Title

The first task is to give your flash card a title. This should be the label you want your student to associate with the object (target) on the flash card. Tap in the text field that says Name in order to type the title of your card.

Picture

You have two choices for adding a picture to your flash card, which are outlined separately below. The option you choose depends mostly on your ability to take a photograph of the flash card target as well as the student’s need for learning with the actual items they see and use in their everyday life. For example, if you are making flash cards of the planets, you will not be able to take a photo of Neptune with your iPad and will probably use the Add Existing Photo option to insert a picture from Google Images (or a similar source) in to your flash card.

(An exception to this might be if you would like to use a picture from a textbook in your flash card and you take a picture of the image in the book with the iPad. Then you would use the Take New Photo option.) But if your student is learning about the school supplies she uses on a daily basis and benefits from seeing her backpack and her pencil case then you will use the Take New Photo option to take pictures of her items for her flash cards.

Add Existing Photo:

Choose this option if you already have a photo of the target item you are creating the flash card for on your iPad. Tap Add Existing Photo to bring up the photos on your iPad. Find the picture you want and tap it to insert it into your flash card.

Take New Photo:

Choose this option if you do not have a picture of the target item you are creating the flash card for. Tap Take New Photo to activate the iPad’s built-in camera. (You will notice that the camera is set up to take photos in landscape mode. If a photo is taken in portrait mode the image will end up sideways on your flash card. The picture must be taken in landscape mode to work in your flash card.) Tap the blue Take Flash Card Photo to take the picture and insert it into your flash card.

You will see that the app automatically fills in the text for the audio prompts based on the title you chose for your flash card. In most cases, this is exactly the speech you will record in order for your flash cards to be used in the app activities. However, users may find instances when they choose to exclude the article “the” from their recordings. To go back to our planet example, you would probably record, “Put Jupiter with Jupiter”, rather than “Put the Jupiter with the Jupiter”. The blue text is there as a guide to help you record prompts that are consistent with the other audio prompts used in the app. That being said, record what makes the most sense for your students and the words they are learning.

There are 4 audio recordings to make for your flash card. You will need to record all 4 of them in order to save your card. If there is an audio prompt that you do not wish to use with your students, you can turn it off in the activity settings. All 4 prompts must be recorded here.

To make a recording, tap the red circle under the blue text. You will know you are recording when the red circle changes to a red square. After speaking the prompt, press the red square to stop recording. You can listen to your recording by tapping the black triangle. You can re-record your audio as many times as you need to in order to get it to sound the way you want it to.

Finally, scroll down to select the Sorting Category (or categories) you would like associated with your flash card for the Sorting activity. You can choose as many categories as you wish by tapping the switches next to each category title. When the switch is moved to the right, revealing the green background, you have selecting that category. To deselect, simply tap again to move the switch to the left. You can also Add a New Category by tapping that phrase at the top of the category list. This will open a new text box where you can enter your custom category title. Then click Add to add your new category to the list.

When you have assigned the appropriate category(ies) to your flash card, you are ready to save your flash card!

To save your flash card you can scroll either to the very bottom of the screen or go back up to the top. In both places you will see Save Flash Card in blue text. Tap this to save your card. You will then see a confirmation alert telling you that your card has been created successfully.

Your flash card will now be available for use across all user profiles within the Receptive & Expressive Labeling, Picture Identification, and Sorting activities.