Special Education Teacher for students with multiple disabilities-SymbolStix Prime user.
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
I use SymbolStix Prime within my classroom where I teach elementary-aged students who have multiple disabilities and are medically fragile. I use SymbolStix to create symbols for my classroom schedule, class jobs board, student choice boards, and individualized student schedules for within their school day. I also create symbols to support student transitions and help students work on a variety of IEP goals, such as people identification, color and number recognition, and counting. I also use Symbolstix to create symbols that serve as visual supports, corresponding to the Leveled Books and Easy Read books from Unique Learning System. I find it helpful that the Symbostix Prime symbols are available to students who use Touch Chat on the iPad as their communication mode, creating continuity in communication, expression, and reception during a lesson.
Pros
- Provides symbols which align with Leveled Books and Easy Read books (e.g., symbols of characters and objects in the story).
- Allows for searching for a symbol and then providing the ability to download it so it can be used within other programs/software, such as Google Slides.
- Symbolstix allows you to save boards that you create so you can go back to them and make changes/edits as needed.
Cons
- The board wizard layout was changed in recent months, and it can be confusing trying to create a board for a field of 4, 6, etc. This was previously easier to do with the older layout..
- Sometimes I am looking for an exact match for a symbol that appears in a Leveled book or Easy Read book that doesn't appear to exist in the bank of symbols.
- When trying to import a picture, sometimes the pictures I import are blurry when I add them to one of my boards.
Return on Investment
- Symbolstix Prime allows me to create symbols in a variety of sizes and customize the background color, font, etc., for students with visual impairments.
- Symbostix helps provide consistency for students throughout the day and supports a language-rich learning environment, including allowing me to use symbols for class schedules, individualized schedules, labeling items in the classroom, visual supports for Unique lessons, and class meetings.
- Symbolstix allows boards to be created using or imported from real pictures, which work better than the Symbolstix symbols for some students.
Usability
Other Software Used
Unique Learning System