

Each book smartly has a contextual language theme or category woven into a story- weather, directionality, etc. The stories themselves have an action sequence narrative structure, and could be used with tools such as Story Grammar Marker® to target narrative elements and retelling of characters, settings and actions.

The BEST part of the "Big Cat" apps is that each is also a creation tool in which you can make your own "books" within the app. Students can arrange backgrounds and visual elements from the story, adding text and audio for a retelling or their own creations. This is truly an awesome feature for a free app! Although these creations cannot be shared outside of the app, this is where screenshots come in handy.

Grab 'em and spread the word!

Note: author has a contractual relationship with Mindwing Concepts, creator of Story Grammar Marker, for creation of blog content.

What can we do over the summer?

As the school year winds down, activities for carryover and maintenance are a frequent request of   parents to their child's SLPs and special educators. For parents of younger ones, PBS has provided a great answer with their free app, PBS Parents Play & Learn HD (also for Android, especially nice since not all families have iOS devices, and bilingual in English/Spanish, as not all families speak English!). This app is part interactive resource, part guide to increasing linguistic interactions between parent and child in natural contexts.

This app provides a wide variety of contexts (the park, in the car, bathtime, kitchen, supermarket, etc) that kids experience with their parents each day, along with a minigame and verbal activities for each place. Minigames are interactives played on screen targeting skills like counting, association and categorization in engaging ways. The activities, scaled from baby to toddler and preschooler, but likely appropriate for primary students with language difficulty as well, are suggested verbal interactions that parents can use in context of these locations. For example, the app suggests that at the supermarket, parents have children name all the items as they go on the conveyer belt as parents model/discuss/elicit how they will be used. This is a simple idea that parents perhaps might not recognize as a "teachable moment."

The app also provides an open-ended scene creation activity, great for narrative and skills such as recognizing and talking about absurdity:

Thank you, PBS, for offering this unique and free resource.

mARch: Out of Bubbles? Try BubblesAR

Bubbles have long been a go-to speech and language therapy tool. They're great, I am not suggesting you stop using them to target /b/ and /p/ sounds, "wet," etc.

But, if you run out of bubbles, or want to try something new to engage kids in a joint attention activity, BubblesAR (free) is simple and cool. Tap the circle to blow a bubble in your "room" (the camera is activated). Tap longer and the bubble will be bigger. Whatever the circle is positioned over will be "reflected" in the bubble as it floats, giving you the opportunity to have the child name items in the room.  Tap the bubble to "pop" it for a cool confetti effect.  That's it!

Animonths: Use Splashtop Remote to Access Flash Animation

There are a lot of great interactive animated activities online that were created using Adobe Flash, the multimedia platform that was once the medium of choice to add interactivity to webpages. When iPhone and, subsequently, iPad came on the scene, there was quite a lot of hubbub about Apple's decision to not support Flash on these devices.  It turns out that inclusion of Flash really drained the devices' batteries, among other problems. Adobe eventually admitted to this when they stated they wouldn't be developing Flash for even Android devices anymore. In the future, web interactivity is likely to be fostered using web standards such as HTML5, which iDevices are all A-OK with (just try running this HTML5-based activity on your iPad in Safari).

Beyond this history of web drama, I have a point.  These Flash resources are still out there on the web and sure would be great to be able to access on your iPad.  Take the BBC's Science Clips.  This is one of my favorite resources ever, as it provides interactive animations and a context for categorization, cause-effect, and following directions, all in the context of key science concepts relating to what is being taught in the classroom:

The "Helping Plants Grow Well" activity, in which you add water and heat at the appropriate time to help the plant grow to its full height.

When used on a computer, these activities are pretty engaging, but for younger kids, it's really hard to do the click-and-drag necessary to complete it, especially if you are using a newer Mac with a multitouch trackpad (that doesn't have a button).  Note that Science Clips activities all come with language-based contextual worksheets, such as this one that goes with the above activity.

Enter Splashtop Remote Desktop ($4.99, iPad only).  This app allows you to control your computer screen from your iPad, thereby making previously inaccessible flash-based activities function as apps. 

Here it is in action, with a student of mine easily interacting with the Flash-based Crayola Create & Color website.

Here's how it works.  Purchase the app from the iTunes store (see link above). After installation, you will be given instructions on how to install a program called Splashtop Streamer on your computer- this will allow the app to control your computer. You will setup the app with a passcode that allows you to connect to your computer as well. After that, anytime you open the app, it will "find" your computer and let you connect and control the screen! To return your computer to its normal state, simply exit the app.

I have found this app very useful despite a few caveats I need to offer here, so proceed using your own judgment.

1. You need to have your iPad and computer on the same wireless network for the connection to function.  If this is not possible at your workplace, don't purchase the app.

2. I have found on large networks with lots of traffic (e.g. hotel conference centers) where I am trying to demonstrate this to people, it never works. It works well at my school and private practice.

3. Consistently, it takes me like 3 tries of putting in my password to connect successfully. I don't know why.

I realize that those caveats may turn you off this new-ish app, but just to show another use for Splashtop Remote Desktop:

That's Splashtop connected to my computer, which is running Intellitools Classroom Suite, effectively making the iPad into an Intellikeys keyboard! I don't know if they even make Intellikeys anymore (the website says "out of stock"), and I could never get the darn things to work, but I have always liked this software and the Intellitools Activity Exchange.  I have a few kiddos who can really benefit from activities such as this "Easy Writing" one, but wouldn't really engage as well with a computer as they would with the iPad.  Splashtop to the rescue!

Announcing Fun & Functional (v. 1.1)

One of my first clinical experiences in graduate school involved planning and implementing classroom-based lessons in the school setting.  It really shaped my thinking for the years to come, as I learned how important semantics was to students' functioning in the classroom.  We would do book-themed lessons and many activities in which students would describe items related to the activity.  It seemed strange to me at the time when my awesome supervisor, Joan Hargrave, who I think reads this blog from China (Hi, Joan!), emphasized how important it was that we were teaching the kids to describe by function.  You know how you don't learn much about language therapy until you do it?  In the years to come, I would see the importance of function as an attribute in so many places- just try administering the Word Test or CELF-4 Expressive Vocabulary and looking at the scoring standards, let alone the "functional" curriculum-based applications of describing by function. Aside from category, it is probably the most salient descriptive attribute.

It was very exciting, then, when my first project with Smarty Ears Apps involved working with prolific author Rosie Simms on an app that targets identifying and describing items by function! Fun & Functional was a great learning experience and it hit the app store about a month ago. I sort of haven't had a chance to write about it until now! Please check out the video tutorial below, and I hope you find the app helpful:

Fun & Functional 1.1 from Sean Sweeney on Vimeo.

Disclosure: Author has a contractual relationship with Smarty Ears Apps and receives a portion of the profit of the sales of this app.

Crayola Create & Color

Coloring sure is fun for kids, but it can be too time-consuming within speech and language sessions (unless it's carefully structured).  However, what if you could use a session to help students create a coloring page that they can complete at home?

You can do exactly that with Crayola Create & Color.  This is a super-cool FREE site kids can use to combine Backgrounds, Pictures (i.e. associated or silly items inserted into the background), and word/thought balloons.  The process of creating the printable coloring pages is a great context to develop spatial concepts, proposition use (for an App-lication of this type of activity, see Smarty Ears' House of Learning), description and story grammar.  Sending the pages home would be a nice opportunity to generalize and further practice skills with parents. How psyched will kids be when they tell their parents they created their own coloring book?

ClickySticky Halloween

ClickySticky Halloween, like others in its series, is a visual exploration and simple picture creation app (for iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch) that offers a lot of fun and language-building opportunities for its small price of $1.99.  The app has four visual scenes to choose from and complete in different ways, allowing for many repeat visits: the (grave)yard of a haunted house, a pumpkin to decorate, a collection of "treats," and kids to dress up in Halloween costumes. Each scene has engaging animations, such as bubbling potions or hovering ghosts.

Once pictures are created, they can be saved to the picture roll or emailed. The therapy uses of such an app are many and varied, and a few I have targeted include:
-Eliciting causals in the context of selecting halloween treats and costumes.
-Constructing absurd costume combinations and prompting kids to explain why they don't make sense.
-Using categories such as body parts, costume types (superhero, animal, etc), and junk food.
-Employing the app as a barrier task where one child asks another to construct a scene using spatial concepts.
-Targeting story grammar at the Action Sequence level by having a student construct the graveyard scene with animations, along with story mapping and development of more sophisticated verb use (e.g. attack, descend).

ClickySticky Halloween is a universal app available from the App Store. It will function without wi-fi connection, and is accessed through tap/drag gestures.

The iPad as a Window...

Picking up a caseload of, say, 35 kiddos can be a bit daunting.  You do your best to schedule and group, read IEPs, and then you have your first sessions.  Actually working with the kids is at once a reminder of why we do this work, and also sort of scary...that many kids at that many different grade levels and developmental zones- I have found my iPad to be a huge help.

An app can provide a language-enhancing activity, but it also can provide a window through which you can assess the child and decide where to go next. In my first couple of days of therapy, I found Smarty Ears' House of Learning to be an invaluable interactive context in which I got to know many of my students better.  House of Learning lets you choose from 12 scenes-various rooms of a home, and also a classroom-and then position a huge array of objects and people within the scene. The app allows you to customize families in a multicultural manner, and when tapped, each object in the scene or scene menu is named aloud, though this feature -my one constructive criticism- is a bit robotic and could be improved (though certainly, you'll be doing much of the talking). The ability to change the position and poses of people in the app provides the opportunity to develop verbs, play skills, concepts, sentence formulation and preposition use, while the variety of rooms and objects available is a great context for vocabulary and category growth.  The app was pretty much a universal hit with the kids I tried it out with, and while they were engaged, I got a lot of information about:

Endurance/attention span: How long the students stayed engaged helped me get a sense of therapy planning.  Some students added one or two objects to the room and attempted to switch to a different room, while others happily decorated for much of the session.  This let me know how many activities I might need to plan within a session: a lengthier activity that hits on many goals, or more discrete tasks?

Level of structure: Some students will be able to independently do "hands off" the app in order for you to use House of Learning as a direction-following activity, while others will need more physical structuring (e.g. visually presenting the screen while delivering the direction, then providing physical access).

Social interaction: A valuable window into a child's social skills can be provided by using an app such as this. Do they focus only on the screen or establish joint attention with you, commenting and questioning? Are they able to respond to your comments and questions while using the app?

Syntactic, semantic and organizational skills: Students' ability to respond to your suggestions or comments about specific items or items in a categories can be gauged with an app such as House of Learning. What they say (or don't say) when using a visual exploration app can be hugely revealing! Additionally, the end result can say a lot about the student's organizational skills and, well, their ability to accept cueing:

This room...

vs. this room...

House of Learning by Smarty Ears is available in the App Store for $6.99.  This iPad-only app is activated by tapping and dragging items into the scene, and will operate without WiFi connection once installed. Overall, in addition to being a great informal assessment activity, I am sure it will serve as hours of therapy and fun!

Make Your Own Backyard Paradise

Make Your Own Backyard Paradise is an interesting, if totally strange, interactive from PBS. Students can select a background and choose from various objects in nonspecific categories (Thing-a-ma-bobs, Doo-Dads, Whatchamacalits), arrange, resize and rotate them to create a potentially absurd scene.

Language Lens

• Naming the objects in various categories could serve as a good word-finding and description activity.
• Arrangement and resizing of objects provides a good opportunity to work on spatial and temporal concepts.
• Discussion of why certain objects go well or look silly in the scene will contextually prompt causal sentence structures.
• The category names of the objects could help students with word retrieval difficulties become aware of nonspecific language.
• The "Letter" category could be used in a phonemic awareness activity.

Helicopter Taxi

This review also appears on TherapyApp411.

App Name/Publisher: Helicopter Taxi/Toca Boca

Description: Helicopter Taxi and Toca Boca's other apps are based on research about different kinds of play and how to engage kids in play via technology.  Helicopter Taxi itself is a very unique app that turns your device (iOS later-generation device such as iPhone 3GS or later, iPad 2- with cameras) into a toy.  You sort of have to see it to believe it:

Helicopter Taxi is therefore an active play app in which children can respond to requests from characters who need a "lift" from place to place.  It uses the device's motion sensors to some degree to respond to being put on a flat surface corresponding to take-off, flying, and landing, and its cameras to provide an "augmented reality" experience with the environment. It's great fun and a very innovative use of (newer only, sorry) these devices.

Therapy Use:  Helicopter Taxi provides many opportunities for language modeling, elicitation, and scaffolding-

Vocabulary and Verb Development- From simple verbs to more advanced such as hover, they are yours for the selection.

Concepts and Prepositions- In moving the helicopter, clinicians can focus on spatial words such as up, down, over, and other basic concepts such as sequencing words, fast, slow, through (the clouds) etc, all with visual and kinesthetic support.

Categories and Curriculum- Helicopter Taxi has 5 different locations (e.g. hospital, factory) that are drop-off points for passengers, and could be a good complement to a community helpers unit.

Pragmatics- The app would lend itself to being used to build turn-taking, eye contact and joint attention, as the child's attention need not always be on the screen at all!

Play and Literacy Extensions- Helicopter Taxi could be followed by low-tech play such as using a Little People Town (that has a helicopter) or books about transportation.

App Benefits/Likes: Takes incredible advantage of device possibilities, child need not be tied to screen, all of the above.

Cautions: 5 locations may get monotonous eventually (maybe expanded in future update?), newer device needed to use app, exaggerated motions sometimes required to get the app to respond to pickup, "landing," etc.  You will need a good case on your device if allowing children to "actively play" with it.

App Summary

Skill(s) Targeted

Articulation & Phonology

Expressive & Receptive Language

Social Skills/Pragmatics

Age/Grade Levels Targeted

Toddler

Preschool

Kindergarten

Early Elementary (Grades 1 – 3)

How to Activate

Isolated finger point

Movement of device

Type of Device

iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad 2

Cost

$.99 US

Would you recommend this app?

Yes

Hyperlink

Reviewed by

Sean Sweeney

Review Date

April 25, 2011

Poorly designed rooms are funny!

The Berenstain Bears' Silly Scenes could be a great activity for preschool-first grade (or developmentally similar) students. This simple interactive site presents a scene with a number of absurd elements to identify and click on.

Language Lens:

• The choices of scenes to explore correspond to a "rooms in a house" category, and also an be used as a generative naming activity before the student clicks through to the room. A key question: what do you usually see in the bathroom?
• Discussion of absurd elements is a good context to model/elict causal or conditional structures:
  There shouldn't be a guitar in the wastebasket because...
  If the light were a goldfish bowl then maybe...