Timeline

The folks at ReadWriteThink are doing a nice job turning a number of their language-based web tools into apps- that are free, to boot. Brought to us by the International Reading Association, these apps including Trading Cards and RWT Timeline make great use of some of the features the iPad has to offer. Namely, it's great when an app lets you set up profiles for students or groups for saving work, as we often don't complete activities with students in one session, and can focus more on the language opportunities inherent in creative processes if you can come back and complete work. These apps also allow you to add pictures from the camera roll (which, if saved from the internet, provide endless visual contexts) and share in various formats, facilitating consultation and collaboration. Additionally, the RWT apps have a mature look and feel that fills in some of the dearth of apps geared toward middle-high school students.

What can you do with a timeline, or more specifically the RWT Timeline app? Break down any sequence, a story line, or historical content. It's very simple to use, and again, FREE, so I hope you will check it out!

Common Core Connection:

-CCSS.ELA-Literacy.SL.6.2 Interpret information presented in diverse media and formats (e.g., visually, quantitatively, orally) and explain how it contributes to a topic, text, or issue under study. 

-CCSS.ELA-Literacy.SL.6.4 Present claims and findings, sequencing ideas logically and using pertinent descriptions, facts, and details to accentuate main ideas or themes; use appropriate eye contact, adequate volume, and clear pronunciation.

PD Opportunity in Boston Area

I am happy once again to be offering the "Technology Links to Language Intervention" course starting in February. This is a hybrid course with a 6-hr face-to-face workshop in Waltham on February 6, 2014 followed by an required online component, offered for PDPs and an optional graduate credit available from Framingham State College (not for official ASHA CEUs). The online activities require about an hour weekly and run through March 14, 2014.

In this class, you will:
-experience models of technology integration with curriculum contexts and IEP objectives
-evaluate web and mobile (iPad) resources according to the FIVES criteria
-learn many tech tricks and practice them with peers
-create pre- and post-activities around technology resources and contexts that further clinical objectives
-access channels for further learning about technology integration in your work.

My favorite part of the course is when I get to step back a bit (but not totally!) and let participants engage with each other around selected articles related to tech integration and language-enriching methodologies, as well as create and share with each other exemplars of work created with web tools and apps.

This course is designed to be helpful to SLPs and anyone else who works closely with language development issues, such as ESL/ELL teachers, literacy specialists, or special education teachers. The course is listed as being geared toward K-8 but has applicability for the preschool and high school populations as well.

You can find all the information and registration materials here! (registration is managed entirely through EDCO) Hope to see some of you there.

Cloudart

Wordle has long been hailed as a great visual way to work with language. Text or a web address (URL) can be pasted into this tool and then a word "cloud" is displayed, with emphasis on more frequently used words. In this way, the tool can be used with any digital text passage or content related website, and the visual that results can be used to develop vocabulary and skills of identifying main idea.

Worldle is not iPad-friendly due to its basis in Java, but Cloudart ($.99) is a great translation of this tool to the iPad platform.

Cloudart has a very simple interface, but with many features that make it useful! Simply copy a block of text via Safari or perhaps from an electronic book in iBooks (many samples of novels commonly used in educational settings are free), or a text-based URL (e.g. the Wikipedia article on any academic topic), and the app will generate your cloud. You can then customize it visually, and even tap to remove or change the emphasis of irrelevant/key words. The cloud can be saved as an image to the camera roll or emailed. 

Common Core Connection:
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.5.2 Determine a theme of a story, drama, or poem from details in the text, including how characters in a story or drama respond to challenges or how the speaker in a poem reflects upon a topic; summarize the text.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.5.2 Determine two or more main ideas of a text and explain how they are supported by key details; summarize the text.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.5.4 Determine the meaning of general academic and domain-specific words and phrases in a text relevant to a grade 5 topic or subject area.

Column Archive

I am excited to have been asked to contribute more columns to The ASHA Leader in 2014. This is a great opportunity and I am grateful to the editors there for helping me with the writing!

I started an archive of these columns and it is now displayed on the FIVES Criteria, Columns and Free Booklets page of this blog (accessible via the links under the banner when viewing the full site). The links to the columns are also here:

November 1, 2013. Mobile Devices Show You the World

August 1, 2013. Welcome to Kindergarten!

July 1, 2013. App-ing Up for ASHA Convention

June 13, 2013. Gather Around the Virtual Meeting Table

April 1, 2013. Apps for High Schoolers with Autism

March 1, 2013. Vocal Workouts go Mobile

August 28, 2013. Apps that Crack Curriculum Content

October 9, 2012. App-Enabled Telepractice

May 15, 2012. Slash your Workload

April 3, 2012. Tech to Ease IEP Pain

Write About This

Write About This is an app designed by educators that uses the technique of providing photo prompts as a way to foster writing skills. Visuals such as those in this app give students a place to start with their language, and the prompts that come with the app provide a context to develop writing with the use of strategies such as story grammar mapping or use of expository text structure (list, sequence, description, etc).

What I like particularly about the app is that the authors didn't stop at simply substituting printed photo prompts with an app version, but incorporated a few key features of the iPad to make this a more powerful resource. While students can type onscreen (and text or text/images can be sent via email to continue developing the work in class), they also can "Publish with Audio" and save their visual work with an audio narration as a movie on the Camera Roll. Additionally, pictures taken with the iPad or saved to the Camera Roll can be used in the app to create customized photo prompts. This would give clinicians or teachers the opportunity to work with a group of students to select a great photo and create a prompt for another group of students to use. Presenting the recorded audio between groups will also allow you to work on auditory comprehension.

Write About This is available in a full-featured free version with a limited number of prompts (about 50 as opposed to 375). I was excited to see that the authors are developing another app called Tell About This, which takes the writing component out and focuses on oral language prompts for younger students.

iPad 101 Webinar

If you feel like you could use some strategies to get your feet wet with your iPad, or know others that could use a contextual introduction to increase their comfort with integrating technology in their work, please sign up for or share my upcoming webinar for ASHA. The content of the webinar will be presented as sort of a "week in the life of an SLP with an iPad," chiefly geared toward the school setting but generalizable to other areas of practice.

The information is below, and you can register here. The webinar will be broadcast live on 2/16/14 and available as a replay for the following year.

This webinar will familiarize you with the basic functions of the iPad in order to more effectively use its associated tools for productivity and clinical application. Sean Sweeney, speech-language pathologist and instructional technology specialist, will demonstrate key tricks for applying the iPad in clinical settings, including use of the Camera and Photos apps, Calendar, Notes, and web-browsing with Safari. This webinar will include an exploration of accessibility settings, strategies for app evaluation, and free or low-cost ancillary apps to facilitate your integration of this powerful tool. The webinar will present strategies applicable in the context of a typical school week, but those suggested can be generalized to other settings. 

Image via Creative Commons: Sean MacEntee on Flickr

Dr. Panda's Bus Driver

The Dr. Panda series continues to produce fun apps with educational possibilities. Specifically, the series of apps (and I need to write about the others) provides a context for exploring different settings and situations in the real world. Though made of "mini games," the apps are slow-paced and provide plenty of moments for breaking away from the screen and discussing what is going on. The slow pace also lends itself to taking turns and use with groups. Like other play-based apps, they also can serve as a context to rehearse a play scheme and then act it out with real toys, practicing play and language skills in the process. Think of the language and executive functioning skills involved with planning a real "bus route" with a play bus, people, and whatever you want to use to mark the route.

Dr. Panda's Bus Driver ($2.99) allows you to drive a bus through a randomly-generated (and beautifully rendered) world of winding roads through a mountainside community. You can't crash, so don't worry. The main action of the game involves picking up and dropping up passengers, controlling your speed over speed bumps, and engaging in mini games such as washing or painting your bus. As the game proceeds, you also have choices about which turns to take.

Language Lens:

-Passengers are "picked up" from different community spots, providing an option to slow down or stop and discuss the actions associated with the locations.

-Road signs prominent throughout the play are a good context to develop spatial concepts, also targeted in the maneuvering of the bus and other apparatus and selection of seats for the passengers.

-Consider pairing this app with Google Earth, as the Street View function can make for a fun "ride" through your students' own community with all the language involved.

 

Posted with Blogsy

When apps go away, be creative!

I wrote about an app some time ago, and it is one of my favorite apps to revisit during this season of giving (even though Hanukah and Christmas were quite far apart this year), so I wanted to mention it again. The Gift Wrap App was used to "wrap" any image from your camera roll, and allow someone to "unwrap." It therefore can be used for a play and "sharing imagination" activity (see the work of Social Thinking®) to target a variety of language objectives, as well as social behaviors around receiving gifts. It also was a nice app to use to expand your comfort level in quickly saving and using images within apps.

Here's the thing: it's no longer available in the U.S. Store, as I discovered when I sat down to write this post. Crap! Though I have it on my iPad, you can't get it, at least for now.

I couldn't find anything else like it!

EDIT: Rachel Smith on Twitter (@lancslassrach) alerted me to the free Wrapped app (works better on iPad). It's a little less slick but serves the same purpose/features (see below)

but when I sat and thought about its process and features:

1. Save a photo of a gift using Safari
2. Add it to the app (or have student do steps 1-2) so it is "hidden"
3. Practice all the verbal and nonverbal behaviors that go with a gift exchange

...I realized that All4MyChild's Bag Game ($1.99, also available in the excellent Social Adventures app) could be used in just the same way! Just save the pic to the camera roll in Safari and choose "Hide Photo." Notice my racetrack pic on the camera roll.

The wrapping may be simple, and you can opt to skip the guessing game, but the idea is the same. The receiver can pinch to open the gift, and there you go!

Language Lens:

-Use this app to target the concept of "People Files" (per Social Thinking, also well explored in Thinking About You, Thinking About Me and the new Superflex Takes on One-Sided Sid, Un-Wonderer and the Team of Unthinkables), the expected knowledge we accumulate about others and use as a basis for interaction.

-Have kids use descriptive language and causals while selecting the photo from Google Images.

-Target verbal and nonverbal interactions while one child "gives" the gift to another by handing over the iPad, and on the receiving side as well.

-This activity also pairs well with Braidy/SGM® Character Maps about what we know about another person- likes and dislikes, as well as the Incredible 5-Point Scale. I created a 5-Point Scale of Gift Receiving with my students:

Common Core Connection:

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.SL.2.5 Create audio recordings of stories or poems; add drawings or other visual displays to stories or recounts of experiences when appropriate to clarify ideas, thoughts, and feelings. 

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.SL.2.6 Produce complete sentences when appropriate to task and situation in order to provide requested detail or clarification.

Happy Holidays to you all!

Want to give me a gift? Vote for me for Best EdTech/Resource Sharing Blog in the 2013 Edublog Awards!

How?
Click on the link above. Find "Speechtechie" and click on the arrow up button in lower left.
Sign in to list.ly with Facebook, Twitter or Google. You can "skip" letting listly post for you.
You haven't voted yet. Click the arrow up button again in my "rectangle." Now you've voted.
Voting is open until 12/18. Please also support other SLPs in the running. You can vote for all of us, even multiple resources in a category, but only once each. Thanks!

SLPs Make Great Showing (AGAIN) among 2013 Edublog Finalists- VOTE!

The finalists for the 2013 Edublog Awards were just announced, and voting is now open. The Edublog Awards is an annual initiative to promote the value of social media in education and share some great resources.  Speech-language-related blogs and resources again are well-represented among this year's finalists, so I would encourage you to go explore and vote. This year the voting is being done through list.ly, which you can sign into with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or Google+ accounts. You can vote for more than one favorite in each category (apparently you can only vote once, however) until Wednesday 12/18. The voting is truly live until the ceremony, as you can see where the candidates rank, so don't let your favorites flounder. Vote 'em up!

The Speech-Language (and Related) Folks in each category, go to This Link to vote. I am not going to link each resource as they are linked on the voting site, but these are all great resources to add to Feedly.

Best Individual Blog- Speech Peeps, Chapel Hill Snippets, Speech Adventures, If Only I Had Superpowers, PrAACtical AAC, Playing with Words 365

Best Group Blog- Speechie Freebies, ASHAsphere

Best New Blog- Rock Chalk Speech Talk, SLPs for Change, Speechy Musings

Best EdTech/Resource Sharing Blog- ahem, SpeechTechie, PrAACtical AAC, Speechy Musings

Most Influential Blog Post- The Speech Dudes' "There's no such thing as a free app, so get over it and pony up!", Busy Bee Speech's "Dear Teacher...Love, your SLP"

Best Twitter Hashtag- #slpeeps, #atchat

Best Podcast- A.T.TIPSCAST, Edceptional, Teach Me To Talk with Laura and Friends

Best Educational Wiki- UDL Tech Toolkit

Best Mobile App- ATEval2Go

Lifetime Achievement- Caroline Bowen, Jenn Alcorn

Vote away- thanks for all your support and I feel so honored to be nominated myself! Please, if I forgot any speech-language people, let me know in a comment, it's all a bit confusing to navigate.

Disclosure: author assisted in development of ATEval2Go app and continues to receive a small royalty related to the app (but support Chris Bugaj and Barbara Fernandes and vote!)

What can we do with a blank slate?

Many of our students need visuals. For these visual supports we often go to paper, whiteboards (I love to have some small ones handy), and now, apps. All of these methods work well for a quick sketch that supports an idea, a concept, a vocabulary word, a relationship. Technology can provide us access to more detailed visuals in the form of saved images, and can take this blank slate and add features such as dynamic annotation and voiceover.

One such tech-based blank slate is Educreations Interactive Whiteboard. I have been working with a small private school on integrating iPads in their curriculum, and we chose this app as one to start with. Teachers are often tempted to use only apps that are filled with content; these engage students, for sure, but I am a big fan of working with students in a process to create, using the classroom content as a context. This process tends involves more planning, collaboration, and of course, language than does the use of content-based apps (which of course can be leveraged in their own way). Recently I made a short(ish) tutorial on Educreations that I thought I would share here:



Educreations is one in a genre that includes the free ShowMe and Screenchomp, and also paid apps such as Explain Everything and Doodlecast Pro. The tutorial above also includes a view of Flickr Creative Commons and how to save photos from that resource, which is important to consider in using Educreations. Though you CAN just save Google Images and use them in an Educreations project, because this app saves to the web, you SHOUD NOT due to copyright issues (that process is OK to use if the saved photo will stay on your iPad for instructional purposes and not be republished to the web). If you save photos from Flickr Creative Commons, a process that just involves a few extra taps and a statement of where the images came from (see this link for a step-by-step), you are following copyright guidelines. Of course you can skirt all that by using your own drawings and images, or using one of the paid apps in this genre, such as Explain Everything or Doodlecast Pro, that allow you to save to the Camera Roll rather than the web.

So, what can you do with this kind of app?

• Take any curriculum topic and break it down in simpler language. If having students do the creation, use an expository text structure-based graphic organizer such as those in Mindwing Concepts' Thememaker Program. Part of the process can include developing written language by writing a printed script to be used in the video.
• Record articulation or other speech production intervention sentences, using the audio for feedback to the student (and parents).
• Illustrate social concepts through Comic Strip Conversations (Carol Gray). Tara Roehl wrote a great post on how she uses Educreations for social instruction.
• Use a storyboard to develop executive function and help students plan, Sarah Ward-style, "What it's going to look like when it's done."
• Tell stories through sketches to develop narrative.
• Creatively speaking, go to town! This example of an Educreations video was a classroom's Hercule Poirot-style wrap-up of a "class mystery," using vocabulary about observation, with fewer people sitting about drinking in a drawing room and hoping they aren't pegged as the culprit.

What other ways have you used Educreations? Let us know in the comments.

Disclosure: Author contracts to Mindwing Concepts to contribute to their blog, and Mindwing Concepts provides professional development through a partnership with Ely Center, LLC, where this author is employed.