App Development Update

I met with the project manager, animator and the head of the animation department. I am happy to say that it was a productive meeting.

This is quite the learning process for me. It is interesting to learn the animation process up close. First, every character and action has to be hand drawn in detail. What that means is that once I give approval to the characters, their look is nearly set in stone. Any change I may make, later in the animation process, means that the animators will have to change the same detail in each previous action. In turn, this will increase the cost of the project and the time needed to complete the app.

The team had used the word "sprite" in our previous meeting. I thought that was their term for the characters even though they didn't look like fairies. At this meeting, I learned what "sprite" means in computer lingo.  According to Wikipedia, "In computer graphics, a sprite is a two-dimensional image or animation that is integrated into a larger scene."

You may remember that, in my last update, I mentioned some changes to the script that the animators suggested. I have some problems with their wording changes. I told the team I would give their ideas some thought and let them know if I feel comfortable with them. 

Managing All Those Apps

Once one starts collecting apps, as I have, categorizing them becomes a necessity. Most of my professional apps fit into the language and muli-use categories. It won't be too long before I start pulling apps out of those categories and giving them more specific names, especially for the language, vocabulary and multiple uses categories. So far the app categories I have are: animals, articulation, associations, audio recording, books, books 2, categories, colors & shapes, descriptives, dinosaurs, language, language 2, language 3, language 4, memory, multiple uses, multiple uses 2, multiple uses 3, nonverbal communication, opposites, reading & phonics, reading & phonics 2, sounds in the environment (mainly animal sounds), sticker apps, vocabulary, vocabulary 2, vocabulary 3, and puzzles.

It is simple to place apps into categories. This is what you do: Decide which two apps you want in the same category. I'll use Fun with Directions and First Phrases as examples. Hold your finger on Fun with Directions until it starts to wiggle. Place the Fun with Directions app directly on top of the other app, First Phrases. A screen/window should then open up with each of the apps shown in it. There is probably a name assigned to the category. You can rename the category by tapping on the X in on the right side and then typing in the name of your choice. Close the category screen by tapping anywhere outside the category box. You can place other apps in the category by simple holding and dragging the wiggling app into the category box.Each category box holds 20 apps.

It is also easy to remove an app from a category. Simply hold your finger on the app until it starts to wiggle. Then slide it outside of the category screen/window.

Sticker Apps One Can Adapt for Language Therapy

Because there are few language therapy dedicated apps, one needs to look for apps that can be adapted to one's language goals. I've found a number of such apps. What I will try to do in my upcoming posts, is highlight these apps and talk about how they can be used in language therapy.

There are a bunch of apps called sticker apps that have a few uses in language therapy. First and foremost, they offer a range of vocabulary. For some apps, one can target descriptives, superlatives, comparisons, actions, prepositions and answering questions. All the apps are interactive in that the child needs to click or drag objects onto a background scene. Objects can be made bigger or smaller (think superlatives) or rotated with two fingers. I have listed the apps from the best to those I will probable delete once this post is published.

Clicky Sticky by Merge Mobile is the best of the bunch. The app offers seven background scenes: outer space, jungle, dinosaurs, airplanes, princess dress-up, underwater, and skiing. Except for the princess dress-up app, all offer some animation and sound effects specific to the scene. The child can start and stop movement of the objects across the screen by tapping on a round red circle. This app can easily be adapted to target colors, vocabulary, prepositions, actions, descriptions and answering questions. Other Clicky Sticky apps are Clicky Sticky Superheroes, Clicky Sticky Trains, and Clicky Sticky Cars, and Clicky Sticky apps for specific holidays. Apps are priced from $.99 to $2.99

Ages: 3-8

Ratings: ++++

Developer's website: Topthatpublishing.com

Cost: $2.99

Dressing Up by TopthatPublishing is another good app. It offers ten male and female cartoon characters each with its own specific background. The child dresses up the character by selecting from a variety of possible articles of clothing. The child can select clothing that matches the scene, as suggested by a sample dressed character in a small box or dress the character as one wishes. Each scene has a short written description of the character. If one taps on the green arrow at the top of the page, the description is read aloud to the child. Tap on a word in the written description and it is read aloud by a narrator. This app can easily be adapted to target colors, vocabulary, descriptions and answering questions.

Ages: 4-8

Ratings: +++

Developer's website: Mergemobile.com

Cost: $2.99

Click Me Stick Me HD Lite by Poldata sp.j. offers one sticker scene, farm animals and objects, and two board games. The full versions offers six scenes: ocean, farm, universe, dinosaurs, pirate, doll world, plus six different board games. The cost is $1.99
Ages: 3-6
Ratings: ++
Developer's website: poldata.p.com
Cost: Free

Tasty Cream by App Minis LLC allows the child to build an ice cream cone. The child selects from a variety of cones, ice cream flavors and toppings. One can work on simple 3 step sequencing with this app. Once the ice cream cone is complete, the child licks it away by swiping a finger on it. One can purchase Tasty Cookies and Tasty Pizza for $.99 each.
Ages: 3-6
Ratings: ++
Developer's website: appminis.com
Cost: Free

Funny Stickers Sea World by Nanny Lalla allows the child to place various underwater creatures in the underwater scene. One has the option of paying $1.99 and downloading the sea, jungle, park and farm scenes.

Ages: 3-5
Ratings: ++
Developer's website: nannylalla.com
Cost: Free

Stamp Touch Stamp Earth Lite by The Being True offers 2 scenes: sky and jungle. For $3.99 one can download ocean, sky, jungle farm, Antarctica and space.
Ages: 3-5
Ratings: ++
Developer's website: thetruebeing.com
Cost: Free

Kid's Poster HD Lite by Pop-ok offers 5 scenes: kid's birthday party, forest, cold penguin habitat, beach, and birthday party. The non-lite version offers the same scenes, so I'm not sure why it costs $.99.
Ages: 3-5
Ratings: ++
Developer's website: pop-ok.com
Cost: Free

Canimals Sticker Book 2HD by Vooz Club is a combination of sticker and puzzle app. The app shows a beach scene (along with music and the sound of the surf and birds). There are some items missing that are outlined in the shape of the missing item. At the bottom of the screen are the items that fit the missing piece. The child needs to drag the item to its matching piece. There are different Canimals Sticker apps that are available for free or $.99.
Ages: 3-5
Ratings: ++
Developer's website: voozclub.com
Cost: Free

Stickers for Kids by Thinkster Apps offers a farm scene on the app I downloaded. This app offers a bit of animation. Touch on the tractor of the farm app and it moves backwards and forwards. Apples fall from the tree, the cloud moves accompanied by a wind sound and the windmill turns when tapped. When an animal sticker is placed on the scene, it makes its sound. Thinkster Apps offers 5 scenes: farm, jungle, prehistoric dinsaurs, and underwater for $.99.
Ages: 3-5
Ratings: ++
Developer's website: not found
Cost: Free

Lite Magic Finger Sticker Book Princess and Cooking by Think Cube offers a dress-up the prince and princess scene and a barbeque scene. The barbeque has two grills, one for grilling the whole fish and the second with skewers for grilling the smaller food pieces. One cannot grill the fish on the skewer grill and vice-verse. Items placed on the "wrong" grill pop off. It seems like the non-lite version offers other cooking options for $1.99.
Ages: 3-5
Ratings: ++
Developer's website: not found
Cost: Free

Elves Dress Up Party by Tab Tale is associated with the book The Elves and the Shoemaker. The app offers one scene with 2 elves. The child places the clothing on the elves until they are fully dressed. There is a color circle that when tapped changes the color of all the clothing at once to the color shown.
Ages: 2-4
Ratings: +
Developer's website: not found
Cost: Free

Another app for associations

I posted blog on December 26, 2011 about apps we can use for associations. The other day I downloaded a new app that fits into that category---Things That Go Together. The pictures are clear and nicely laid out. One moves the picture on the left to fit into the corresponding empty box next to its correct association on the right. One can select to start out with 1 picture association and go as high as 8. One has the option to select or deselect various sounds. There is glitch in this app that results in sound overlay between, "Which items go together" and  verbal praise so it might be best to deselect "Success Sounds" until the problem is fixed. One also has to the option of recording one's own sounds.

Ages: 4-8; aphasic adults, or adults with dementia
Ratings: ++++
Developer's website: Grasshopperapps.com
Cost: Free

App Development Update

I recently asked to be assigned a new project manager.

I was becoming increasingly frustrated with the project manager. I found her emails to me to be patronizing and contentless. On the two occasions we met, she was late, first 10 minutes then 20 minutes. During the second meeting it seemed that I had waited 20 minutes so that she could get up to speed on where the project stood.  Mid-December I called her to find out if the company would be open during the last two weeks of the month so that I would know if my project would be on hold until everyone returned. She said that people would take a day or two off but that my project would not be delayed. She said that I will be pleased with the progress. Not having heard from her, I called again on Dec.21 to find out about the status of the project. The receptionist said that my project manager would be out for the week. I had been considering requesting a new project manager and decided that the time had come. I called Earl and told him about my frustrations.

This afternoon I met with Earl, the head of animations and my new project manager. It turns out that the animation team had a number of questions about the script as well as changes they wished to propose. Some of the actions in the script were too difficult or not doable. The designers also felt that the script was boring because it was repetitive. I appreciated the feedback. I explained my reasons for the writing the script the way I had. We talked about their ideas. Earl proposed that another meeting take place once the animators had a chance to show me their ideas. I should hear back from the team within 2 weeks.

Apps for Auditory Comprehension

Patti McAleer Hamaguchi, M.A., CCC-SLP is on the right track with her three apps: Fun with Directions, First Phrases and Picture the Sentence. The reason that she is on the right track is because these apps target specific aspects of language, the specific language targets are clear, they utilize the animation and interactive qualities of the iPad, are reasonably priced, and avoid the problems inherent in speech recognition targeted apps. I like the clear and simple pictures. The apps offer primarily receptive language tasks with some opportunities for expressive language during the phrase repetition, record and playback components. It is clear that considerable time and thought has gone into the development of the apps.

Of the three apps my favorite is Fun with Directions. This app offers three levels: easy, intermediate, and advanced. This app allows the speech pathologist to work on directions in a systematic manner without the preparation and presentation I have always found to be tedious. The fun animation and interactive components will certainly make this app appealing to children. At the easy level, one simple direction is such as "Close the gate" is given. The intermediate level increases the complexity by including colors or an additional descriptive element such as bottom, middle, top, close, erase, open, push or touch. At the advanced level, the length of the direction is the longest and most complex adding the concepts left/right, size, more adjectives, and/or a second step. At each level there are different concepts one can access by tapping on the New Concept button at the top of the screen. At the bottom of the screen for each level are two buttons: New Direction advances to the next screen, and Hear Again repeats the direction. The Settings screen allows one to turn text on for readers, turn voice commands off, have concepts presented randomly or select the concept on which one wishes the app to focus. Random appearances by Superstar Directions (this can be turned off in Settings)  is a combination of understanding concepts and directions and sentence repetition tasks. The child listens to a direction. After the child follows through on the direction, a screen with a microphone appears. The child is asked to repeat and record the direction by pressing the record button. After the recording is completed, a new screen appears that allows the child to listen to his recording and compare it with the narrator's instruction.

First Phrases focuses on simple grammatical structures presented in command form such as, "Pour the juice." When the child taps anywhere on the screen (Easy Level), or the pictoral/word representations, the narrator verbalizes each part of speech as it is tapped such as, "Pour," "The trash" in the 2 part verb + the object setting, or "Pour," "the," "Juice" in the 3 part verb+the+object choice. Once each part of speech has been tapped, the narrator answers the command by saying, "Sure, I'll pour the juice." The screen automatically moves to an animated demonstration of the command being carried out. If the record option has been selected a new screen appears for the child to record her repetition of the narrated command and compare it to the narration. This app also offers one the option to focus on specific verbs among the 29 offered rather than have them presented randomly. Challenge Play is another option available in this app. In Challenge Play, the child needs to drag the word/picture part of the phrase to the correct box above, in the correct order.

The information portion of Picture the Sentence states that the app targets auditory comprehension and conceptualization of basic English sentences. After reviewing the app, I think it is as much an app for sentence recall and repetition. In this app, the child to listens to a sentence and then selects the picture that goes with the sentence. The app presents the task in two steps. First, the sentence is narrated while a blank screen flashes pictures representing each part of speech. For instance, for the sentence, "She is eating a cookie in a car," the following pictures flash, one at a time, to represent the parts of the sentence: Girl's face (she),  the girl eating a cookie (is eating), cookie , a cage with a ball inside (in), car. Then the screen automatically advances to show five pictures. The child needs to drag the picture, that best represents the sentence heard, to the empty frame above. There are different levels of play based on length of sentence and complexity. The simplest level is subject +verb followed by subject +verb+object. The next level up is subject+verb+prepositional phrase. The most challenging level is subject+verb+object+ prepositional phrase. One can also opt for a random selection of target sentences. In addition to selecting the challenge to the student based on sentence length, one can further increase or decrease the wait time between the narration and the selections and change from colored drawings to stick figures or no pictures with the narration. Additionally, one can select to have the subject presented as either a  pronoun, noun, or mixed. There is a cute reward feature built into this app called Pick-A-Door that one can select to appear after 3, 5, or 10 responses. A screen appears with 8 brightly colored doors. The child taps on each door until he finds the door that has the animal.

The three apps allow for the individual settings of 15 children to be stored. There is no scoring feature. The reasons for this, according to Ms. Hamaguchi, are, "...the touch and drag is not a reliable way to acquire assessment data due to the fact that objects are accidentally touched, dropped when dragged, etc. In addition, we are trying to keep the cost of the apps down, and adding a data collection feature would drive up the price and also add to the memory load."

Ages: 3-5; Fun with Directions can be used with aphasic adults.
Ratings: Fun with Directions +++++; First Phrases +++, Picture the Sentence ++++
Developer's website: Hamaguchiapps.com
Cost: $9.99 for the full version, $.99 for the Lite version (the Lite Version is free during the month of December).

App Developement Update

I'm happy to report that the illustrations for the two main characters are completed. My next job was to refine the script, which I did. Did you know that a script needs to be written? I didn't until I started this project. Fortunately, I had already written a script a couple of years ago for what was to be another Help Me Talk Right book. I got sidetracked and then along came the iPad. I realized that the script could be the starting point for an app.

Stay tuned for the next step in the process.