ictsan

Boardmaker is a staple piece of software in setting for learners with very significant communication difficulties.

It is not a piece of software for pupils to use. Rather it is a means to create, easily, communication boards and other symbol communication material including the ever useful visual timetables. You can go further and use the symbols as labels and signs in the school environment, making the school more accessible to symbol users.

Effectively Boardmaker delivers an easy way of creating these materials using Picture Communication (PCS) symbols. These are the commonly used symbols which are mistakenly called Boardmaker symbols. Boardmaker is popular because of its ease of use. The symbols can be called up by typing in the word you need.

Boardmaker 5 is no longer available. The new version 6 is apparently very similar. The main improvement is that you can type phrases or sentences, which will be represented by symbols. It is unclear, at the moment, whether this version will work on networked computers, in the way that we have managed to get BM5 working. Boardmaker has the severest form of copyright protection. You have to have the disc in the drive to use the software. This renders it liable to damage and it would have to be replaced -not at full price- from the supplier.

Note that the PCS symbols can be purchased in another form. They are available as a a CD-ROM of .wmf file - vector art for PCs. They work with MS Publisher and Word, Textease and all major packages. It is possible to create materials in more versatile ways. However, for speed of creation, Boardmaker is faster. It does what it does well.

Take a look here at some uses of Boardmaker; http://www.flickr.com/photos/ictsan/sets/72157600007125658/