4 Tech Tools for Auditory Learners

Use technology as a tool.  What a great concept in educational learning.  Instead of ipads for rewards or an easy center for tired teachers at the end of the day, here we can plan to use apps as a meaningful part of our curriculum.  The following are great suggestions for building phonological awareness in early education.  However, you could easily adapt many of the apps to assist in developing vocabulary, ELL, or foreign language development.

Word Chatterpix

Cost: Free
Recommended ages: 4-12+
ChatterPix Kids
​by: Duck Duck Mouse LLC

Have your students take a picture of a word and create a chatterpix.  My students love to look for words in the classroom.  This activity is great for helping students to feel their language learning is useful to their everyday life.  We recently went on a walk and took picture of words to play with our chatterpix! Great way to start developing early reading skills.

Generate QR Codes of Songs

Cost: Free
Recommended ages:
3-12+
​QR Generator
by: by w69b GmbH

QR Codes can be a great tool in many different aspects.  In my most recent lesson in particular, I hid QR codes in different places around the room.  The children scanned them and had to find the nursery rhyme and the rhyming words and report back to the class.  The possibilities for linking QR codes are endless.  You could make your own video, incorporate websites, or even use them as a vocabulary building tool.  Have fun with it, my kids certainly did!

Beginning Sounds 

Cost: $0.99
Recommended Ages: 4-6
Sound Sorting: Beginning Sounds
by: Lakeshore Learning Materials

 I love this series!  I have all three downloaded onto every computer in each classroom. There is now an app available to download, but I used the CD.  It builds phonological awareness, rogue memory, and mouse control.  One of my 3 year old's mastered rhyming words because of this program.  I highly, highly recommend it.  It is worth a dollar! It works like a slot machine. Children drag the pictures to match the sounds. Correct sounds are pinned, incorrect pictures are placed back in the slot.

Voice Changer Plus

Cost: Free
Recommended Ages: 4+
Voice Changer Plus
by: Arf Software Inc.

What sound does and S make?  You really know your letter sounds, now can you do it in the batman voice? Kids (and adults) absolutely love this app, because it is hilarious.  They don't even know they are practicing letter sounds, or spelling words, or reading sentences.  It is just pure fun!  Once they begin to gain proficiency, you can give them more challenges.  If your child is studying for a spelling test, see if they can record spelling out the word and beat their recording! Have you ever heard Brown Bear, Brown Bear read backwards?  You should. You really should.