Use this app to customize sequences of images, books, photo albums, flash cards, and more to aid students in developing communication skills, building vocabulary, and understanding social context. The "hotspot" feature can also help kids learn about part-whole relationships. For example, if a kid taps on a hotspot of him- or herself in a class photo and hears the phrase "I am a classmate," (especially if their voice is the recorded voice) that can help make the connection that they are a part of the class. This app can also be used to record students reading stories to practice reading aloud and general speaking skills, and then share them with others who are using the same app. There are so many potential uses for this app that once you master the basics, you can be as creative as you want to be in using it to meet students' individual needs.
Continue readingScene Speak is like a create-and-store digital library for photo books, flash cards, diagrams, and more. While used effectively for special needs students, it can also be a helpful tool for all students to connect visuals and audio with vocabulary words. Teachers and parents can make photo books of kids' favorite stories, family photos, vocabulary words, social stories, and more. There's a 32-page tutorial on the app, which most first-time users will need to read. Then use pre-loaded images, upload images from your device's camera or the Internet, add your own voice, a student's voice, or use text-to-voice audio to create pages. Mark "hotspots" on the pages so kids can tap to hear and see the word associated with the object in that section of the page. Scene Speak's Visual Screen Display (VSD) Library comes with pre-made pages of a park, child's bedroom, doctor's office, and more. Tap on one, and the page opens to reveal items inside that room or details of a diagram. Tap on My Books and "edit mode" to create a book or VSD. You can also edit existing VSD pages and add audio.
While not intuitive on the creating (Edit Mode) side, the Play Mode in Scene Speak is very easy to use. It can be a useful tool for creating flash cards, pages, and books to help kids learn vocabulary, context, and self-expression. Kids can also practice naming, listening, and speaking, especially if they are prompted to repeat the words they hear or to record some of the pages themselves. It would be nice to see more on-screen prompts or a video tutorial, rather than wading through such a long written help section. Still, with a bit of patience, Scene Speak can become a go-to tool to create books and pages to help your students practice communicating or learn vocabulary, social stories, and more.