Animated Step-by-Steps®

Monday, February 15, 2016

Personalizing Animated Step-by-Steps™ Made Easier!

If you are willing to devote the extra time, you can modify your Animated Step-by-Steps™ to include personal photos of your students. It’s a great way to heighten engagement.

I vividly remember the first time I used the interactive whiteboard to present a story that had been personalized with the photo faces of students in the class. I was richly rewarded with their squeals of sheer delight …. the question, “How did I get in the story? … and my personal favorite …. “ How you do dat?”

What child doesn’t like to see themselves in a starring role on either the big screen (interactive whiteboard) or the little screen (iPad)? The extra time needed to personalize a product is well worth the effort, but I am fully cognizant of the fact that it does require a fairly sophisticated understanding of PowerPoint to efficiently make the changes necessary for personalizing the product.

First you must change your .pps file (PowerPoint Show) into an editable .ppt file. This can easily be accomplished by re-typing its end designation, i.e., the letters following the period. Make a copy of your ASbyS files to be on the safe side.

As indicated above, simply click on the name of the file, then select just the pps letters that occur after the period in the name. Change these letters to ppt. This changes the file from a ‘show version’ to a ‘editable version’. If you have the more current version of the PowerPoint, I suggest you open this newly minted .ppt file from within PowerPoint. This will allow you save the file in the newer version of PowerPoint, i.e., the .pptx format. Under File on the PowerPoint menu bar, select Open, then navigate to your recently modified file.

If the file name is not showing you will need to change the default setting. Here are some general guidelines for both Mac and Windows:

For Mac

Click on your desktop to bring up the Finder menu

Click on the Finder (next to the apple icon in the upper left corner) in the menu bar

Select Preferences in the drop down menu.

Click on the Advanced Tab

Select the option Show all filename extensions

For Windows

Go to Startup button (bottom left of screen)

Choose Control Panel

Click on Appearance and Personalization

Select Folder Options

Click on View Tab in the dialog box

Uncheck the box that says Hide extensions for known file types (scroll down in list)

Click OK

Here’s the additional and perhaps most daunting challenge …

When you ungroup the existing face from the firefighter’s body … you lose the animation(s) that were previously created for that grouping. You must then substitute the face of your student for the existing face … group the new face to the old body … redo two animation(s) (sliding on to the page; sliding off of the page)…. and make sure the new animation(s) are correctly inserted back into the animation lineup for the page.

Yikes that’s a lot of meticulous work!

Is it possible to change out the photo face … without having to redo the animation sequence?

At long last … I’ve finally figured out how to do this!

Here’s how its done …

Select the grouped item (typically the body + face).
Click a second time on the face of this selected group and you should now see two boxes highlighted (one box represents the body, the second box is the face).
I think it is less confusing to do the ‘photo face transplant’ when the face is clearly on the top of the stack.

In some ASbyS, e.g., Get Up and Dance the photo face already lies on top of the group; in others the photo face lies beneath , e.g., 10 Brave Firefighters. If the latter is the case you must move the photo face to the top of the stack. To do this you must right click on the top image and select Arrange then select the command move backwards. This alters the arrangement so the photo face is now on top.

Now that the photo face is on the top of the stack, right click on the face (control click on mac) and select the command, Change Picture. Navigate to the photo you wish to bring in as an alternative; click on the Insert button.
Presto! The new face appears in the group (note: because you are working with a grouped item you should always see two selection boxes.

While still selected you can optimize the size and placement of the face. You can even rotate or flip the image horizontally to allow the image to be better integrated with the body. In 10 Brave Firefighters, the photo face must then be sent to the back to create the impression that the child is wearing the firefighter hat. Right click on photo face and select send backward.

Congratulations! You have successfully replaced the illustrated face with a photo face of your student ….. without disrupting the animation sequence! … Hours saved!!!!!!

Now that I have figured out a process for making personalizing easier, I’m sure I will be designing content differently re: how I group faces to bodies to make the process even more effortless for those of you who wish to personalize content.

Summary: I have agonized over how to make the process of personalizing ASbyS easier for quite some time. Finding a relatively simple solution to a long standing quest is a beautiful thing!

… ’til the next post … (new posts every Monday)
Next week's post will provide information on how to create photo faces with transparent backgrounds.

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Augmentative Communication Consultant

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Monday, February 8, 2016

More on Nurturing Pretend Play

I’ve always been interested in poems/songs that support emerging pretend play skills. Miss Polly’s Dolly and Baby What’s Wrong? are two resources that are up to the challenge! Both resources are available on the Teachers Pay Teachers site in three formats: Regular (no symbols), SymbolStix (n2y) and Picture Communication Symbols (Mayer-Johnson/Dynavox).

Miss Polly’s Dolly is a sweet poem about having a sick dolly, needing to call the doctor, having to get a prescription for medicine, putting your dolly to bed and bracing yourself for the inevitable bill. Baby What’s Wrong targets a broader range of pretend play babycare skills and reinforces words that reflect important physical states (sick, tired, cold, thirsty, hungry, wet) that every parent wants their child to be able to communicate instead of fretting or crying. And …what parent doesn’t want their child to understand the phrase ‘right now!” e.g., Give that baby a bottle … right now! : )

I like to conduct both activities with props, inviting the child to ‘act out’ what they just heard or saw after reading/animating a page together.

Miss Polly's Dolly Props Baby What's Wrong? Props

If you have a symbol-supported version of the song, you already know that the necessary symbols appear after the page animations are complete and are conveniently available to conduct Aided Language Stimulation. For more information on Aided Language Stimulation visit http://bit.ly/1HKizla If you are using your ASbyS on an iPad the pinch-zoom feature can be used to enlarge symbols allowing crucial aspects of the symbols to be made more recognizable as a result of enlargement. Please visit a previous post, Utilizing the ‘Pinch Out to Zoom in’ Feature of the iPad for additional information. http://bit.ly/1Rg2ljg

Both pretend play songs lend themselves beautifully to AAC collaboration either non-electronically or using a voice-output device. When conducting Baby What's Wrong as a ‘mini play’, for example, one child might be assigned the sound effects coded green (whaa whaa, brrr, brrr, cough cough, yawn yawn, sing sing); another might be assigned the physical states coded blue (hungry, thirsty, burping, wet, sick, tired, cold); while a third child is assigned the needed objects coded red (bottle, cereal, back, diaper, medicine, bed, blanket). These color-coded printed words have been incorporated to help students recognize when it’s their turn to add their voice to the unfolding song/poem/play.

Please refer to a previous post Using Poems as a Mini Play http://bit.ly/1im3FoB and Using a Planning Sheet to Assign Roles http://bit.ly/1MkAFWf for further clinical suggestions.

While some children will be using poem-specific communication displays to collaborate, others might be using those same displays non-electronically as a memory device/ organizing prop. So last year you created some song-specific communication displays to support a child using a classroom communication device, this year those same displays might be used non-electronically as an organizing or memory aid for a child with emerging speech!

Children with emerging speech can often benefit from using a flip book version of the slot-filler items in the poem/song to support their roles when using an ASbyS. These flip books present key words (more specifically the slot-filler words) sequentially in a flip book arrangement.

This works especially well when used in conjunction with a sequential voice-output communicator such as the Step-by-Step Communicator by AbleNet (https://www.ablenetinc.com/little-step-by-step) (https://www.ablenetinc.com/big-step-by-step)

This ‘sequential communicator’ (generic term) is also perfect for children undergoing switch training, especially when used in conjunction with a Y-cord that makes the process errorless. For more information on the use of the Y-cord please visit, http://bit.ly/UsingY-Cord.

As an aside, I also find these flipbooks to be a great addition to the child’s bedtime routine allowing you to sing the song with expectant pauses that invite collaboration.

I think these two pretend play songs are especially useful when working with ‘students on the spectrum’. They embody many of the features that seem to be appealing to this population of children … electronics, music, props, predictable structure, sound effects …. and best of all there is a lot of fun to be had with these two resources!

…’til the next post … (new posts every Monday)

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