Sunday, August 15, 2010

Stories2Learn - Social Stories



Did you watch the video?

That's all it took to spark my interest and within a
couple minutes I was enthusiastically exploring more
about the Stories2Learn application "app" to make social
stories for my child, Matthew, who has Agenesis of the
Corpus Callosum.

"Create personalized stories using photos, text and
audio messages."


"Stories2Learn works with iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad."


Price: $13.99

"Stories2Learn
was developed by an educational team
consisting of teachers, a speech therapist, and a
school psychologist specializing in educating
individuals with communication challenges."

For about the cost of one book in the bookstore you can
have an endless library of personalized possibilities
to create for your child or student that meet their very
specific needs to help with: social skills stories, daily
schedules, teachable stories and so much more...that
enable photos, your own text and audio messages that you
personally record on each page.

Stories2Learn Tutorial movie download

Note: video tutorial takes several minutes to download





You write the story from the first personalized
page to the last. And, you can easily edit any page
any time...from pictures, to text and recorded
messages. You can also add more pages or delete
pages in the story. Plus you can keep on adding
new stories.





When you click on "My Stories" you will go to a screen
that says "View Stories". There you will find a list of
all of the stories you made. You can easily view a story by
clicking on the picture icon and story name.




After reading reviews about Stories2Learn and watching
the video of Leo's social story I went directly to itunes
and purchased Stories2Learn so I can use it with my child,
Matthew, who has complete Agenesis of the Corpus Callosum.

It wasn't too difficult to figure out. Within a fairly
short time after buying it I had my first personalized
story about our family beach trips up and running on
Matthew's iPod Touch for him to watch and listen to.

The story page has touchable arrows on each side of the
page that give the person an opportunity to go back to
view the previous page in the story and listen to it again
or go forward to see and hear the next page.

here's two of the 14 pages I made for Matthew:



Very quickly Matthew learned how to flip through the
pages and tap the picture to make it 'talk'.



He likes it.

And he's already watched "Matthew Goes to the Beach"
several times today.

The first time I recorded a story on Matthew's iPod
Touch, using the external microphone that came with
the iPod, it was very quiet and could barely be heard.
I was disappointed and thought that was the end of that.
But then I gave it another try and held the external
mic VERY close to my mouth while speaking the words
for each page. Worked like a charm and made a big
difference in the sound volume. Plus, I put Matthew's
iPod Touch inside his iMainGo2 speaker case so it
gets an even bigger boost of volume and works great.

Stories2Learn comes preloaded with one social story
that includes two kids playing a game and taking turns.



Many kids who have Agenesis of the Corpus Callosum
learn best through A LOT of repetition and this "app"
allows a person to see and touch the picture over and
over to hear the audio message as many times as they
want and need to hear it out loud--something my own
child did immediately upon trying out his new story.

Stories2Learn has opened up endless possbilities for
me in terms of helping teach Matthew specific skills
that he is working on learning and it gives me the
ability to completely personalize the entire story with
pictures, text on each page and we can record messages
with my voice, dad's voice, a friend's voice or a family
member's voice to turn the story into a meaningful
forwards, backwards, say it again...(and again)...
teachable video-like book that is lots of fun.

I can foresee using Stories2Learn as a tool to help
teach my child independent skills like "using the potty",
"brushing teeth" and.....a whole lot more!!

Thank you very much Look2Learn.com, the creator of
Stories2Learn, for creating a fantastically fun
teaching tool.

I'm excited about it and I can't wait to personalize
more learning stories for Matthew that meet his
specific needs.

I'm also seriously considering the idea of upgrading
to an iPad for Matthew?!?

Stories2Learn is a terrific on-the-go library of
learning fun for use with the iPod Touch, iPhone or iPad.

So what do you think?

Does it spark your interest and creativity for use
with your child or a student to help with social
skills stories, teachable stories, daily schedules
or anything else?


Many kids who have agenesis of the corpus callosum
have challenges with social skills. Receiving
social skills training in school or in the community
from a trained professional and the use of social stories
can be valuable tools to help a person who has ACC
learn and practice social skills.

Video about ACC and Social Skills

2 comments:

  1. Sandie ~ I just think you are a DEAR for having this blog available to us and providing such great information!

    THANK YOU SO MUCH!
    Love, bree

    ReplyDelete
  2. Bree,

    Thank you so much for your very sweet comment. It is my pleasure to share information and thank you for the beautiful blog posts about Bugg and your whole family that you share. They are filled with love, loving life and are a blessing in my life. I look forward to reading each new post you write.

    Love,
    Sandie

    ReplyDelete

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