Since the transition to distance learning, many SLP's have discovered BOOM CARDS! Here are some of the questions I had when I first learned about them.
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What are Boom Cards?
Boom cards are digital, interactive activities. Activities on Boom Learning are referred to as "decks" and the slides in the decks are referred to as "cards." Here are some of these ways these cards are interactive :
drag images or text
type answers in text boxes
click on images or text boxes in order to select them as the answer
Do I have to pay a subscription fee?
Nope! When you sign up for a free account, you'll get a free trial for a premium account. But once that expires, you'll still be able to access the free and paid decks in your library.
For security and privacy, adults must have a Boom Learning account to use Boom Cards. With the free basic account, you'll be able to :
Access to your library (this is where all of the decks are stored)
Add more decks to your library (free or paid decks; P.S. decks can be purchases on Boom Learning or TpT)
Have access to fast pins (more on this later)
How can I use them in therapy?
Boom cards are versatile! They will work for :
Distance Learning
Teletherapy sessions
Face to face therapy
Projection onto a SmartBoard
All you need is a device with access to the internet (e.g. tablet, iPad, computer).
Boom cards are an awesome way to keep students motivated and engaged during distance learning or in teletherapy sessions.
If you are using Zoom, you can give students control of the screen to interact with the cards.
Can I still use boom cards if I'm using Teams or Google Meet? Absolutely! They're a wonderful tool for eliciting language and targeting a variety of speech and language skills, even if the student can't control the screen themselves.
TIP: If you're on a computer, you can shrink the sizes of the windows in order to have multiple windows open on your screen at once. For example, open up your 50 articulation trials boom cards, and drag the edge of the window to shrink it. Then open up a window with all of the /k/ words on it, and shrink that. Now you have both the word list and digital trials shared on the screen for the student to see.
Can I share them with students?
Yes! You can generate a "fast pin." Fast pins are accessible for 14 days. After that, you will need to generate a new fast pin.
To generate a fast pin :
go to your library
find a deck
click on the small drop down arrow
click fast pin
click to generate a pin
copy the link
Ideas for using fast pins :
post them on our Google Classroom (see video below for more info)
share them via email with parents for home practice
embed them in your virtual Google Slides classroom for quick access
copy and paste them into a Google Doc or Word Doc for quick access to the activities during the week
Still have questions? Check out these videos :
*remember - features like adding student profiles are part of the paid premium membership only
I hope this has been helpful! Feel free to reach out if you have any additional questions!
Sarah (:
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