My Top 3 Apps

My Top 3 Apps

I would like to now talk about MY top three apps.  With the multitude of apps listed above, it was certainly challenging to come up with a new one that hasn't been already talked about so I will give some more information about three of the apps listed above that I feel are my favourites ;)  I think it's important to note that my absolutely favorite supportive features for diverse learners are the built in features on the new hand held apple products.  Without putting any apps on your device, you can have text to speech (either everything read, or select text options), zoom in/out features, text sizes changed, quick click and email, etc.  Check out your device under Settings - Accessibility and see what they have to offer.  Pretty impressive!

1.  Facetime - This app has been essential for me living far away from my children's grandparents.  As long as each person owns an iphone or iPad you can make visual phone calls (similar to Skype) for free.  Since you don't need anything but connection to WiFi, phone calls are free!  You can set it up to call a phone number or connect to an email address.  You have the option of using the front camera or back camera so you can set it up to view yourself or view your surroundings.  This has been really useful for us with a young baby.  We set up our iPad in the babies room and our phone in our room - voila!  a video baby monitor!  In education, this would be useful to use for a student out sick for an extended period of time, for visual conferencing of group members, or even for motivation for presentations for those who may have anxiety to being up in front of the class.  As with most apps discussed, the uses are only limited by your imagination!

2.   Book Creator - I know we were discussing free apps, but for a minimal cost of about $4.99 you can download this app for iPad or iPhone.  What a great app!  As the description on the App Store states "The simple way to create your own beautiful iBooks, right on the iPad.  Read them in iBooks, send them to your friends, or submit them to the iBookstore."  The description is accurate but fails to describe the easiness of use of this program.  My brother with special needs is able to use this to create his own books and is extremely motivated in doing so.  This app was a winner of a parents choice gold aware and is the number 1 book app for the iPad in 54 countries!  An I can understand why!  My son (3 years old) and I made a childrens book in a very short time.  I could see this app being extremely useful for literacy education for reluctant writers.

3.  iSequences Lite - This app includes 100 exercises in sequencing around social, emotioanl and day-to-day habits.  There are 3 and 4 step sequences to start and builds on this.  You can teach children about sequencing while also learning about steps for autonomous habits, fun activities, daily situations and emotions.  Great for young children but designed and more appropriate with children with autism or other special needs.  In the free lite version you get 10 out of the 100 sequences but a great place to start and build on.  Activities include:  putting images in the correct order.  Once you achieve this, a second activity starts.  They will provide a prompt or visual clue if incorrect.  The second activity is choose the correct end for the sequence between 2 or 3 options or choose which emotional the character will feel in the situation described in the sequence.  There are various configurations in the settings which will allow you to choose which sequences to work on.  The only thing I feel this is missing is a place to make your own sequences (with picture of yourself perhaps - a little more motivating) or a few more options in the configuration setting (for instance less prompts, visual/verbal prompting choices, choosing to have or not to have the celebration noises)  If anyone knows of a better app that would include these options - please post in my blog so we can share resources :)