I was recently contacted by the developers, all4mychild, to inform me of the release of their brand new app, Talking Train! You may recall their guest post during my Pragmatic Skills Week. Click the previous link to get access to it. In that post, they discussed a strategy for keeping stories “short and sweet.” They discussed using a train as a visual to do so. Well, they turned it into an app!
When you open the app, this is the page you see. Students can click “record” to record themselves expressing a story. They can hear the story by clicking “play”. To create a story, students can click each train “car.” They can type, draw, or input a photo to use to tell a story. This can be done with the first 4 cars.
As you can see, I used my amazing (HA) artistic abilities to make a story about it raining and needing an umbrella to get back home. Once I created my story, I could record it, and then replay it back. You can also tap the screen for puffs of smoke that emerge from the smoke stack for every question that kids ask, to facilitate question asking. By clicking “go” students can watch the train move which is motivating too. You can email the stories for safe keeping or printing purposes.
Things I like about this app:
- Easy to use and navigate
- Multiple options for students to create a story
- Cute colors, graphics, and animation for motivation and reinforcement
- Recording and play back features for self monitoring and assessment
- Ability to email easily
Things I would like to see in an update:
- Ability to add more “cars” on the story for more parts
- Ability to add “tabs” such as story elements to help direct students
- Clip-art included into the app for easy picture creations
- Ability to save stories/pictures onto app for progress monitoring
To learn more about this $4.99 app, visit iTunes!
