“Let’s take just one stakeholder example: students with disabilities, as well as their teachers and parents. Autism advocate and software developer Russ Ewell from the Hope Technology Group is excited. “Apple could unlock another door for autism with this breakthrough,” Ewell said. “Parents could create social story books.” So could special education teachers or therapists, tailored for each student.”
I wouldn’t be honest if I didn’t admit we were excited to be quoted on Wired.com last month. We were a bit player in a significant article about education, text books, and digital publishing. You can read the entire article here.
What I consider most important about this story is in my quote. Properly developed and leveraged iBooks Author could become a powerhouse publishing platform for Social Stories.
Whether iBooks Author realizes this potential is difficult to predict, but one thing is certain, Social Stories are a vital tool for children and adults with special needs. In fact, we have begun looking into the development of a Social Stories app by Digital Scribbler. Please give us your feedback on this potential project.
I love this idea! My kids love apps and they love social stories. I’d be v intrigued to see how these two things could be combined. Currently, we use low-tech things like hand puppets for our social stories!!
Do keep us posted!!
I would love to see easy, basic social stories made available — and more importantly, without the special needs penalty cost. It seems absurd to me that Pictello is $18.99 and Stories2Learn is $13.99 (and has a real problem with losing content across updates and and devices — I am still too furious to write about this in detail, but in short *all* of Leo’s beloved social stories were irretrievably obliterated). I do love Pictello’s ability to share stories across devices, and recordable voiceover is important for pre-readers. But as Injini’s new Write My Name allows recording voiceover in a $1.99 app, I do wonder how those prices are justified. And why there isn’t a better cheaper option. Definitely interested in following along.