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Kid in Story Book Maker is a personalized story creator for children and their parents, educators or SLPs
Kid in Story Book Maker by Locomotive Labs is an iPad app for children and adults to use together to create a story. More than just a plain-text page turner, Kid in Story Book Maker allows you to insert the image of the child into the story and to record voice-over narration for each page. It's your own personal storybook maker that can be used for creative storytelling or more focused instruction by educators and speech-language pathologists (SLPs). The central purpose of Kid in Story Book Maker is the ability to create a personalized story. The developers have created tutorial videos to walk you through the steps, and the process is relatively easy. Templates make it simple for you to get started, but at this time there are not many choices. The developers at Locomotive Labs invite users to share their original stories, so hopefully the Kid in Story template library will expand. Users also have the option to create a story from scratch, but that process is a bit more involved. Once you have the framework of a story in place, you can start building the pages. You can retrieve a picture from your own photo library or take pictures of your child as the story is being created. Image-detection technology isolates only the child and superimposes his or her portrait onto the page of the story. Sound can be added to narrate the page and text may be added or edited to the story pages. One improvement the creators might consider is allowing more than one audio recording per page. When an adult records his or her own voice, this is not a problem. However, when a child attempts to record the narrative on a page, it can be challenging for those struggling with verbal recall, sentence formulation and word retrieval. For a simple narrative such as "This is my happy face," it is not a problem. On the other hand, generating a longer or more complex narrative can be an issue for children with speech and language delays. Another factor to consider is time. Although adding and editing the photos to the pages are relatively simple tasks, this can take time. If the adult user is a care provider or SLP, he or she may need to do work outside of the session since it can take valuable time away from the session and it may be hard to justify this cost to third-party payers. This is certainly true if an original story is being created. When you are done with a story, you can share it via email or Dropbox. The story is saved as a Kid In Story book file (.kis) and requires the recipient to have an iPad or iPhone with Kid in Story installed. The story also can be sent as a PDF file, but the audio narration will be lost in the conversion. The Kid in Story Book Maker app is a useful tool for preschool and elementary-aged children. It has clear benefits for children with autism and can also capture the attention of other children who may resist listening to stories or story retelling activities. The older the child, the more likely he or she can be involved in the actual process of creating the story. This format allows the child to be engaged with the visual and auditory narrative, and can motivate an otherwise resistive child. In addition, Kid in Story commands the visual attention of a child while trying to teach specific behavioral concepts like sharing. Frequently, the child's usual avoidance strategies are reduced or eliminated. The app can be used with children who are having difficulty reading or who avoid reading activities. Since the user can control the text, it allows a great deal of flexibility as to the content and complexity of the story. Another popular usage of the app is to create social stories for a child who may need pre-teaching or preparation for events. This includes, but is not limited to, children on the autism spectrum. The Kid in Story app also is being used by SLPs, educators and parents to teach specific skills to a child or children. Some of these can include teaching linguistic concepts such as prepositions (spatial concepts), pronoun usage, descriptive and other early academic concepts. It can even be used as an activity to facilitate speech sound articulation skills at the phrase, sentence or paragraph level. Kid in Story Book Maker by Locomotive Labs is available for US$6.99 (right now it is on sale for free) in the iOS App Store. Speech-language pathology analysis provided by Clare Clifford, CCC-SLP at OT To Play.
NACD Home Speech Therapist brings apraxia therapy to the iPad
Speech Therapy for Apraxia - NACD Home Speech Therapist is an iPad tool designed to improve speech sound productions and motor speech planning skills in people with apraxia, a speech disorder in which a person knows what they want to say, but has difficulty speaking the correct sounds, syllables, and words. The target users are children, but the app can be used with adults as well. I have a few children in speech therapy, which gave me and our speech-language therapist an opportunity to try out the iPad app. What the app does The apraxia program has 8 levels with speech sounds that are arranged appropriately in developmental sequence. The app doesn't teach the individual sounds, but focuses on learned sounds in various sound combinations. Each combined sound consists of consonant vowel (CV) syllables and are grouped according to their place of articulation, with the exception of the liquids (/l, r/). Within the practice sets, the target sounds vary in manner (how the sounds are produced) and voicing (whether or not the voice is used). Users can choose to start at the beginning and work their way through the 8 levels or jump ahead and work on those sounds that need practice. The consonant groups practiced in the app include B P M; D N T; G K H; W; F V; S Z; SH CH J; and L R. Level 1 starts off with 20 CV targets and is simple in its presentation with one CV syllable and image per screen. The images are simple and easy to recognize, which makes it especially suitable for children. The child (or adult) touches the screen and the auditory stimulus (sound) is presented. The child then repeats the sound and moves on to the next screen. The adult provides the necessary feedback to help the child improve their sound-making skills. The next 7 levels all have 10 CV targets and are increasingly more difficult. If the child has the verbal recall ability, the complexity can be increased even more by asking the child to touch some (or all) of the stimulus items and then repeat them as a whole or partial sequence. This can facilitate rapid motor planning and sequencing. The good and the bad Just like any app, the NACD Home Speech Therapist has its strong points and its weaknesses. As we have seen with other tablet applications, this type of visual and tactile activity can hold a child's attention longer than traditional practice sessions, which is a good thing for parents looking to pack as much learning as they can into a therapy session. This type of app also gives the child a sense of control and lets them progress through the program at their own pace. You have to monitor the pace, though, as a child left alone with the app could whip right through an exercise. The adult can try to control the pace by holding the iPad, but some children may resist (and by resist I mean cry uncontrollably) if the tablet is held out of their reach. You have to find the right balance between self-directed and parent-directed learning. Not surprisingly, elementary school-aged children and even many preschoolers can learn to recognize the picture or letter combinations, and can try to say them without touching the screen or hearing the auditory input. Yes, this allows the child to progress to the point of producing sounds without the auditory input, but it could also lead to the child saying the response simultaneously with the stimuli. This makes it challenging for the adult to accurately assess the child's response when he or she speaks at the same time as the iPad. Thankfully, there is a simple solution -- just turn down the sound of the iPad until you can hear your child clearly. The biggest drawback to the NACD Home Speech Therapist is the lack of visual movement or reinforcement when a stimulus item is touched. This not only takes away from the overall experience of the app, it also can hinder a child who focuses on visual instead of auditory stimulus. Conclusion Overall, NACD Home Speech Therapist is a useful tool for teaching CV phonemes to independent learners. It can be used by a speech-language pathologist in a school or clinical setting. It can also be used by parents to practice with their children at home. Note that the app does not replace the teaching of the individual phonemes, and would not be useful if the child needed visual cues from a speaker or an alteration of the auditory stimulus. Speech Therapy for Apraxia - NACD Home Speech Therapist is available for $4.99 and is compatible with the iPad. Speech-language pathology analysis provided by Clare Clifford, CCC-SLP at OT To Play.
Brain implant, software enables patients to think out loud
Truth be told, we've already seen instances where technology has enabled individuals to speak without speaking, but a brain implant placed into Eric Ramsey's head could certainly raise the bar in this field. The wireless electrode, which resides just six-millimeters below the surface of his brain, records pulses from 41 surrounding neurons involved in speech generation, and thanks to software developed by the associated team, those thoughts will hopefully be translated into words in the not-too-distant future. Currently, the group feels that they can accurately identify the word Ramsey is thinking up 80-percent of the time, and in the coming weeks, a computer will begin giving the patient real-time feedback so he can perfect the art of thinking out loud. 'Course, the team responsible isn't likely to be satisfied until an unadulterated conversation can take place, but it seems we're well on our way to seeing that come to fruition.[Via BBC]
