Appy Friday! I don't know about you, but social skill activities and materials are always things I am in need of. With the Autism population higher than it has ever been, you are very likely to come across a student that has social goals on his or her plan of care- no matter what setting you are working in. The
Virtual Speech Center has recently released an app called, Social Skills with Billy that is designed for children with Autism. This app was created to allow them to practice social skills and pragmatic language in real-life situations and to practice identifying feelings.
Here is how the app works. When you open the app you will see the screen above. Here, you can adjust the settings, learn more about the app, and access student reports. When you are ready, click start to begin the app.
You can add multiple students to the list and multiple students can use this app at one time. This is always a great feature for SLPs that work in the school setting or run groups. Once you have added and selected the students to work with, click on next.
Here you can choose the activities for each student. You can choose anywhere from 1-7 of the activities to target at a time. There is also an option to edit each activity and specifically choose which scenarios you want to use.
Once you have made your selections, you can begin using the app. Below is an example from
Identifying Correct Responses in Dialogues.
The screen shot below is from the Identifying Right vs. Wrong Responses.
This prompt is from
Identifying Feelings by Following Directions.
Below is a prompt for
Identifying Feelings in Multiple Choice.
Identifying How One Feels Based on Short Case Scenarios.
Lastly,
Stating How One Feels Based on Short Case Scenarios.
I love that this app explores social skills in so many different ways. The graphics are colorful and engaging, but not too overwhelming or busy. Another positive for this app is that it allows you to use it with multiple children at a time, which is perfect for social skills groups. The scenarios used in this app are real life, which provides great real-life practice for students. I would recommend this app for school age kids-young adults. You can learn more about this app or download a copy for yourself
here in the iTunes store!
**The Virtual Speech Center did provide me with a copy of this app in exchange for a blog review. However, all opinions expressed in this review are my own.**
