An interesting and powerful new app, with a whole new way to support a child with little/no/developing speech.
The best thing about the app is that it:
“LEARNS to predict
what YOUR child
wants to say.”
It moves away from the traditional grid formatted AAC system and gives us “word trees” – beautiful circles of words and stems, that all interconnect as sentences are constructed! It reminds me of all those mind maps/word webs we used to draw when were planning our writing at school!
- The powerful word prediction system built within aacorn, is such a great way to help children learn to put sentences together to communicate faster and more effectively.
- This word prediction is used to help guess what word the child wants to say next. Logical options are presented to help complete the sentence. It is also super easy to add words to sentences when nothing has been predicted.
- acorn then remembers these words that have been added to a sentence, so that they are presented automatically next time.
- Only presents 5 main choices off each category at a time, keeping it simple and distraction free. By simply pushing the category button, it takes you through other word choices in that category.
- aacorn uses real recorded voices, not a text-to-speech voice. You can choose between boy and girl US, UK, and Australian voices. Whilst this means that the voices are very natural sounding, it does mean that you need to record your own voice when you add new vocabulary items.
- Highly customisable, with the ability to add, edit and change words easily.
Here’s a quick video demonstration of aacorn.
Here are some important links for you to check out:
The App developers website: http://aacornapp.com
This innovative app could really change the way we introduce, teach and model AAC systems to early communicators.
If you have tried aacorn, we would love to hear from you! Leave us a comment! Tell us what you think!