My apologies… I made a change to this Happy Valentines Day post….(the original Valentines Day card app post had more charges to it than I realized – I though it was free but was not really!)… to an option of a sweet, free story appropriate for Valentines Day or any day from Hallmark!
Did you know Hallmark published free book apps based on their hard copy books? Here is one of their free story apps ….
Cooper’s Big Bear Hug – A free Hallmark interactive Storybook compatible with iPhone/iPod/iPad with a sweet and loving story line. Appropriate for young students and providing read aloud and games.
Here are more free Hallmark interactive story books that read aloud and are appropriate for the emergent reader audience:
- Watson and the Case of the Sneaky Stealer
- Bigsby’s Best Friend
- Abigail and the Balance Beam
Although they might be for younger students, they provide read aloud capabilities, puzzles and are interactive to keep students engaged. Easy navigation with forward and back buttons are presented in a standard manner for ease of access to students.
More free options for your OT iTool Kit
Happy Valentine’s Day Apping!
Carol
OT's with Apps & Technology 
Have you seen the new Injini app “Write My Name” It’s only $1.99 and it’s great. I can’t wait to use this with my kids.
Kathy McNamara, OT
Kathy,
No I have not! But I will check it out. Thank you much!! I hope you don’t mind if I mention your name in the post. Thanks for sharing this app in your comment!
Carol
Do you know of a simple text to speech app that highlights as it reads? I have a student who has very limited fine motor abilities and is not able to highlight portions of a document that needs to be read. He is cognitively very high but his reading level is much lower. He would like to be able to follow along with an ebook or even read a website.
Julie,
I will need to do some checking, but the highlighting component just doesn’t seem to be readily available in apps like they are on the computer based AT software. Read & Write Gold’s web based app probably does this when text is web based, but I have not had a chance to trial their new product out. There is a minor highlighting component when you convert text into book readers as vBookz although it is not very smooth. When you turn on the speak text function using iOS5 you can select a line which highlights it and it will speak out loud but will not follow the word it is reading. As wonderful as the iDevices are there are many tools and features that just are not yet available on them.
If I run across any other options I will post it.
Anyone else have any suggestions??
Thanks Julie for your visit and comments.
Carol