WH-Questions Island is the newest app from the Virtual Speech Center Inc.
The app focuses on WH questions with 480 prompts used in either the flashcard mode or the game board mode. The game can be played as a receptive language activity where students are given 3 possible choices. The expressive language option gives open ended WH questions for the SLP to rate as correct/incorrect.
The island them is colorful throughout the app. The real photos will help make things for concrete especially for our ASD populations.
Question prompts include What, Where, Who, When, Why and How.
Throughout the game you can add multiple students and select different goals for each person. Settings can turn on automatic paging and adjust the alternating counts between students. Use the audio recording option to allow students to hear their answers. This is particularly helpful if you wish to simultaneously target syntax goals. The flashcard activity is pretty straightforward. Pictures are presented and questions asked.
The game board uses the spinner and avatars selected to move across the board.
Data is collected through the app and can be emailed or stored as needed.
Pros: The board game is engaging. I love that the pieces move independently – it saves me from the hassle of helping them move pieces! I also love the real pictures as visual prompts. So many of my students have difficulty with WH questions, so I know I will the use the app a lot. I can use it to simultaneously target sentence formation, syntax and articulation using the expressive format.
Cons: I played the game with a student today. She had receptive goals and to give her a model, I set my goal for the same type of question but with the expressive skill. The cards were barely ‘shuffled’ and very often my question and her question were the same, one right after another. I wish the cards were better ‘shuffled’ in the presentation. In the ‘info’ section of the app the students can click to open Twitter/Facebook. I wish these links weren’t included, to reduce the likelihood of students getting into other programs.
The app is available in the itunes store for $9.99 as of today! Let me know what you think if you take the plunge!
Disclosure: Virtual Speech Center provided me with a copy of this app to review. No other compensation was provided.
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Jenna, I don’t know if you are aware of this but as long as you have the most updated software (iOS6) you can disable any part of any app you wish. Go to Settings,then Accessibility, Then to Guided Access and turn it on. Once it is on when you are in an app triple click the home button. You can draw a circle around any portion of an app you do not want the kids to have access to while in it. It will grey it out and that part will not work. Let me know if you have any questions!
Thanks for the comment! Yes I know how to do guided access. I just don’t want to go into each of the virtual speech centers apps and disable it. Time is precious you know!
Children with disabilities during speech therapy don’t need to get on fb/twitter ever. They just added it to help their PR so I wish they would take it out of all their apps!
Guided access is really amazing for a lot of apps or kids who need less options! I love it!
Thanks for commenting!