Workshop: Applying Technology to Support Social and Executive Functioning

Hi Folks, please spread the word about the following workshop being held by the Massachusetts Speech-Language Hearing Association.

Applying Technology to Support Social and Executive Functioning

Saturday, April 5, 2014, 8:30-3:30, Emerson College, Boston.

This workshop will demonstrate a variety of visual and interactive applications that can be used with students with difficulties in social cognition and executive functioning, particularly with a lens on addressing these issues in the educational environment. Webtools and apps for iPads will be covered, including those helpful for older students struggling to access the curriculum and manage their workload. Participants will have guided practice time throughout the day, as well as opportunities for sharing and collaborating with colleagues.


Learner Outcomes
1. Participants will describe a variety of tools applicable to students at various age levels to support social interaction in the school, community and home settings.
2. Participants will apply applications towards assisting students and parents with executive functioning: planning, organization, behavioral regulation and time management.
3. Participants will align technology tools with specific approaches supporting social and executive functioning, such as Story Grammar Marker® and The Incredible 5-Point Scale.

Find out more and register on the MSHA Website.

Have a "Smashing" Saint Patrick's Day

"App Smashing" is a term I am starting to tell people about at workshops. Apps do discrete things, and no one app does everything. But we can capitalize on one app's capabilities when combined with another's- chiefly through saving a product to the camera roll. This provides both an opportunity for us to expand our tech comfort and for kids to follow multiple step directions. "App Smashing" was coined by Massachusetts educator Greg Kulowiec and you can learn more about it here.

St. Patrick's day can indeed be about more than the stereotypes (no comment, but I am too old, basically, anyway), and this week I used the context to do an activity about positive self-talk. In a brief lesson we illustrated how our self-talk can influence our feelings and therefore our social behaviors- it's the difference between "Lucky Thinking" and "Unlucky Thinking."

Students then used the free app St. Patrick's Day Booth Free to snap a selfie- you may have to try a few to make sure the top of the head is hat-ready- and add festive stuff. This app allows you to save to the camera roll (tap the download/box symbol).

Next, use a photo comic app such as Story Me or Strip Designer. Add the photo to a single-paned comic from the camera roll, and add a word balloon or thought balloon after working with the student around some "Lucky Thinking" from their day or week. This also targets sentence and narrative formulation as well as social cognition. 

See our model used with our center's doggie, Stella!

Have fun with App-Smashing!

"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.

AR Flashcards Space

Last mARch I focused on applications of augmented reality (AR) in education. Augmented reality is the technological process of accessing digital information in our analog world. Location or device orientation information, printed "markers" or other data are used, often in conjunction with a mobile device camera, to display relevant information. AR has a major "cool" factor and is very engaging for students to use- often they have not ever experienced anything quite like it!

AR can be quite simple to use as well, as is the case with apps such as AR Flashcards-Animal Alphabet, which I wrote about last year and also just won the 2013 Best Mobile App in Education Edublog Award. The folks who created this app have targeted another topic- the Solar System- in their new app AR Flashcards- Space ($.99)!

This app would be a fun tool to incorporate for students studying space, the solar system or an earth/sun/moon unit. After you print a set of colored flashcards (available here if you would like to preview them), launch the app and point your rear-facing camera at a card. The planet depicted will appear in dynamic 3-D. Tap the planet to hear its name (SLPs, let's acknowledge that the articulation of the students who recorded the planet names, well, has some errors) and another button will play a paragraph-length audio description of the planet.

Langauge Lens:
-The images that appear are great stimuli for descriptive language skills- what do you notice about the planets?
-The information played auditorily for each planet is schematic (focusing on category, e.g. gas planet, temperature and other features) so could be used for auditory comprehension activities or also perhaps to fill out a planetary scavenger hunt graphic organizer of facts about each planet.
-This app could also be paired with Aurasma to create your own content about the planets or another topic.

AR Flashcards-Space is well worth it for $.99!

Travolta's Teachable Moment

YouTube is a great resource when it comes to finding timely video clips- just preview the exact one to make sure you know what you are showing.*

Sunday at the Oscars, John Travolta made somewhat of a gaffe by, I guess you could call it mis-introducing singer Idina Menzel, because it went far beyond simply mispronouncing her name. Your students are likely to have background information about this as the song she was singing is from the animated hit Frozen.

I know many have sympathy for Mr. Travolta for various reasons, but nevertheless, the humorous situation can be used as a teachable moment for students (and us)! Though we emphasize social concepts such as "People Files" (see Social Thinking® and the work of Michelle Garcia Winner) regularly, students still benefit from regular review of why it is important to at least use others' names purposefully, if not have deeper knowledge about them, and this situation seemed totally on point. Use YouTube to look up the occurrence, or see this link for video, and for an engaging twist, a little interactive that lets you "Travoltify" your students' names.

You can also show at least the beginning of the performance immediately after and discuss why it was important for Ms. Menzel to react professionally:

If you have been to one of Sarah Ward's workshops, her STOP strategy for situational awareness (Space, Time, Objects, People) goes well with this situation.

Space- onstage, backstage, audience, well, uh, the world.
Time- Before the show, each piece of the show is rehearsed several times. What happened right after this? What should Mr. Travolta do to make up for his mistake after this?
Objects- Paper (could have been used as memory aid), teleprompter.
People- What do we know about Mr. Travolta? What about Ms. Menzel- unfortunately this was a shining moment for her that got messed up a bit. What did others think about his mistake? What are the emotions involved for the speaker, singer, viewer. See this ad by the promoters of Idina Menzel's new Broadway show capitalizing on the humor of the story.

The concepts established with the clip can then be applied to activities emphasizing names and people files within the group.

*I also like to use apps such as TubeBox to save clips (avoiding connection/blocking problems in buildings) and remove distracting adds and sidebar clip libraries.

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.

Blogobirthday and Giveaway!

Hi Folks,

This month, I am celebrating the fourth year of this blog! Wow! Thanks all who keep reading and keep me writing...

To celebrate, and because of a convenient coincidence, I am going to give away 10 codes for the full version of Comics Head (normally $3.99), a terrific comic-making app. Jay from NextWave Multimedia saw my post on how Comics Head could be used to build narrative and social awareness, and offered up the codes to you guys.

Image via Flickr Creative Commons by Omer Wazir

I don't normally do giveaways because they frankly are hard to do via blog! Also, I am headed to sunny FL tomorrow for the remainder of school vacation week here in the Northeast, and so don't have much time to devote to this. So, we are going to keep this REALLY simple. If you would like to receive a code:
-Leave a comment on THIS POST within 24 hrs about how you use comics in your work (any kind of comic, digital or not). Some readers have reported trouble posting a comment. Good teachable moment- if you ever have trouble with a website, switch browsers (Chrome generally works well with Blogger).
-Leave your email address in the body of the comment (if you don't, you have not entered).
-If I receive more than 10 comments, I will pick by random number generator and email you the code- 24 hrs from now!
-If I don't get 10 comments in 24 hrs, I am going to give the codes to Twitter pals (Twitter pals also feel free to comment here, haha)!
-You will need to redeem the code immediately or may lose the opportunity to do so, as they expire soon.
-Please do not email me about the giveaway, as the instructions and everything you need to know about it are above.

Much thanks!

EDIT- I realized I don't have wifi on my plane, and I don't want to bring my computer on vacation! So I did the drowning a bit early. Winners: Linda, Matt, Lisa, Ilene (email comment), Leslie, EasyRead, Diana, Sharon, Ryan, Stephanie

Sorry if you didn't win- thanks for participating!!

DirecTV's "Don't" commercials

YouTube gives you on-demand access to just about anything, including commercials that have a language teaching purpose.* DirecTV's recent campaign consists of stories that start when someone is not using DirecTV, and end with an unfortunate consequence. I actually had a student suggest this series while we were using ads to learn about expository text structure. The cause-effect chain in each clip is very fun to explore, and can be used to target inference, complex sentence formulation or sequencing (you could also screen-shot each condition and make a visual sequencing activity, or place your shots in something like Popplet for sequencing). As the character's situation often changes, this provides good opportunities to explore the story grammar element of setting, do situational analysis with Sarah Ward's STOP (Space, Time, Objects, People) strategy, or even Social Behavior Mapping (see the work of Social Thinking® by Michelle Garcia Winner). Exploring a few of the clips would also allow you to work on main idea, i.e. what overall is DirecTV saying about their service as opposed to cable.

As these ads are off-color and have hints of violence, you would want to use them with an older population (especially the last two, which are a bit saucy). Also be very careful to preview each one before showing, as these ads have been parodied in inappropriate ways, and you wouldn't want to show one of those videos.

A number of the clips are embedded below- email subscribers click through to the post to see them.








These last two are definitely more for older students/teens:




*If YouTube is blocked at your school, apps such as TubeBox allow you to cache (download) any YouTube video for offline viewing, or download to your computer using sites such as KeepVid.

EDCO Class Canceled

HI Folks,

Unfortunately we had a (too) small enrollment for my EDCO Tech Links to Language Intervention class that was supposed to run tomorrow 2/7. Winter blues? EDCO has notified enrollees but asked me to post as people called today about it, and they are worried others might show up having not registered...

Thanks- hopefully we will reschedule for summer or fall.

Apps Gone Free

The F in the FIVES Criteria has long since changed from "Free" to "Fairly Priced," but we all love a bargain. One of the best ways to find "finds" is a daily check of the Apps Gone Free app (free). This app, a resource from the terrific App Advice blog and website, lists apps that have "gone" free for a day or so. The apps tend to be of higher quality both because they usually cost some money (not always an indicator of higher quality, admittedly), but also because they need to have a minimum rating of 3 stars in the App Store in order to be listed. Apps Gone Free is a great way to hone your evaluation-at-a-glance skills; take a look at the apps listed and do a quick FIVES analysis (or application of other criteria you find handy) in your mind before you even download. In this case, there's no risk if the app doesn't turn out to be something you could use!

Another feature I like in this app is that you can easily share your bargains with colleagues via email or twitter, so they can grab the app while it is free as well, and perhaps you can collaborate over ideas. Keep in mind to alert them that the apps listed are only free for a very limited time!