APPS - so many, every day
Make a Scene: Farmyard- This is a great app to use during a farm thematic unit. Kids get to create their own farm by adding animals, food, tractors, and more. This has been a fun way to work on following directions, prepositions, and teaching new vocabulary.
Creating & Viewing eBooks and Story Books for iPad Toontastic $9.99 Developed by Launchpad Toys, Toontastic teaches narrative techniques. Users can then choose or create their own settings and characters. They then move these characters around the page while speaking the dialogue. I have used this app with children from about 5 years old all the way through to senior school. TeleStory $4.99 Recently released, TeleStory is a great addition to the Launchpad Toys family. It allows students to film and broadcast their own TV shows using digital costumes and real-time augmented reality settings and effects. The structured scenes are really great for children who have difficulty with story grammar and language. The ability to do as many ‘retakes’ as needed, is practice for language, fluency and presentation skills. Book Creator $4.99 Seeing the joy as children watch their books come to life, warms my heart. Book Creator allows you to create your own beautiful iBooks, right on the iPad. They can be read in iBooks, sent to friends and family and submitted to the iBook Store. Books can be as complex or as simple as required and the following features are available: Book creator can even be used to teach core vocabulary. You can read about it here My PlayHome $3.99 My PlayHome, My Play Home Stores ($2.99) and the newly released My PlayHome School ($2.99), is the ultimate virtual doll house. The characters eat, sleep, shower, brush their teeth, go to the store, and go to school. Toca Boca $2.99 The Toca Boca apps have always been a favorite of mine for open ended play sequences, vocabulary and language. They are great value for money and every now and then they go free. I particularly like Toca Hair Salon, Toca Hair Salon 2, and Toca Hair Salon Me, Toca Tea Party, Toca Tailor, Toca Kitchen and I know Toca Kitchen 2 Real Vocabulary Pro $29.99 app by Virtual Speech Center, is a comprehensive and flexible language app to assist children build their vocabulary. The app targets receptive and expressive vocabulary. Auditory Memory Ride $19.99 This is a comprehensive app to work on Auditory Memory. Different time delays as well as background noise make this a fantastic app for working on auditory memory. The app addresses the following aspects of auditory memory. Fun with Verbs and Sentences $15.99 This app is developed to elicit early language development and I’ve really enjoyed the versatility of using this app with a variety of children with different language levels. A full review of this app can be found here Letter Sounds – Reading Doctor $23.99 Difficulty with grapheme (letter) – phoneme (sound) correspondence is one of the difficulties that significantly affect the ability to learn to read and spell because there is no relationship between the way letters look and the way they are sounded out. An in depth review of this app can be found here. TouchChat and Speak for Yourself are full-featured communication solutions for individuals who have difficulty using their natural voice. There is no single communication system that is right for everyone and both Touch Chat with Word Power and Speak For Yourself, cover a very broad spectrum of users. Speak for Yourself is my other “go to” AAC app. It is easy to navigate, requires a maximum of 2 taps to get to a word, it has a word search feature and a ‘babble’ option which allows individuals to explore language. Soundable – Sometimes you have to kick back and relax with a nerdy little SLP game. Soundable is a great refresher for IPA and fun SLPs! Think of it as Scrabble with IPA! Enjoy! Real Vocabulary Pro – $29.99 I really enjoy how this app targets vocabulary learning in students K-5. You can work on antonyms, synonyms, definitions, multiple meanings, and idioms within this app. It also keeps data for you! There are reinforcer games as well which is helpful for older clients! Sentence Ninja – $19.99 Sentence ninja is a great way for students to work on grammar and syntax. It can also be used for language and articulation carry-over. It’s a very motivating theme for students and they enjoy working on this app during sessions. It has built-in data tracking also. aacorn – $189.99 AAC is an ever-changing area. This app is great for some students and a great way to introduce AAC to younger children. It learns the student and can be customized completely. I also love that they offer free version to SLPs for therapy and trials. Plus, of all AAC options, this is one of the best-made and affordable options. I have used this with nonverbal elementary students as well as nonverbal children under 3. With some training, it can be utilized by most students easily. Avokiddo Emotions – $2.99We use this with social goals to identify emotions, talk about why the character feels that way, etc. We also use this to work on attributes, actions, describing, requesting, and so much more. It’s a well-made and versatile app! Between the lines level 1, Between the lines level 2 and Between the lines advanced These apps are ones that I used to work on inferences, body language, facial expressions, perspective taking and slang. The videos and real photographs helped my caseload a lot. These apps also can be found in lite versions. Cost: 15.99 or .99 for lite versions CoWriter app – 19.99 or iPad. This mobile app version of Co-Writer™ from Don Johnston, provides word prediction with grammar and phonetic spelling support and topic dictionaries for the iPad. Text to speech provides supports for struggling reader and writer. Custom Boards This is an app that I use to create materials. Often I use it during therapy sessions and we can create a new vocabulary game or list together. It has many different templates. You can use your own pictures, ones in the app or from google. Cost: 49.99 Describe it to me There are over 160 pictures to use to work on improving describing skills. There are six different questions that target category, function, parts, location, visuals, and extras. You can work on this app in the receptive mode and chose a correct answer or in the expressive mode and create your own responses. Cost: 9.99 FingerPaint Duel This app is made to encourage “playing together creatively.” In the app two players try to finger paint a shape and get the most points. My twist we talk about strategies- which size pencil would work the best and why, should you use the eraser or not, etc. Cost: Free and Full app 2.99 First Then Visual Schedule HD app – (14.99) for iPhone and iPad provides visual communication schedules for individuals with disabilities. Use images, video, text supports in visual schedules. Offers multiple styles of viewing schedules, from single to multiple pictures with options of check-off, to do done or put away. Add choices of sensory breaks to the visual schedule. Print or email schedules as hard copy option. First Then Visual Schedule app is also available for Android. Fotor Photo Editor & Cam app – Free (with in-app purchase) iOS app for iPhone/iPad features photo editing options not provided with the iOS stock Photo Album app. The free version provides tools to enhance, apply effects, manage brightness/contrast, stickers, text, crop, rotate, tilt/shift, frames and pixelate. Additional in-app purchases are available, however the free version provides many tools to modify images on your device as needed for AAC apps, storytelling apps or other creation apps. Take pictures from within Fotor app or import from your Photos Library. Fotor Photo Editor is also available for Android. Hiding Monsters- $1.99 I love this app! These not-so-scary monsters play hide and seek with your students in different scenes. The app changes up their hiding place so it's not so predictable. I love using this app to engage the kids in expressive language- especially prepositions (the monster was IN the washing machine!) They get so excited when they find the monster! InPromptu app – Free app for iPhone/Pad developed by Ohio State University, provides visual communication with text and video supports for individuals with disability. Provides mobile means of supplying evidence based practice of visual modeling using this app. Keeble Accessible Keyboard app – 14.99 iOS 3rd party keyboard app provides word prediction, color coded keys, text to speech and dwell and release options for the iOS keyboard. Used in conjunction when word processing, emailing, or texting, this app provides support for struggling writers when used with other apps. Lazoo Squiggles app – Free app for early, emergent writers to draw, add stickers and sound to create a picture story. Drawings becomes animated! Great app and activity for young writers! ModMath app (free) for iPad provides an electronic math paper typing environment to create basic math problems (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, simple fractions) on the iPad. Great for elementary students with handwriting problems. Awesome app. ASSISTIVE TECHNOLOGY ELEMENTARY APPS Articulation APPS Writing research and tools for individuals with autism and complex disabilities 55 Best Education APS |
News-O-Matic This is a subscription based app that I happened to get on sale. The news changes daily and is made for kids. It has short articles, videos, slide show, maps and fact links for each article. The articles can be read to you. Targeted vocabulary words have links to definitions. Cost: free app with in-app purchases
Ready to Print app – 9.99 for iPad provides prewriting activities and handwriting activities that can be graded according to the users skills. Collects data on individual users progress. This is an essential for OT’s who have a mobile device who are working with primary aged students. Ready to Print app for Android is also available for Kindle Tablet and Android devices. Sago Mini Doodlecast This app is like a white board with at twist. There are 30 drawing prompts but you get to finish them. As you draw you also record your story. When you are finished it will play back each stroke you drew and what you said as you were drawing. Lots of therapy twists here. Be sure to check out the other apps from Sago Sago too. Cost:2.99 SnapType for Occupational Therapy – Free for iPad is a annotation app that provides an easy method of typing on photos of worksheets for individuals with dysgraphia or handwriting challenges Timbuktu Pizza-This is a very fun app for following directions. Each pizza has a list of ingredients that the student has to include on the pizza. The list includes both pictures and words, so it's even great for non-readers. After the student finishes making the pizza, he/she bakes it then serves it to Igor (a monster.) If the student followed directions, Igor is happy and eats the pizza. If the pizza was not made correctly- watch out- Igor will throw the pizza! Toca Kitchen Monsters- This app is so much fun. Who am I kidding? All Toca Boca apps are! In this app, students choose a monster to prepare food for. They choose a food from the refrigerator (mushrooms, tomatoes, steak, hotdogs, broccoli, etc.) then cook it up! They can cut it, blend it, boil it, microwave it, or put it in a skillet. After they cooked the food, they feed it to the monster! I have loved using this app with my food aversion students and picky eaters! Just another way to show them how to have fun with food! Voice Dream Reader app – regularly 9.99 (currently on sale for 4.99) for iPhone and iPad is the Swiss Army Knife of document and textbook management apps for individuals with reading challenges. Manages large files with a wide a variety of formats (PDF, Doc, RTF, DRM-free, Daisy, EPub, web and many more. Integrates directly with Gutenberg, Bookshare, Evernote, Google Drive for file management. Text to speech, synchronized text highlighting, high quality voices, color background/text contrast and text formatting options are a few of the customization features within the app. Provides study tools such as highlighting and extracting highlighted text and annotation. Appropriate for middle, high school and adult readers. |