About Blossoming
About
Firstly, thanks for choosing this App.
Blossoming is a visual support tool for autism children, include First-Then Board, Visual Schedule, Visual Instruction, Reinforcer Choice Board and PECS Board. Parents or teachers can design special courseware to support or train child based on theire own requirement. There are lots of cards and courseware examples built in the App. And users can expand them unlimitedly. User can share cards after simple register/login. More functions and user guide as below:
User Guide
1. This App is only support iPad/iPhone. Author have no play to develop version for other platforms.
2. First page is for child. Only courseware in use will be listed.
3. Parents or teacher can enter settings by shake iPhone/iPad, or triple clicking the screen with 3 fingers. Before the settings, one simple question is needed to prevent child to use it by mistake.
4. Materials are orignal version for all cards. Courseware is for sepcial trainning purpose. And the cards in courseware are from materials.
5. There are 5 kinds of coureseware: PECS Board, First-Then Board, Visual Schedule, Visual Instruction and Reinforcer Choice Board.
1) PECS Board is for language training. Child's operation is draging (or pressing, depends on the settings) the card needed to the sentence strip above, and then clicking the check button in top-right. Please read PECS introduction in the end of this page before you use it to train child.
2) First-Then Board to tell child 'xxx firstly, then xxx'. eg: wash hands firstly, then have lunch.
3) Visual Schedule defines the schedules of one day, or steps of some action. eg: steps of washing hands. a) Open the tap; b) Make hands wet...
4) Visual Instruction shows one card and one command to child.
5) Reinforcer Choice Board let child to choose one reinforcer as award in DTT.
6. The times can be used for card in PECS is settable. 'No Limit' means the card will back to box after check button clicked. But cards in 'Daily' can be used only one time everyday. 'Daily' is used to control the quantity of snacks or games child wants.
7. Parents or teachers can set operation mode for PECS courseware . There are two options, 'Drag' and 'Press'. if 'Drag', child need to drag the card to sentence strip. if 'Press', child only need to press the card, and it will fly to sentence strip automatically.
8. The layout of some coursewares is customizable. It can be 1x1, 2x2, 3x3 or 3x5. You can put some blank card into courseware if needed.
9. Teachers can prepare different coursewares for different children. Click the Edit button in courseware list page，and then coursewares will be draggable. The coursewares in not used(hidden) section won't appear in first page.
10. The App has some built-in cards. Parents and teachers can add his own classifications and cards, or edit existing ones.
11. While editing card, click the existing picture can take photo to replace it.
12. Sharing card is appreciated.
13. The built-in cards are from Internet. If it infringe your copyright, please tell me.
14. The coureseware and cards added by you are stored in your device only. Please don't uninstall this App, or they will lost.
15. Please don't use this App for other purpose.
Support
Please mail to 2288900@qq.com
PS：PECS
Phase 1: How to Communicate During Phase I, the focus is on teaching the student to initiate social communication. The student is taught to approach the communicative partner with a picture of a desired object or food item and place the picture in the trainer's hand, in order to receive the desired reward. This exchange is taught using one picture, selected by the trainer. Within Phase I, two trainers are utilized. One trainer acts as the student's communicative partner, and the other trainer acts as the physical prompter, who prompts the student to reach towards the communicative partner with the picture in exchange for the student's reward.
Phase 2: Distance and Persistence During Phase 2, the student is taught to initiate social interaction when the communicative partner is not nearby and waiting. The student is taught to persevere if the reward is not immediately provided, to communicate over longer distances whether it be across a larger table or walking farther distances to reach his/her communicative partner, and initiate spontaneous communication. Teaching the child persistence is comparable to a typically developing child raising his/her voice to gain attention when initial attempts are not recognized by the communication partner. Training should progress across different settings, with different communicative partners, and different types of reinforcing items to assist in the generalization of PECS usage.
Phase 3: Discrimination Between Symbols During this phase, the student is taught discrimination of symbols and how to select the symbol which depicts a desired item.
Once the student demonstrates mastery with pairings of preferred and non-preferred pictures, discrimination between two preferred pictures is introduced.The picture array is increased until the child can discriminate among all the pictures in the picture book. Frost and Bondy's 4-Step Error Correction Procedure is used to correct mistakes. For children who have difficulty with picture discrimination, mini objects can be used followed by a gradual shift to pictures. Students progress to this step after they can reliably request their favorite items from a variety of people. Pyramid Educational Consultants markets an app designed to reinforce Phase 3 instruction.
Phase 4: Using Phrases During Phase 4, the student is taught sentence structure in order to make requests by using expressions such as "I want ____ ". Another skill targeted in this phase is commenting as it is learned at the same time as requesting among typically developing children. The requests consist of a sentence starter and a picture of the desired activity or item on a sentence strip. The communicative partner reads back the sentence after it has been exchanged by the student. A delay between the sentence starter and the activity/reward is often used to encourage speech and/or vocalizations. Speech/vocalizations are rewarded by providing the student with a greater amount of the reinforcer to encourage the student to use a picture and speech rather than a picture exchange alone to request activities and items. Teaching children using PECS to create a sentence using expressions such as "I want ___" is a way to increase the complexity of their communicative exchanges.
Phase 5: Answering a Direct Question During Phase 5, the student is taught to respond to the prompt, "What do you want?" The goal of this phase is for the child to respond "I want ___ " regardless of whether the item is present. This phase adds upon already established skills and a desired item is still used to motivate the user to respond. A delayed prompting procedure is used in which the question and prompt are initially presented at the same time and later a delay is established between the question and gestural prompt. Ultimately, the student should answer the question before additional prompts are provided. According to Bondy and Frost, skills developed in Phase 5 are acquired quickly because sentence construction is familiar to the student and they are motivated to answer. In this phase, the student is also taught descriptives (i.e. colors, size) so that he or she can indicate preferences within desired reinforcers (e.g. I want the red ball).
Phase 6: Commenting During this phase, the student is taught to respond to questions as well as to spontaneously comment on items, people, or activities present in his or her environment. The student can now respond to the question "What do you want?" with "I want ___" In this phase, the student is also taught to differentiate between appropriate responses to the questions "What do you see?" and "What do you want?" The teacher should structure the environment to the give the student plenty of opportunities to make spontaneous comments. The teacher can sabotage the environment to elicit comments from the student. Functional communication skills the student should now have developed include being able to make spontaneous requests, responsive requests, and responsive and spontaneous comments.