Last night, I presented at the CESI (Computers in Education Society of Ireland) TeachMeet online via Zoom. A TeachMeet is like an informal conference where people give short presentations of between 2-7 minutes. This resource is the presentation I delivered on mobile apps on the theme of “Words”. There are recommendations for eight different apps to support the acquisition and development of language and vocabulary.
The recommended Apps are:
- Smiley Sight Words – this helps with the development of a sight vocabulary for pupils at the beginning of reading or AEN pupils. It includes Dolch Lists, Fry Words, some sets of themed words. You can also add your own sets of words.
- Sound Touch – the aim of this app is to develop speech and language in young children and those with speech and language difficulties. It helps with noun identification and categorisation of objects.
- WordBook – this is a Dictionary/Thesaurus which is always handy to have on a mobile device. It also has a great crossword solver section.
- Popwords – this is a fun game which will help with spelling and the development of vocabulary. Pupils have to connect three or more letters to create a word to “pop”.
- Foclóir – this English/Irish dictionary is based on the Foclóir.ie website and is great to have on a mobile device.
- Texting Story – with this app, pupils can create SMS text conversations between two people. The app will then save the conversation as a video which can be shared.
- Wordpack – this app creates word clouds from a bunch of text. There are lots of shapes and colours to choose from which should be appealing to pupils.
- Garageband – although most people associate this app with music, Garageband is great for the spoken word. Go to the Voice Recorder section of the app to record voice audio to create short podcasts. The recording can be saved as an MP3 and saved, shared or exported to other apps/software like Audacity.
(.PDF file 1.28 MB)
