Day Six: Wonderful Webinars

On our sixth day of class we were asked to view two webinars that tweaked our interests.  I decided on the webinar entitled “Apps Supporting Social Skills” and a student led webinar entitled “Meet Nicholas & learn how he uses the iPad to meet his needs in school”.  I chose these webinars with a particular student in mind.  This student is autistic and has trouble with social skills and social thinking.  The webinars explained some really great apps that I would like to try with my student to help develop their social skills and social thinking.

Social Adventures: The Social Adventure App is targeted for children aged 4 to 9 with social needs.  It can be used to teach initiating and maintaining interactions, advocating and negotiating, getting regulated, interpreting nonverbal, negotiating personal space and experiencing humor.  

Social Express:  The Social Express App provides fully-animated interactive lessons and high quality printables that teach users how to think about and manage social situations, helping them to develop meaningful social relationships and succeed in life. 

Social Skills Sampler: The Social Skills Sampler App is a free app where students can view videos on the topics of meeting/greeting people, taking responsibility, being polite and courteous, joining others in groups and apologizing/excusing yourself. 

Conversation Builder: The Conversation Builder App is designed to help elementary aged children learn how to have multi-exchange conversations with their peers in a variety of social settings. This apps helps students learn when it is appropriate to introduce themselves, ask questions, make observations and change the subject of the conversation. 

Pic Collage: The Pic Collage App is a great tool that students can use to make collages on any topic using stickers, text, web images and free form cut outs. Students could create a collage of web images of friendly greetings or they could create a collage using pictures and text to show how to listen with your eyes and brain. 

Toontastic:  The Toontastic App is a storytelling and creative learning tool that enables kids to draw, animate, and share their own cartoons with friends and family through simple and fun imaginative play.  Students could use this app to create animated stories on meeting/greeting people, being polite and courteous and they could create multi-exchange conversations between characters. 

As a Resource Teacher, I could support a teacher to see the potential of these apps by showing them videos of the apps in action through Youtube and iTunes University , providing them with articles about how to use the apps and giving them a chance to use and experience the apps first hand.  

I would help the teacher support the student in the classroom by showing them how to use the apps and offering them suggestions on how the student could use specific apps to help achieve his or her goals.