Awareness! An App for Articulation, Fluency, and more!

I recently downloaded this app for my own use (to keep me safe and aware while running with my headphones in),  but I quickly realized that it had wonderful applications to speech therapy, especially for kids struggling with articulation and fluency difficulties.

Awareness! The Headphone App allows you to hear environmental sounds around you while listening to music or other audio through your headphones (on iPhone or iPad).  Awareness! uses the microphone of your device to bring in the external audio signal and blends the signals so you hear the audio source form within your device (i.e., audio, music) as well as the sounds around you!  It really works well!  Here are a few ways I have explored this app so far in therapy:

• As feedback to slow down speech rate (much like DAF-delayed Auditory Feedback)
• As feedback for articulation practice and error discrimination
• To help my kids with auditory processing difficulties practice listening to what's important within a sea of environmental noise

I love using Awareness!  with the built in iPhone/iPad, front facing camera as well for added feedback!

This app is simple, but awesome, and I can't wait to keep exploring it as a feedback tool in therapy!

What apps are you using for feedback?

iBooks 2 Now Available To Download -- AppAdvice

What amazing applications for our kids with special needs! I see tons of possibilities in this from parent handouts and guides to adapted books!  So exciting!

iBooks 2 Now Available To Download -- AppAdvice
http://appadvice.com/appnn/2012/01/ibooks-2-now-available-to-download

Symbol World: Symbol Based News for Kids & Adults

If you like News2You, you will love SymbolWorld! "SymbolWorld is a website created by Widgit Software specifically for symbol users. It has material for all ages and includes news, personal contributions, stories and learning materials." (http://www.symbolworld.org/)

Features of this, FREE, web-based program are:

• easy navigatation, with the option to personalize the layout and colors to suit any reader's needs
• you can create user accounts, allowing you to save style settings, access the "Print Friendly PDFs" feature, rate articles and sign up for email notifications
• all links have visual highlights (i.e., a colored border to show where you are on the page) to make the site more accessible for people using switches or who use the Tab key to browse

• at the bottom of every article is a ‘Print Friendly’ button, which will create a print friendly PDF of the entire article for you to save or print directly from your browser

Speech/Voice Output is currently not available on SymbolWorld :(. But they are working on this feature for the near future! The current, non-speech version of SymbolWorld does not require Flash, which means you can view ALL of the features of the site on your iDevice. I was actually able to use the VoiceOver feature on my iPad to select the text on each news page and have it read aloud. I was also able to touch each word in the article to have the VoiceOver engine read each word aloud one at a time. This could be a great literacy building tool for early level readers! The fact that you can print each symbol-based news story to a PDF file gives you some flexibility with regard to speech output. If your child is currently using an electronic reading program like Kurzwell , the PDFs from SymbolWorld could be loaded and read through that or other PDF reader programs. I can even think of some ways to make this happen on iPad…:) Want to know more about that? :)

Online AT Conference-Techknowledgy 2011

Get informed about how to implement technology for your kids without changing out of your PJ's! :)  Check out this cool project shared on The Assistive Technology Blog where you can attend AT workshops online!  Techknowledgy 2011 has a nice selection of topics including "AT Solutions for the Early Childhood Population" and "AT Solutions for Communication and AAC" The conferences are quick and many include vieos!  Super cool, check it out and let me know what you think.