Hello 🙂
Here at Speech Therapy For All P.C., we loooovvveeee to use apps during therapy ( both through teletherapy and face to face appointments). We get asked many times what apps can help children increase their language skills, so we figured we would feature a different app in the upcoming weeks on our blog page 🙂
One of our favorite apps is called “Bitsboard Pro” ( not the catchiest name, I know). This app has many features to target increasing overall language skills. The basic concept are category boards of pictures. ” These boards can be directly downloaded from the app (no charge). Once you choose a board set (food, drinks, community places, etc…) you have the option to choose which type of lesson to run ( there are many)! For example, there is an “explore” lesson. When pressed, all of the pictures that are in the board will appear in a grid. When a child touches the picture, the picture becomes centered and enlarged – paired with an audio recording of the word (you can add your own voice as well). You can have your child try and find one of the pictures by simply asking them
“Where is the hot dog”? or based on attributes “What is something that is orange and long that we can eat?”
There are many different types of lessons that can be used (photo touch, spelling, true/false, communication board, etc…). While this may not be a super fun app for children to play with by themselves, it is a very good carryover app to work with children who have difficulty with their language skills (from not speaking, to difficulty following directions, to difficulty reading).
It also words extremely well as a starter app for types of AAC- before purchasing apps like Proloquo2go, TouchChat, and Snap Core. By having children “find” pictures that is asked of them from the Bitsboard app, you can get a good indication of their overall skills locating specific pictures upon command. The application also keeps data of all of your scores on your lessons!
Here is a direct link to Bitsboard online
Here is the link for the iPad version
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/bitsboard-flashcards-pro/id646240375 (there is a paid and free version).
Thanks for checking out our blog! If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to reach out to us at info@speechtherapyforall.com !