My Pictures Talk

I am excited to share with those following my educational/parent applications review blog an assistive technology app that can assist children, parents, and teachers.  According to the developers and Lunchbox Reviews “this app will help you catalog, share, remember, and can teach skills to those with autism or developmental delays. It also allows you to document trips, adventures, class trips or create your own stories. Use your imagination! It will allow you to bring your photos to life with text and audio. You can create talking photo albums, or use as a teaching tool to help promote wanted behaviors.”  My review is based on my experiences with a 4th grade group looking to build an interactive class newsletter.  As a class, we discussed the options that they wanted in this newsletter, a number students were interested in making auditory visuals of their lives within their classroom and school.  Those individuals using My Pictures Talk were of varying learning needs and styles.  This project was designed to let them be creative rather than having a direct focus from me.   I provided them very little assistance and they were on their way.  Collaboratively they worked together to take photographs, design a script and to then record their stories.  I was amazed at the end result.  This form of documentation allows outsiders to see what is going on in the classroom.  Our next steps is to then embed these quicktime videos into an interactive file for parents and other educators to see.  This application gives a voice to all students.  The possibilities are endless!

In addition, I plan to present this application to a team of special educators to see how it might be an effective tool for our special needs population. Please be sure to visit Grembe Inc. website to learn more about My Pictures Talk along with other assistive tools that they have to offer your child or student.  Or you can visit your iTunes library to begin downloading today!