Our Expressive Solutions team had a great time exhibiting at the ASHA National Convention in Orlando, Florida. We always enjoy meeting so many amazing SLPs and hearing stories from you about how you are using our apps for speech therapy. Your commitment to your students and enthusiasm for learning are inspiring. Our favorite part is always being able to give back to you. We had almost 500 people entered in our iPad Air, Gripcase, and iTunes codes giveaways. It was so exciting to see the crowd gathered to announce the winners. The lucky folks were: Ludymar Rivera - $10 iTunes code Lori Porcelli - $10 iTunes code Lauren Hrebin - $10 iTunes code Margaret Murphy - Gripcase Melissa Austin - Gripcase Tennille Kulcsar - iPad Air Congratulations to all of our winners, [...]

Here it is: summertime. A time when many adults are wondering how they’re going to keep children engaged and entertained during all of those free hours. Whether you are a speech-language pathologist (SLP) providing services as part of Extended School Year (ESY), or a parent with your own child to amuse, a new trend could be just what you need: coding for kids. Many schools are jumping on the computer programming bandwagon and offering children the chance to learn basic coding skills. But, with schools still reeling from the Great Recession, many kids might not have access to such classes yet. No worries. You can easily include coding in speech therapy to target expressive language or introduce it to your own child with some great mobile and web apps. No need to worry if you don’t know a[...]

If you are looking for a fun way to target social communication skills, as well as beginning computer programming, Robot Turtles is a great new board game you can play with your students (with or without autism). Robot Turtles requires players to use simple commands to move their turtles to capture a jewel on the game board. When students give commands, they are replicating the process computer programmers use to give instructions for a computer to execute. Games, in general, provide opportunities for social communication; Robot Turtles in particular involves specific interactions between the game players that enable more opportunities for social communication. For students who show an interest in games and computers, playing Robot Turtles can be a highly engaging way to practice social co[...]

Today marked the first day of Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in San Francisco, CA. As always, there was great speculation about what major announcements Apple would make today. While some of the long desired items, such as the iWatch or iTV, were not announced, some exciting updates to Apple’s OS X and iOS software were revealed. Here is a look at our favorite highlights, as well as a more comprehensive list of the changes coming soon. For Mac users, there are some really exciting new features coming to our computers in the fall with OS X Yosemite. Our favorite is the capability to answer and make phone calls on your Mac computer. Apple demonstrated this ability at the WWDC Keynote by calling their new business partner Dr. Dre from a Mac computer. You can call a p[...]

“Honey, please set the timer to ten minutes.” Whether you know it or not, when uttering these words, you’re speaking in developer terminology. A developer is a person who creates software such as apps. A developer writes code, which is a series of commands - otherwise known as instructions - for a computer to execute. Why would you even care about knowing this terminology? Software is all around us, in our personal and professional lives. As technology continues to advance at a rapid pace, new developments impact us whether we embrace them or not. As adults, we can choose to keep pace with these changes or do our best to ignore them. But, for the children we serve in our practice, there is an increasingly accepted feeling that learning about technology is a necessity, not a choice, if t[...]

When we heard about the death of the beloved Maya Angelou yesterday, one word immediately popped into our minds: fortunate. This may seem like an odd choice, but allow us to explain. We had the privilege of hearing Maya Angelou speak at the 2012 ASHA Convention in Atlanta, Georgia. She was humorous, captivating, and so incredibly wise. You couldn’t help but feel that you were in the presence of a great soul-- a kind-hearted woman who overcame tremendous obstacles by virtue of her fierce determination and positive attitude. The energy in the room pulsated with every story she told, every nugget of wisdom she bestowed upon us. It was a once in a lifetime experience for all who stood in line early in the morning, coffee in hand, to be electrified by her words. Among the many lessons she[...]