Interactive Use of Mobile Apps in Teletherapy

This trick could give you the option of using mobile apps interactively in a teletherapy session. Worked for me. As we know, we can allow viewing of, say, iPad apps by Quicktime on Mac (here's a link on that, you just don't ever have to click record, you can simply show the screen) or wireless mirroring. But students would not be able to manipulate the app even through remote control (the iPad/app appear on the screen, when we click on the screen on the app nothing happens, so when they click on it on the screen nothing happens, you still have to touch the iPad to interact with it, QED).

I was inspired to check out the possibility of Android Emulators a few years ago by the brilliant Megan Sutton and this post. As she describes, these take some experimentation. I have downloaded some of the 3 emulators she lists and they have not worked on my Mac, or did, then didn't. Currently Bluestacks works great for me, and I describe in the video below how I have used it and several Android apps in teletherapy sessions. This requires setting up a Google Play account (basically your Google account) and attaching a credit card to it as you do your Apple ID. No, any apps you have purchased in the Apple App Store will not transfer- you'd have to re-purchase as Google Play apps. So try this if you really like the idea of using some of the apps you love that are also available on Android (you can look that up in advance in the Google Play Store to see if you should even bother). And as in the video, I'd recommend:

-try free apps first
-test this out with someone you can test remote control with on Zoom or wherever
-assume the risk- if you pay for apps and then say, Bluestacks stops working, theoretically you still own the apps like with Apple, I just can't guarantee anything.

So, use this trick for apps you would love to use interactively (for me Pic Collage and Toca Apps) and don't go nuts with purchasing.

View the video