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App Review: Everyday Objects by Color Cards

When I first began working in the field of speech therapy as an SLP-Aide, I had access to my supervising SLP’s materials.  He had all of the card sets created by Color Cards.  I used those sets quite a lot over the years as an SLP-Aide.  Therefore, I was pleased to see that they now have apps and even more delighted when I was contacted and asked if I would be interested in doing a review of the Everyday Objects App.  Although I was provided the app, the opinions in this review are all mine. 


This app provides three activities: describing, reveal, and viewing the cards.  The viewing option allows for you to pull each one up so that labeling skills can be worked on and/or to provide a review of what vocabulary will be worked on during the session.



The describing task brings up one of the pictured cards for students to describe.  It provides an audio stating “Tell me about this” but also provides a visual sentence prompt.  In the top, right corner, the app provides a little microphone so you can record what the student says. On the bottom of the screen, you are able to take data for the activity by marking if it was completed accurately, with prompting, or not correct.  I love that I have the option to state if prompting was needed beyond just correct or wrong.  

The reveal activity will show a small portion of the screen and students are asked to guess what the picture is of.  Each time you touch the screen an additional portion is displayed. Again, the microphone is on top to record student guesses and the bottom allows you to mark if the response was accurate, required help, or was not correct.

I like to get the biggest bang for my buck, so I do not use it in this way.  With the knowledge I have from choosing which pictures to work on, I provide the student with descriptive features and see if they are able to guess accurately prior to final reveal of the object.  I attempted to also have the students choose three pictures and then turn the tables on me.  They would give me descriptive features (function, location, appearance, etc..) for me to guess.  Of course, to get the most out of it, I would play along as if I could not guess correctly until the final reveal. 

In the settings, the cards are grouped by difficulty: easy, medium, and hard.  The settings screen allows you to view the image banks and choose the number of cards and which cards you wish to use. It also allows you to set up the activity by determining the background color, cut out shape (for the reveal), collect information for reports, and whether  you wish to provide a counter or not.  It also allows you to decide if you would like the task broken up with a cute reinforcing animation or not and if the keytone or audio is turned off or on.   You are also able to review student reports with a graph to monitor progress and buy additional cards. One of the BEST FEATURES for this app is that in the settings area, I can add my own cards to the mix.  It is simple to do too!  Simply take a picture of an item on the spot or use a picture in your library, name it, choose which category it fits (verbs, objects, emotions, what’s wrong), choose level of difficulty, and save! 


OVERALL IMPRESSIONS:  I loved the flexibility of moving along as I see fit and that the app provided a microphone and the option to report that the student required additional prompting to complete the task. Real life pictures are also wonderful to have instead of line art or cartoon clip art.  I definitely see how these pictures would also speak to older populations.  The data collection graphs were also helpful.  I LOVE that I can add my own pictures too! That is a wonderful feature to have because I can add more recent or age-specific pictures.   However, there were a few things that I felt would make the app even better.  The pictures as they are work for older individuals; however, for littler kids updated pictures would be helpful.  I recognized a lot of these pictures from the same cards I used years ago. The last thing I would suggest is that in the view the cards portion, it would be great if you could choose a field of 2, 3, or 4 pictures that can be side by side to work on receptive identification or compare/contrast.  One of the things I loved about the original cards is that you can work on so many different skills and it would be great if some of that flexibility could be applied into the app.  Overall, it is a great and simple app for working on labeling, descriptive features, and inferencing using real pictures.  Plus, the price just can’t be beat especially when you can add your own cards and tailor it to meet student vocabulary needs!

You can buy Everyday Objects App from Color Cards for $1.99.  Add-on packs can be purchased in settings.  Each additional pack includes 100 cards for $4.99.  Add on packs include: Everyday Objects, Verbs, Emotions, and What Wrong cards. 

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