Custom Boards {app review + giveaway}

To continue celebrating, I'm excited to bring you a giveaway from Smarty Ears of one of their most beloved apps.

I distinctly remember the first time I heard about Custom Boards.  I was sitting in my apartment and was playing around with my new (at the time) iPad, trying to figure out which apps were good choices to start with.  I was reading about Custom Boards, saw that it was on sale, ran to Target to purchase an iTunes gift card,  and immediately purchased the app.

Some fun facts about this app:
-It was a finalist for "Best App for Special Needs of 2012"
-It is evidence-based! (Wilkinson, Carlin, and Jagaroo, 2006; Mirenda and Iacono, 2009; Wendt, 2009).
-It uses 11,000+ symbols!
-There are over 125 templates on the premium version!

You have six options for types of templates you would want to create!  They are: activities and games, devices and switches, signs and labels, grids and boards, schedules and calendars, and worksheets.

Click on whatever category you want, and it will open the template options under that category.  As I mentioned above, you have lots of options.  You can make your own game templates, visual schedules, signs for your classroom, worksheets, and templates for select devices! It is so versatile.

In honor of the season, I created an example Christmas tree worksheet for you.

To create this, select whichever worksheet or template you want to use.  Click on the white circle/square. You will get this screen:

On the right hand side, you can search by category of image, target sound, and position of that target sound.  Pretty awesome right?  Then, just scroll through the images, click on the one you want, and it will appear in the big box on the left.  You can add a background color if you want.  Just click on that box to add it to the template.

So when you create a board, activity, or template, you can save it to your archive!

As with all Smarty Ears apps, you have a full page of support, where you can access a video tutorial or contact information.  Another great feature of this app is that it backs up to iTunes!

Here's what I love:
-It's evidence-based.
-It's SO versatile.
-It can benefit kids with AAC, language, and social communication goals, among others!
-You can email and print directly!
-It has lots and lots of templates!
-It has thousands of symbols!
-You can use your own pictures.

Do you see yourself using this app?  You can find it in the iTunes store here.  It is currently listed at $29.99 (at the time of this review).

Smarty Ears has very generously donated codes for FOUR lucky Home Sweet Speech Room readers!  Enter the Rafflecopter below for your chance to win!


a Rafflecopter giveaway

Note: I had previously purchased this app myself.  No compensation was received. All opinions expressed are mine.