Apps and online resources for OT's and SLP's

Kristin here.

I found this cool site with awesome tools for Occupational therapists, and many of them also apply to SLPs.

http://mastersinoccupationaltherapy.org/2011/40-best-online-tools-for-occupational-therapists/

it includes a hearing test app, AAC apps. etc.

Also, if any of you are interested in a job in the school system working with teens just 4-5 hours a week, very flexible hours, let me know!  (SLC, Utah area ~3300 South.)  I can get you more info- my friend is looking to hire.

~Kristin

New SLP iPad App: Caseload Tracker

Hey everybody, I hope your summer is going well. Probably better for the education SLPs out there.

I wanted to announce that the Caseload Tracker app has finally been published and is now up and available on iTunes.

This app is designed to help SLPs and Special Educators keep track of their caseloads and stay on top of IEPs and Eligibilities. I came up with the concept as I was getting completely bogged down by meetings with no good clear way of keeping track of all of them.

This app has a built in system for tracking these important due dates by color coding alerts in the app as well as using the iOS's push notification alerts to keep you informed of the total number of students with upcoming meetings. Its also a great resource for keeping your caseload information handy.

For those such as myself, this will be a very useful tool in staying organized with your students. Let me know what you think

And we'll be having a contest on here soon to win a code for this app. I'll stay in touch.

SLP Goal Bank App on Sale

I just found out that the SLP Goal Bank app for the iPad is on sale until May 20th. Normally the full price of this app is $29.99, but right now you can get it for $5.99.

This app is exactly what the title of it says. Its a goal bank of speech language therapy goals, categorize by disorder. There are educational and medical goals alike. Its meant to help you, as a starting point, when writing goals for your patients/students/clients. You can also add your own goals to the app, storing them for future reference. Then you can email your self the goals so you could simply cut and paste them wherever you need them.

If you are a brand new SLP and are struggling coming up with goals, or if you are seasoned SLP who would just like some new ideas, (oh, and if you have an iPad), then this app is for you.

My iPad/iPod SLP starter guide...

It's Kristin here. 

SLP's:  Do you have an iPad for therapy yet?  If not, many school districts are getting grants or starting new programs to purchase several of these relatively inexpensive devices for the SLPs.  Someimes you don't know what you can get until you ask for it!  And putting it on your gift wish list so you can get your own is a great idea too. 

Well, I know a good chunk of our posts lately have been iPad related, but don't get discouraged yet.  Soemtimes we like to post about what we're into, and we are both having lots of fun with these new "toys."  We'll be posting on other SLP topics soon enough, I swear!

So here are a few of my thoughts on getting started:

• Right off the bat make sure you ahve "MobileMe" set up in case you lose your iPad.  VERY IMPORTANT!  I had a personal experience where this saved me!
• Create an iTunes account.
• Browse the Apps Store to see what's hot, what on sale, what's under the "Education Category," etc.
• Read the info on the "updates" before you actually upload them.
• Set the restrictions so that in-app purchases are disabled.
• Enable "triple click" under settings which allows you to turn the screen black and font white, zoom, and get voice over for the blind.
• Import your work calendar into the iPad calendar- awesome!
• Download the iPad starter guide and iPad user guide to the iBooks app (free!)
• All classic novels are free too!
• Download lotsa apps, practive them, and categorize them for ease of use.
• Use the double click feature often to clear out the apps you are not using which slow you down.  Here you can also freeze the screen so it won't flip to different orientations when you rotate the iPad.  Also adjust screen brightness here as needed.
• If you don't have Angry Birds, World of Goo, Cut the Rope- download them already!  Get with it, SLP!  :)
• Other must haves: Pandora, Penultimate, Fruit Ninja, Talking Tom, iRiddle HD, Pulse, DropBox, Facebook Friendly, Nightstand, WeatherBug, Pocket Pond, Zombie Trailer Park.
• I'll do one more post with all my favorite apps for therapy next time!
• Get a protective screen cover so you can wipe it down with disinfectant.
• Get a case to protect it and help prop it up for clients.
• Also consider a keyboard or stylus!

Of course, if you don't have the iPad- get the iPad 2 instead (I'm jealous!).  The iPad is now cheaper by a couple hundred bucks.  The iPhone and iPod touch are also cheaper and also awesome (but iPad is nicer in a therapy session for visual purposes if you have the option...)

Any thoughts from you readers?  I'm sure there are SO many experts by now!  Got any other suggestions on getting started?  Any other favorite apps I may not know??  (I'm obsessed.)  :)

XOXO,
~Kristin

Language Therapy using Dropbox

I think we’ve already gotten to the point that we can agree that the iphone and/or ipad can be useful in therapy. There are numerous apps that you can use with more coming everyday. If you don’t have one of the devices, I would strongly suggest you look into it. Yes, there are great in therapy, but there are other ways they can be useful as well. You can keep track of your schedule with them, set alarms, use voice recorders, etc, etc. There are endless possibilities.

What I wanted to write about today is about a nice little trick you can do with your iphone/ipad for therapy that might not have occurred to you.

I use my ipodtouch for articulation therapy all the time now, but not so much for language therapy. Well, there are language therapy apps out there. I love the kindergarten.com apps for vocabulary and conversation for my younger students. I also often times use precentally to help me keep track of data when I’m doing student directed play therapy, and I just need some place to keep data. That’s what I use on my device for language therapy, but I know there is a lot more out there available. I'm not going to get into listing them all in this post, but if you look up speech language therapy apps on google or in itunes you are going to find a lot of things you can sort through.

One of the problems with the language therapy apps out there is that they rarely do exactly what I would like. Recently, I had a thought as to how to make language therapy material on your iPhone or iPad very easily. And guess who much it will cost you. Nothing! It’s free! Can you believe it!

It’ll take some set up, but if it’s worth it to you to have therapy materials on you so you can use it on the fly, then its worth it. Now you have to still create the materials  or the ability  to make them. This is simple enough if you have Boardmaker, Writing with Symbols, or even a regular old word processor. Any software that you can program and insert pictures will do.

So, say you want to make a simple picture of an apple. I like to use google image search (but be careful how you word things, you never know what might come up).



Now you've found your perfect apple picture. In a word file I inserted the picture and labeled it.



At which point I then saved the word file to "My Documents" in my Dropbox folder (I'll get into dropbox a little more here in a second). Then I was able to pull this up on my iPodtouch (I'll get a picture of the iPad on here once I can get my hands on one).





















Okay, to get started with this plan you need to sign up for Drop Box (click here for a link to it). Don’t worry its free. Dropbox is an automatic backup software that syncs with whatever computer you’ve install it on. So, if I have dropbox on my work computer, I save some Boardmaker boards that I’ve been working on then it will automatically be saved on my home computer (where I also have drop box installed). The second I come home I can pull up the same file and continue to work. Any computer you have it installed will automatically sync those files. You could also have it on your lap top, and there is an app on the iPhone and iPad. Essentially, it’s like having a virtual flash drive with you on the computers you use. My wife and I use it all the time. It’s great for moving items over that wouldn’t fit in a standard email. You can also share folders with other individuals. We share a folder with my mother-in-law so that we can exchange pictures of our children with her. We just drop them in the dropbox folder and the automatically start uploading on my wife’s parents’ computer as well (in the shared folder).

You can get up to 2 gigabytes for free. They will try to sell you upgrades, but in my humble opinion, it’s not worth it.

When you save a file from your computer it will then be visible on your iPhone/iPad when you are connected to the internet whether that be via wi-fi or by 3G. Now, you can select a file as “favorite” and then you would be able to have access to that file while being off line, which is an important feature for those of us with iPads and iPodtouchs who don’t always have the luxury of having instant internet. Why the whole world doesn’t have wi-fi coverage everywhere, I just don’t know. Come on people, the internet is a basic human right! Well, maybe not.

Anyway, you cannot edit files that are on your iPad/iPhone, only view them. But that’s okay, that’s really all that I want anyhow. So, you have your friendly boardmaker file and/or your very nice word processor with access to google image searches. You can put a word list, a social skills story, sequencing pictures, basic concepts, or whatever you want. Now save these items to your drop box, go onto your iphone/ipad and selected the items as favorite. Now you can pull those up on your mobile device anyway you want. You now have your own custom made mobile therapy materials on your iphone/ipad. Not that you could have easily printed those pages out and carried them with you where ever you went, but I’m all about taking less therapy materials around with me if I can help it.

Some of the software out there save to a very specific format that dropbox can’t read in the iphone/ipad app (I’m looking at you boardmaker). There is a very easy solution. There are numerous PDF creators out there. PDF files are documents that adobe acrobat readers can read. It’s a pretty universal format that is used frequently, and dropbox does recognize it on their iphone app. The way most PDF file creator software works is simple, just print the document, but selected the PDF creator as your printer and instead of printing the file, you save it as a PDF file somewhere on your computer, preferably your dropbox. Click here for a list of software programs that can create PDF files.

Well, there you have it a cheap way of toting language therapy material around with you, actually this could work with any different types of therapy. You make specific word lists for articulation therapy. You could make fluency therapy material mobile so you could get out of your office to do generalization activities. You could make board games (if you bring your own dice) with you to the preschool room. Granted I think this would be more effective on the iPad than anything else. And, yes I still don’t have an iPad, but I got my headstart teacher on to this. I don’t really think she’s seen the full potential, but then she stays in one room unlike us speechies.

So, go ahead and try this and tell me what you think. Let me know if you have any questions about getting it all set up.