Apps to support literacy

 

UDL…it ALL comes down to this! UDL is intended to increase access to learning by reducing physical, cognitive, intellectual, and organizational barriers to learning, as well as other obstacles. UDL principles also lend themselves to implementing inclusionary practices in the classroom. Today in class, we were introduced to various Apps that we can use with students to support their learning. The Apps that we learned about today were all easy to use and very adaptable to meet the needs of all students but in particular our students with low incidence disabilities.

Book Creator: I cannot express enough how much I love this App! Being a self-proclaimed non iPad user (that is before this class), I find this App so easy to use! I can see where students of all abilities would be able to use the various options within the App to personalize and customize their work. Not to mention, the finished product is really nice. 

Clicker Sentences: I had never used this App before today and I was pleasantly surprised once again at how easy and quick it was to learn. I was very impressed with the versatility of this App. The sentence flexibility such as the different levels of sentence prompting and guided order provides the student with different levels of support therefore allowing for scaffolding of learning. Our students can really grow with this App because of the amount of availability for choice. When creating the different sentence grids, we need to think of the student and their particular skill set. Due to the number of customization options (voice, speed, highlight colour, speech, changing the swipe option on or off etc...), using this App with students with low incidence disabilities would be very accessible. Here is what Chelsea and I came up with today while exploring this App.

 
 These examples show the different levels of scaffolding available. 






















This is our finished product. I like that you can have the story read to you after it is created as well during creation.

Tools4Students:  This is a great App for our more "neurotypical" students. The App provides several different graphic organizers that are really quite easy to use. These graphic organizers would be great for students who need some of the built in accessibility options that the iPad provides such as word prediction, dictation. This App would also be a fantastic tool for students who struggle with organization of ideas and executive functioning skills. 

Here are some of the graphic organizers available with through this App.

Pages: This is a word processing App again for the more "neurotypical" student who could benefit from the built in accessibility options that iPad provides. What I really liked about this App are the templates available (envelopes, business cards, flyers, photo cards, brochures, newsletters, reports, essay, resumes etc.). I can see this App being especially useful for our students in middle and high school. As stated in the training video, "The Pages App allows you to make good looking documents in a short amount of time." Which middle and high school student doesn't like that!

I have included in my Blog the instructional videos for each of these Apps but all instructional videos are very easy to find on Youtube. That's one of the things I really like about these Apps as well. You can always go back to the videos while using the App. 

In my current role as French Immersion Resource teacher, I can see that using Book Creator and Clicker Sentences could be a viable option. For some of my students with higher literacy skills, the Tools4Students and Pages might be useful. I think that it's all about trying them out to see what works and what does not for particular students.