Webinar #3

Webinar #3- Fine Motor Skills

Dexteria app is an app for occupational therapy. It includes three main features: Tap it, Pinch it and Write it. For a student with limited or impaired motor skills, this app is a very fun and interactive way for students to practice their fine motor skills or hand and eye coordination. These skills are also useful for young children developing their hand writing. The three areas that we looked at in the webinar included “Tap It” which works on fine motor skills, “Pinch it” which works on the ability to pinch grip or the functional grasp for writing and lastly, “Write It” which works on individual isolation of fingers and the ability to use a stylist to practice hand writing. I liked the idea that this program is progressive and you are able to use a stylist, which will help younger students develop their hand writing skills. On the Binary Labs website, which provides the Dexteria app, it was also interesting to see they offer other apps called “Letter Reflex” which helps students overcome letter reversals, and “P.O.V” to help students develop spatial reasoning skills.

Bugs And Buttons is an affordable app at only $2.99. It is aimed towards young children to develop patterns, counting, learning about bugs, and in particular fine motor skills.  The app comes with 18 educational and interactive games. Two of the games that were demonstrated in the webinar which I enjoyed the most were the “Pinch and Grab” game, focuses on developing fine motor skills and it is challenging for students as it gets more difficult. It was neat to see how they added in the feature for student to learn how to sort and recycle as well. The program can also work on student wrist extension with the adjustment of the angles. The other game I also enjoyed was called “Roach Racing” which is another feature that also works on fine motor skills by controlling the speed with the coordination of your finger(s)/thumb.  The “Bug And Buttons” website (provided by “Little Bit Studio”), also indicates it is available in English, French, German, Spanish, Dutch, Italian, Japanese, and Chinese.  

Here is a demo of the app found on YouTube:

 

Injini app- As Barb best said “you get what you pay for with this app”. I can agree with her after learning about all its features and the fact that it was designed by teachers. The website (injini.net) states it’s a useful app for students with “special needs, to improve fine motor skills, spatial awareness, memory & visual processing”. It also states it has been “field tested with families, early intervention centres, & preschools. When this program is used for assessment or practice, the visual motor and control skills, as well as fine motor skills are all important. In this program you are also able to use your fingers or stylist to develop pre-writing skills. Another highlight is that the levels are progressive and develop in the same sequence as the developmental writing skills. It comes with 9 games and 8 mini-games that include many levels to practice the following skills “fine motor, cause and effect understanding, spatial awareness, memory, differentiation, response inhibition, visual processing, sequencing and more” (injini.net).

Here is another demo of the app Injini found on YouTube: