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Connect with over 500,000 members of the Boardmaker Community, including educators, parents and Speech Language Pathologists (SLPs). Access over 90,000 free pre-made materials to share, use and store. Boardmaker (BMSDP Demo.exe). It's a design program that lets you make and adapt curriculum materials for students who need symbols. Teachers, therapists and parent of students with special learning needs consider Boardmaker to be an invaluable tool. Picture communication symbols (PCS) are designed to convey a particular meaning, not just an object. Messages can be presented and generated through different types of media such as individual cards, paper charts and communication boards, computer display programs and voice output devices.
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Topic themed resources are available to download from the Boardmaker website.
For schools using Boardmaker Studio or Boardmaker Online, those of you who have searched for activities on their community sharing site boardmakeronline.com will know the challenge in wading through the many, many resources uploaded by users from all over the world each day. So, it's always good to see high quality activites which can support learning & teaching in our classrooms. Just in time for Shrove Tuesday, this useful resource pack has a range of print/interactive literacy and numeracy activities including simple counting, matching, sequencing and phonic awareness.
Some of the activities were created with a new symbol set called ‘In Context’ which was recently added to Boardmaker Online. The symbol set features primarily adults (they were created for the Stroke and Brian Injury pageset in Compass) and is in a similar style to the ‘PCS Thinline’ with which you may already be familiar.
The resources have been created using Boardmaker Studio, so if your school uses Boardmaker Studio or has a Boardmaker Online account you will be able to download and play/print them. You can find the actvities in the 'UK Curriculum' Group on Boardmaker Online.
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If you are using the Boardmaker Student Centre App, you can download and play the activities on your iPad by logging in with the user name “Pancake” and the password ‘lemons’.
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Don’t forget to make sure your school has Heather & Stuart installed on your PC’s , so you can change the text to speech option in Boardmaker Studio to the Scottish Voices. More information on the Scottish Voices can be found here on our Scottish Voice Website.
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Picture communication symbols (PCS) are designed to convey a particular meaning, not just an object. Messages can be presented and generated through different types of media such as individual cards, paper charts and communication boards, computer display programs and voice output devices. Using these tools can allow an individual to express themselves with more complex types of communication and can allow them to interact easily.
The following are links to sites where symbols can be downloaded free. ***NEW*** Picto Selector Created by Martijn van der Kooij,Picto Selector, a freeware Windows application, is a software to create commuincation/schedule boardsand adapted stories. It has a searchable database of over 23000 symbols.This software also allows you to export and import custom pictures . Trainland This link leads to the trainland website’s PECS resource page. According to the websites author she is like me a parent who has been there, done that and still doing it. This site is a treasure trove of over 2,700 working links on everything autism. The PECS Page has hundreds of symbols you can download (some PCS and some photograph) as well as links to many other sites that have symbols that can be downloaded and used for communication. This site is a must see! Children with Special Needs : This site had several pages of pictures that can be downloaded printed and used to help get you started implementing the picture exchange communication system Do2Learn |
This site has black and white picture cards such as the one pictured above, to help individuals to make schedules, story strips and PECS cards. They can be printed as full-size coloring pages, in one and two-inch sizes with or without words. Printed and cut out, these can be used singly or grouped together. Blank image grids in one-inch and two-inch sizes are included for making custom drawings. A selection of blank schedule forms are provided on this site to allow for creation of customized schedule boards. (Picture cards can be cut up and attached to the blank forms.) PictureSET |
This is a large collection of downloadable visual supports that can be printed and used for receptive and expressive communication in any environment. It has a searchable database of picture communication supports for all different areas of life; school, home and community. The two photos above are pictures of materials I downloaded from this site. The mood thermometer can be used to help a child to express how they are feeling. This may help teach them to express their moods in a more socially appropriate way, to teach self regulatory behavior or to help them understand the moods of others.
The other picture shows a folder game that I printed to teach a child to categorize common items such as food and clothing. Many good ideas and examples on this site!
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This is the “official” Boardmaker share site. Access to Boardmaker software needed to print many of these. Hundreds of topics are available.
Mayer Johnson Boardmaker Free Download
To try Boardmaker free for 30 days, it can be downloaded from: http://www.mayer-johnson.com/downloads/trials/
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ABA Resources
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Many free downloadable resources that can be used to build language and skills. Sample drills and information on Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) program are also on this sight.