{App Review+ Giveaway} Citymals
I recently got the opportunity to review a voice activated app from Outloud Apps called Citymals.
Disclaimer: I was provided a copy of the app; however, the opinions expressed are solely my own.
When you open the app, this is the screen you will see. You can add different students, as well as change settings by clicking on the little gear symbol in the bottom right hand corner.
Once you view (or skip) the tutorial, you are brought to this scene. The orange bar at the top of the screen is what the child will look at in order to make enough noise for something to happen on the screen. We started by using vowels, like “eee” and “aaa” and “ooo.” You could also say words though.
Once the child reaches a certain threshold, the orange bar will glow and things start to move on the screen. Animals will appear, the trash can tips over, etc. You can also record your voice and listen back to it later.
What I Liked:
-I used this with my youngest students and they were excited to see what would happen on the screen once they reached the threshold
-There are definitely opportunities to talk about the scene with older students, so it could be used for sentence formulation, labeling, etc.
-Graphics are bright and engaging
-You could use it to tell a story/tell what happened by recording the student’s voice if you didn’t want to use it for the voice activation portion
-It targets turn taking because you do have to wait for a period in between vocalizing for the orange bar to reappear
What I Would Love To See:
-It would be nice to be able to move the items that appear on the screen for added language skills
Overall, I think this is a good app for your very young students who might be working on just using their voice. It also could be adapted for younger elementary aged students who are working on sentence formulation. My students always love hearing their voices, so the ability to record and then hear their sentence is really nice! This app is available in the app store for $3.99.
To win a copy, enter below:
I want to win this app because I am a graduate student and plan to work with children when I finish school. This app can be used for so many different things and would be a great app to add to my collection.
This looks great. I work a lot with early intervention so I could definitely see myself using this app as a visual incentive to entice students to use their voice more, for those reluctant to imitate sounds at all. Thank you for the chance!