Abilipad (formerly Intellipad) is a relatively new writing app available for the iPad. Developed by an Occupational Therapist who wanted a custom keyboard for her client – the App has become much more than a custom keyboard creator and is a very clever writing and literacy teaching tool.
At the most basic level, Abilipad offers a keyboard with word prediction, some basic spell checking and text-to-speech support. The student can hear words being predicted before selecting them – and the same support is offered for the spell checking. The word prediction is a bit of a weakness in what is otherwise an excellent app – it can be a bit idiosyncratic (as in the example below where it predicts weekendish) and doesn’t have any options for phonetic word prediction or for adding word lists or custom vocabulary.
The spell check automatically kicks in whenever the program sees that you are typing a non-word or a word for which there are variations. The spell check can sometimes compensate for the word prediction. For example – I typed the sentence “On the weekend I went to the zoo and saw an amimal”. Although the word prediction didn’t ever offer “animal” as an option, the spell check did.
Whenever the student wants to hear what they have written, they just need to select the speaker in the top right corner and an Acapela voice reads out their typing. Having had some recent contact with the developer, they tell me that speak word-by-word and speak on punctuation will be available as options soon – with an update due out in the next few weeks.
For the speech itself, currently a range of US and UK Acapela voices are offered in the settings with more to come in the next update. And while I’m discussing settings – word prediction, spell check and text-to-speech can be turned on or off through the settings at any time. Other settings include changing the response rate of the keyboard and turning key repeats on and off. Documents can be printed or emailed to save a student’s work.
As well as using the standard keyboard shipped with Abilipad, custom keyboards can be created at any time. This is the really exciting feature of Abilipad as it allows us to provide scaffolds for some students – but also to create custom literacy activities.
In the example below, I have made a “silly story” overlay with story beginnings, middles and endings. I tried this with some students last week – and lots of laughter was the result!
I can make up a keyboard with words jumbled up as an extension activity to a guided reading book – where the student needs to re-order the sentence. Or I can make a keyboard to do some of Caroline Musselwhite’s Poetry Power activities – the uses for these custom keyboards are many and varied.
As I build a keyboard, there are quite a few options that I have control of: I can choose to combine keys along a row to make a larger key; I can select the background, foreground and text colours; I can select the font size; I can delete keys to leave spaces; and I can attach a recording to a cell.
The screenshot above was taken while I was in the process of making up a keyboard for doing an onset rime activity with the word family –ill. I can also make up keyboards for Making Words (Cunningham, 1991). And once I have made up a custom keyboard, I can choose to share it online with others, and also check out what others are sharing using the share button within the app.
And finally, there is one more feature of Abilipad that I really like. I can make up a writing document with a picture beside it – perfect for writing about personal experiences or keeping a journal. The picture is pulled from your picture library on your iPad and the writing space appears next to it. Fabulous for writers of all levels!
Abilipad isn’t perfect – I’d love to have more control over the editing and the word prediction could definitely be improved – but it goes a long way to filling a hole in the current writing and literacy tools on the iPad and I know I will be using it lots and lots!
Abilipad is available on the iTunes store for $20.99AUD. Videos and more information about this app are available from http://www.abilipad.com/.