Apple Education "Lesson Ideas" iBooks

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of speaking at the Rhode Island Speech-Language Association's annual conference on the topics of "Pairing Picture Books with Apps" and using apps for content creation ("digital storytelling") for language development goals (see the Work with Sean page for some more info on the topics and locations of my presentations). With open-ended "blank slate" apps, you have a world of freedom in creating content to present to students or creating content in a language/executive function process with your students. However, it can be hard to know what to do with these apps, so it is great to see lesson ideas. Many of these can be found online--for example, search for "Pic Collage Education" to find many posts with examples of how that great app has been used in language-based ways.

Apple also has been endeavoring to publish resources that provide ideas on how to use apps in education, and now has a series of 5 iBooks. Take a look at Explain Everything Lesson Ideas (Free); like the others in the series (covering such apps as Puppet Pals, Stop Motion Studio and the coding app Hopscotch) includes video demonstrations, project examples and lesson ideas in various subject areas and age levels. The multimedia content of each iBook truly takes advantage of the eBook format, providing a great visual and interactive experience as you read. Looking at the projects, you'll easily see how many could be adapted to goals such as categorization, storytelling or following directions in speech and language therapy (see for example the "Beginning Letter Sounds Treasure Hunt" in Explain Everything Lesson Ideas).

From Puppet Pals HD Lesson Ideas

To obtain the books, first make sure you have the free iBooks app on your iPad or Mac. Search the store within the app for Apple Education and you will find the 5 free titles.