Magic Moments with Tellagami

Looking for ways to engage older learners with age appropriate materials? Searching for fresh ideas for AAC and language practice?

Tellagami (“tell-uh-gah-mee”) is a free iOS app that allows you to create short animations, save them to your device, post to Facebook, and share them by email, SMS text, or Twitter. Best part about it, in this busy SLP’s opinion? Super easy to learn and use! The animations are called ‘Gami’s’ and are short and fun to make. The app has a good amount of flexibility and you are only limited by your imagination.

Here are some ideas for putting it to use in your AAC work.

1. Choice making: The AAC learner can work collaboratively with a peer to create a Gami. In doing so, he/she can make selections of things like the gender of the character, hair, clothes, and the background.

2. Peer interactions: Many of our AAC learners’ peers really want to interact with them but lack confidence in doing so. Having an easy-to-use app like this takes the pressure off, because they have something to focus on. This kind of partner work builds relationships and provides an age appropriate context for communication. We can envision classrooms where this kind of partner activity is part of the classroom routine. Together, they can make Gami’s to share with the class, send as a text message home to a parent, or email to a teacher, therapist, paraprofessional, or administrator. What AP wouldn’t love getting something like this from a student? {Click image below}

3. Send a message: What a great way to involve the learner in sharing information between environments! Together, you can build a Gami to share information about what happened in therapy, home, or school and send it by text or email. You can even post it on Facebook, if that is accessible in your setting. It’s a good way to build on the ‘nothing about me without me’ philosophy: Work together to tell about what’s going on. {Click on image}

4. Authentic writing: It can be really tough to write if you are a person who uses AAC. And when things are hard to do, it helps to have a motivating context or activity. Enter, Tellagami. First, we hook them with the fun part, making the Gami. Then they get to type in what their character will say. Hearing the character speak their words is not only motivating, but allows the learner to listen for anything that doesn’t sound quite right. We can help them go back and make the necessary additions, deletions, or modifications. Think of it as a mini-editing experience.

5. Show appreciation: People who support AAC learners work hard. We may not be perfect, but we try and it sure is nice to be appreciated. Next time you want to thank a team member and maybe even inspire them to reach a little farther, try a Gami. {Click on image}

6. Build language skills: We’re always looking for fresh activities for our language therapy sessions. And since everyone seems enamored with the iPad, Tellagami is a natural fit. These short animations are great for practicing core language, building longer sentences, using Tier 2 vocabulary, and using more sophisticated syntax.

7. Narrative development: It takes a long time for some of our AAC learners to get good at storytelling. Whether you are focusing on personal narratives, retelling a story, or developing fictional narratives, there may be a role for Tellagami. We’ve been working on strong story starters in some of our AAC therapy, and are using Gami’s to provide examples. We also email them to clients between therapy sessions as story starters. When they return for the next session, we listen to the stories they’ve created and sometimes work together to edit them into a final form. Then we can share them in any number of ways.   {Click on images}

If you already use Tellagami or download this free app and try it out with your AAC learners, we would love to hear about it. Come back and share your experiences in a comment.