Mind Mapping with children who need support with organisation.

Posted on October 20, 2014 by thclc

2connect for mind mapping

2Connect is a collaborative mind mapping tool.
Teachers could use 2Connect for planning work, and as it is a collaborative tool you could use it for planning together as a class on the whiteboard and then a child can use the mind map as a word bank on a computer and cut down on typing time.
“2Connect is a concept mapping and planning tool which helps children organise thoughts (individually or collaboratively on a network). It’s a simple way to put ideas on a page.
Concept Map: Add words, sound and images
Sound Recorder: Record and play back your own voice to help support and guide your writing
Collaborative Tool: Work on the same concept map at the same time and see ideas instantly appear on all the other machines in real time.
Word Bank: Just link to any writing program, click on a word and it’s inserted into the text”
Some other mind mapping software is Kidspiration (you can download a free 30 day trial) With colourful clip art.

Turns into a linear document with paragraphs.

Kidspiration turns into a linear document at the click of a button.

Planning your writing.

Using an iPad with a y2 Girl with Down’s syndrome

Posted on October 19, 2014 by thclc

If you have a young child with Down’s Syndrome in your class some of these ideas might help.

Choose a good iPad holder like Big Grips

A Big Grips Frame

Communication Apps:

iPads offer many ways to support communication, from full (more expensive) AAC Apps to cheap or free Apps offering limited but useful communication. You would want to choose on the basis of whether an app can be personalised easily and what kind of speech output it has (male/female/child) and voice quality. How easy is it to learn and can your edits be backed up?

Have an App that encourages speech: Talking Tom/ Taking Gina, there are others; they repeat back what the child says thus encouraging vocalisation.

Talking Tom repeats what you say

Signing apps are: Baby Sign and learn, MobileSign 2 The ultimate BSL App – a great (free) BSL dictionary comprising a video lexicon of 4000+ BSL signs, with a simple alphabetic search but no voice over.

My ChoicePad is a cross between a signing App and a communication aid App, offers a combination of 450 core vocabulary Makaton symbols and Makaton signs. My ChoicePad has video clips of signing accompanying the symbols, as well as line drawings of how to make each sign, and speech output. You can also use your own photos and voice recordings.

Scene and Heard app

Picture stories: “Scene and Heard” which costs £34.99 & is based on visual scene displays, messages are embedded in hotspots, with popup symbol windows. Switch accessibility is built-in. (And Scene Speak is a cheaper simpler way to explore and evaluate the use of visual scenes – no symbols though, just text and speech output.)

Using TalkBoard to make a sentence.

TalkBoard turns your iPad into a communication aid and visual prompt board. TalkBoard is affordable because it does not come with built-in pictures or symbols, which many other apps charge extra for. You can easily use your own pictures and symbols to personalise the app. (read what a Speech and Language Therapist thinks about it here)

If you need to you can move towards turning the iPad into a full communication device using The Grid 2 or Proloquo2Go. Speech and language therapists will also know more about exactly what is best for the child in your class.

For writing/publishing/general Book Creator (2.99) for creating stories with own pictures, some text and voice. My Story and Our Story (from OU) are great for making social stories as well as for telling stories.

Also apps for making letter & number shape: Finger Paint from Inclusive Technology is nice and so is Doodle Kids.

All the Busythings apps are great and they have literacy & maths content.

Collins Big Cat books (for reading and making stories)

Others are: Flash Cards, iPlay&Sing, Little Writer for Kids.

The best Clicker App for younger children is Clicker Sentences

Clicker Sentences

which has lots of ready made resources and “talks to” Clicker 6.

You may find the accessibility options on the iPad helpful, especially “Guided Access” which helps the user to stay focused on a task while using the iPad. Guided Access limits the device to a single app and lets you control which app features are available. This will stop the user moving on to something else if s/he gets fed up with it.

Use Guided Access to: ▪ Temporarily restrict your device to a particular app ▪ Disable areas of the screen that aren’t relevant to a task, or areas where an accidental gesture might cause a distraction ▪ Disable the hardware buttons

Tap Settings > General > Accessibility > Guided Access to set up Guided Access. From there you can: ▪ Turn Guided Access on or off ▪ Set a passcode that controls the use of Guided Access and prevents someone from leaving an active session ▪ Set whether the device can go to sleep during a session

Start a Guided Access session ▪ Open the app you want to run. ▪ Triple-click the Home button. ▪ Adjust settings for the session, then click Start. Disable app controls and areas of the app screen ▪ Circle any part of the screen you want to disable. ▪ Use the handles to adjust the area.

Ignore all screen touches ▪ Turn off Touch.

Keep iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch from switching from portrait to landscape or from responding to any other motions ▪ Turn off Motion. End a Guided Access session ▪ Triple-click the Home button. Enter the Guided Access passcode.

Story Making on iPad.

Posted on October 19, 2014 by thclc

Sock Puppets for Story Telling

iPads are great for story telling and story making with children of all ability. My favourites at the moment are Sock Puppets, which allows the child to move around their chosen sock whilst recording their voice.

Also try ‘Our Story’ by the Open University allows you to choose your pictures from your camera roll or other places and put them on story line, then add text and voice over each picture.

Also helpful for story making is the comic strip template on 2Publish +

I worked with a child recently in a year 3 class learning about speech and speech marks. The class were putting speech into speech bubbles on paper. Danny, whose writing is less than legible, successfully used the comic strip to publish his work.

Various great templates.

2CreateAStory for social stories and reluctant writers.

Posted on October 19, 2014 by thclc

PurpleMash’s 2CreateAStory can be used to make little folded books (4 pages print out on one side of A4 and make a little book when folded) and this is great for recounts about trips out or for your social stories but it is so much more than that.

2Create a Story also allows children to create their own multimedia digital storybooks with 3 different modes: My Simple Story, My Story and My Adventure Story.

My Simple Story has a simplified user interface with fewer drawing tools, fewer animations & sounds and no background button. This is to make creating books easier for younger children.

Animate and add sound!

My Story includes added features such as backgrounds and sound recording.

My Adventure Story includes the functionality to create non-sequential links between pages and animate characters.

The ‘add sound effects’ option also offers you the option of recording your voice to either speak the text you have typed or elaborate on it. This is great for children who are more comfortable talking than typing/writing. You can also import your own pictures.

This displays the story planner view which shows how the story flows. In a Simple story or My Story this will be sequential. In an Adventure story it may not be.
This assists children in planning their story. You can click on any page to go to that page.
When in play mode, the overview will still work to take you straight to a page of a story. This is very useful in Adventure stories when testing whether all the routes through a story work correctly as you
do not have to go through the whole story each time.

You can see a preview of how the animation effect will look as you select the animation effects. Each
animation button has a different effect. My Simple Story has fewer animation effects available. Only
one animation can be used on each page of the book.

Example of 2Create A story page

Look out for a blog post with more details about making Adventure Stories.

(Click bus picture below to see an animation)

Assistive Technology and Inclusion

Advice and ideas from Tower Hamlets

Monthly Archives: October 2014

Mind Mapping with children who need support with organisation.

Using an iPad with a y2 Girl with Down’s syndrome

Story Making on iPad.

2CreateAStory for social stories and reluctant writers.