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Clicker 5 – Hands-on Workshop

What you will learn

During this full day workshop you will:

• learn how to navigate within Clicker 5
  
• become familiar with Example files
  
• create word and sentence building activities with pictures and words
  
• learn about grids with pop-ups
  
• create talking books
  
• learn about special access options and much more!

What is Clicker 5?

Clicker 5 is a package that allows you to make your own activities for students with a range of education and access abilities.

You can make activities in Clicker 5 which provide lots of support using pictures or you can just use text. You can set them up to be used by students using a mouse or students using a switch.

Clicker 5 comes with a range of pre-made activities which give you an idea of the range of things you can make with Clicker 5. You can also download activities from LearningGrids.com and from the Spectronics website www.spectronicsinoz.com – just go to our Activity Exchange section.

Training Booklets

For those of you wanting to work at your own pace or run your own training activities, three training booklets, Introduction, Advanced
and Access are available.

Here is one of the pre-made activities in Clicker for sentence making.

Clicker Explorer

When you first open Clicker you are taken immediately to Clicker Explorer. This looks much like you have opened any folder on your computer. Let’s double click on “Examples” and have a look at one of them!

Now double click on “Literacy” to go into the example literacy grids.

Double click on “School Sentences”.

Example Grid Sets – Sentence Making

“School Sentences” is an example of a grid set that sends words to Clicker Writer, the talking word processor that is part of Clicker. The cells are grouped and colour coded to help students build their sentence.

Toolbars

You will notice two pictorial toolbars. The one at the top of the screen, the document toolbar, lets you make changes to the Clicker Writer document. It has the following features:

• standard tools such as New and Open document, Save, Print
• document formatting tools
• change font, size and colour
• change background colour of your page
• speak text, hide grid, insert a picture.

The toolbar in the middle of the screen lets you change from one grid to another or return to your home page or Clicker Explorer screen.

These tools link to an onscreen keyboard, pop-up word bank, let you delete a letter or word or place Enter in your text.

Toolbars can be customised so that only selected tools are available in the activity. This is done by going to File, Settings and Toolbars.

Supportive Features – Speech and Pictures

Words can be spoken before they are selected by right clicking on a cell. Words sent to Clicker Writer can also be spoken. When a full stop is added to the end of a sentence it will read it aloud and the words highlighted.

You will notice that some of the cells in this grid set have picture support.

To hear a word spoken in the grid, right click your mouse over it.
To choose a word to send to Clicker Writer, click your left mouse button over it.

Make some sentences using the words in the grid.

To see more words and create more sentences click on the arrow.

Using the Pop-up Word Bank for More Words

Sometimes when you are making a sentence, the word that you want may not be in the grid. To bring up a word bank or dictionary of commonly used high frequency words, click on the icon on the toolbar in the middle of the screen.

Click on the letter to find the word you want.

Changing Text in a Cell

Choose a cell with just a word in it. Hold down the Shift key and click on the cell. The text in the cell should be highlighted. Delete the word and type a different one. Press the Enter key. Go through the same process to change the cell back to contain the original word. If you just want a picture in a cell with no text, just delete the text as above. Only the picture will be sent to Clicker Writer.

Hiding the Clicker Grid

When you want to read back your sentences, you may want to remove the grid temporarily. Click on the Hide grid icon.

Reading Text Aloud

Click on the Speech icon on the toolbar to hear words spoken and see them highlighted.

Spell Check for Errors
Once you have completed your sentences, click on the Spell check icon on the toolbar. If you have any misspelled words in your sentences, a pop-up window will be displayed that gives you a list of words that may be used.

When you have finished creating some sentences click on the Explorer icon on the toolbar.

This will return you to Clicker Explorer where you left it.
When the message appears asking if you would like to save changes to “School Sentences”, say no.

Explore
Take 10 minutes and explore some of the other example grids in the Literacy folder that are designed to support sentence making.
These are called:

• I can sentences
  
• In the Park Sentences
  
• Simple Sentences
  
• Seasons Sentences

Some grid sets offer a lot of support to students.
Take note of those that you could modify and use for your students or ones which have elements you would like to use.

Make Your Own Grid Set

Let’s make a sentence-making grid using one of the templates

There are several ways of accessing the templates so you can make your own activities.

From the Clicker Explorer screen, select “Create new Grid Set” from the task bar.

Or

From within a grid set, go to the File Menu and choose “New Grid Set”.

Follow these steps to open a template.

1. Double click on “Sentence Building”
2. Double click on “Sentence Building” again
3. Have a look at all the grid layouts
4. Click “4×3”
5. Choose “Create”.

You should now see a blank grid and blank document.

Now we’ll add some words and pictures to the cells.

First we are going to go into Edit Mode. In Clicker there are 2 modes: Run Mode and Edit Mode. It is possible to make some changes to your grid sets in Run Mode.

Edit Mode gives you more control over changing your grid sets.

1. Click “Edit” from the menu
2. Click “Edit Mode”.

You should now see a floating toolbar.

Try hovering your mouse over some of the cells in the grid. You will see little boxes appear around the cell. This tells you that you can move or resize the cell.

Now move the cell with the full stop in it by clicking and dragging it to a different position on the grid. Now replace it in its original position.

To add words to cells follow these steps:

1. Shift and left click in the first cell in the grid
   
2. Type the word “On”
   
3. Press the Enter key.

Add more words in the cells below using steps 1-3.

Now we’ll choose some pictures to add to some of the cells.

1. Go to your Clicker 5 Editing Tools toolbar and click on “Pictures”.
   

2. The Picture Palette will appear. From here you can browse around your hard drive and find pictures. You can also look through the picture libraries which have been registered on your computer. For the moment we will simply double click on “Crick Picture Library”.
   
3. Double click on the folder called “Christmas”.
   
4. Scroll through pictures to find “present”
   
5. Click and drag this picture to a blank cell on your page.
   
6. The picture and its label should have appeared in the cell.
   
7. Continue finding pictures and dragging them into the blank cells.
   
8. Click “Close” on the Picture Palette.

Changing Text in Cells

The text in the cells that have pictures may not have the words that you want in them. To change the text:

1. Shift + left click on existing text in a cell
   
2. Delete or simply type words you want to add
   
3. Press Enter.

Changing the Colour of Selected Cells

Sometimes you may want to colour code cells to make it easier for students to see word groups or sentence beginnings.

1. Press the Control key + left click over a cell to highlight the whole cell
2. Do this for cells on the left of the grid
   
3. Now right click the mouse over the shaded cells. You will see a small window appear
4. Go into “Properties”
5. Click on the arrow beside Background
6. Choose a different colour
7. Click “OK”.

Add a Page to your Grid Set

You should still have your Editing toolbar open and be in Edit Mode.

To look at all the grids in the grid set you need to go to Clicker Explorer. Click on the Explorer icon on the Editing Tools toolbar.

You should see a screen like this.

At the top is the grid you have just made. Double click on it and you will see the page you have already made. Click the Explorer icon on the floating toolbar to go back to Clicker Explorer.

Master Grids

Go into Clicker Explorer. Down the bottom of the screen are the Master Grids for this grid set. There are nine Master Grids for word bank layouts and four that could be used for pop-up grids. We will talk about pop-up grids later.

1. Go down to the Master Grids displayed.
   
2. Click and drag 4×3 and place it next to the grid you have made in Sequence 1.
   
3. Double click on the first page in your set and go back to the Clicker screen.
   
4. Now click the arrow on the grid to take you to the next page that contains blank cells.

Add words and pictures to build some new sentences as you did in the last grid.

Try Your Activity Out
Close the Editing Toolbar to exit Edit Mode and return to Run Mode.
Click on cells to send pictures and words to Clicker Writer.

Saving Your Grid Set

Delete any text in the document as you want the activity to start up with a new page.

1. Go to File.
   
2. Choose “Save Grid Set As”
   
3. Create a new folder for your activities and call it “Workshop activities” then press Enter.
   
4. Double click on the folder you have just made and type the name of the grid set then OK.

Grids with Word Banks

We are going to look at some more sample grid sets. These grids are designed to give the student a list of words relating to a topic to help them write.

1. Go to the Clicker Explorer window and then double click on “Examples”
2. Double click on “Geography”
3. Double click on “Coasts Word Bank”.

Enter the grid set and click on Coasts. A window will open with a set of words relating to the topic coasts down the bottom and a new Clicker Writer document at the top.

Type the sentence “Where the coast has been worn away there are erosion land-forms”, using both the keyboard and the word bank. Don’t forget to press full stop at the end. The sentence is automatically read back to you.

Word banks can be used with all levels of students – words on the word bank can also be accompanied by pictures and the words themselves can be as simple or as difficult as you like!

Making a Word Building Grid using Word Bank templates

Follow these steps to make a new grid set:

1. Go to the File Menu and choose “New Grid Set”
   
2. Double click on “Word Banks”
   
3. Double click on “Word Banks” again
   
4. Click on 3×3
   
5. Click “Create”.

This grid will send to Clicker Writer in the top half of the screen.

Let’s make a grid for doing an onset rime activity. Make sure you are in edit mode before you start. (Choose Edit, then Edit Mode to display the Editing toolbar.)

This time we are going to edit each cell by using the Cell Properties Window.

1. Right click on the cell
   
2. Choose “Properties”
   
3. Add the text e.g. b
   
4. Change colours of the cells if you wish
   
5. Choose “OK”.

This is how the grid should look when you have finished.

Once you have finished, try the grid out, making up each word in the at word family, bat, cat, fat, hat, mat, etc. Notice that there is a space after each letter.

Clicker automatically puts a space after each cell – this is the default when you create a new grid that sends to Clicker Writer. To remove this space from every cell except “at” follow these steps:

1. Right click on each cell
   
2. Go to “Properties”
   
3. Click on the “Send” tab at the top of the window
   
4. Click on the box next to “Add Space” – the tick should disappear.
   

5. Click “OK” and go on to the next button.
   
6. Make sure none of them send a space except “at”.

Instant Pictures as you Type

If you want to make sure that pictures are displayed with the words you create by pressing cells in the grid you will have to change the picture settings.

1. Click on the Picture icon on the Editing Tools Toolbar
2. Choose “Instant Picture and Library Settings”
3. Click in the box beside “Use Instant pictures in Clicker Writer and Text Boxes”
4. Click “OK” then “Close”.

Now try out your activity. Pictures should appear in the document window as you make some words.

Changing and Removing Pictures

To scroll through or remove a picture attached to a word in Clicker Writer, click on the word (and picture), then press F12.

Adding More Grids

Go into Clicker Explorer and add three more 3×3 grids. Double click on each grid and do one for the word family “all”, one for “ill” and one for “ig”.

Changing the Master Grid – creating links between grids

Now you have four grids but there is no way for your student to move between them.

We are going to make a change to one of the Master Grids. Any change you make to a particular Master Grid applies to all grids in the sequence that have the same layout.

1. Go into Explorer from the Editing Tools toolbar
   
2. Go to the Master Grid for 3×3
   
3. Shrink the bottom right cell to half size (see picture below). You can shrink it by clicking and dragging on the small square that appears on the right hand side of the cell when the mouse is over the cell.
   

4. We will now add a forward arrow. Go to Clicker 5 Editing Tools toolbar and click on “Cell Palette”
   
5. Move to the red, green, blue or yellow tab and click and drag the forward arrow into the space you have just made.

Now, use Clicker Explorer to go back into one of the grids you have made and try out your forward arrow.

You should now be able to move through all four, typing onset rime words as you go.

On the last grid in the set, delete the forward arrow button by right clicking over it and choosing “Delete”. Add a button from the Cell Palette that will take you back to the start of the activity. It looks like this:

Save Your Grid Set

When you have finished, save your file.

1. Go to File
   
2. Choose “Save Grid as”
   
3. Call it “Make a word”
   
4. Save it inside your folder called “Workshop Activities”.

Grids with Pop-ups

Let’s take a look at some grid sets that use pop-ups. Classification and Labelling grid sets are a good example of these.

Click on the Explorer icon, which is now on the toolbar in the middle of the screen.

Double Click on the Migration grid set which is part of the Geography examples.

Click on each of the buttons on the Migration page. Notice the pop-ups with extra information. Continue through the grid and have a go at each of the categories.

This could be re-created with any information – things that float or sink, things that are yellow, etc.

Try Some More Examples

• Find these activities in the “Examples” folder
  
• Go to “Literacy”. Choose “Find the Rime 1” or “Find the Rime 2”
  
• Go to “Science”. Choose “Animal labels”
  
• Go to “Science”. Choose “Animal names”.

Talking Books and Multimedia Slideshows

Clicker 5 has a number of bookmaking templates that let us quickly and easily create talking books or multimedia slide shows. Some of the templates enable us to set up activities where students can create their own books.

Videos, scanned or digitised pictures and real sounds can be added to the books.

Useful Multimedia Tool

The Digital Blue Digital Movie Creator 2 is a “kid friendly” resource where children can take their own video footage and snapshots, download them onto a computer and use them in their creations. Click here to read more about it.

Let’s take a look at some examples
Double click on “Geography” to go into the example Geography grids.

Double click on “At the Seaside – Read”.

Example Grid Sets – Talking Book

“At the Seaside – Read” is an example of one of the most common uses for Clicker – a talking book. Read the book and notice some of the features of Clicker 5 – in particular that each word is highlighted as it is read aloud and the pop-up labels on the final page.

When you have finished reading the book, click on the Explorer icon on the toolbar to return to Clicker Explorer.

Explore
Take a look at this talking book that uses Real pictures and videos.
Go to “Examples”, Science and Frog Video Book.

Let’s Make a Talking Book

Go to the File Menu and choose “New Grid Set…”

Double click on Book Making

Double click on Landscape 12

Click Create.

Your new grid set will now open.

Press the forward arrow and scroll through the grid set. You will notice that there is one title grid and 12 single page grids – which is why the template was called Landscape 12. Each page has a large cell to put a picture into, a smaller text box, a forward arrow, back arrow, speaker button and microphone button.

Formatting the Title Page

For this exercise we are going to make a book about an excursion to the zoo.

On the title page we want to give it the title “Our trip to the zoo”, put an appropriate picture in the large cell and put your name in the author box.

Go to the “Edit” menu and choose “Edit Mode”.

To change the title follow these steps:

1. Shift + left click over words in the cell
   
2. Delete or type “Our Trip to the Zoo.”
   
3. Go to the Editing Tools toolbar and click on “Pictures”
   

   From here you can browse around your hard drive and find pictures. You can also look through the picture libraries which have been registered on your computer.

   We will use the Crick Picture Library.
   

4. Double click on “Animal Life”
   
5. Choose a picture of an animal that lives in the zoo. Click and drag this picture to the large cell on your page
   
6. The picture and its label should have appeared in the large cell
   
7. Delete the label by pressing Shift + left click on the word under the picture
   
8. Press Delete then Enter
   
9. Click “Close” on the Picture Palette.

Making a Cell Transparent

You should still be in Edit Mode.

1. Right click over the picture to see this window
   
2. Go to “Properties”
   
3. Click the down arrow beside Background
   
4. Choose “Transparent”
   
5. Click in the radio box next to “Show border” to take away the tick
   
6. Choose “OK”.

And finally, add your name as the author. Shift + left click over cell at the bottom of the page and add the name of the author.

You may have noticed there are several ways of adding text to cells.
Either by Shift + left click or by right clicking on the cell then going to “Properties” then “Cell Properties”.

Your title page should now look something like this:

Go on to the first page of your book and customise it following these steps:

1. Add the story text to the text box at the bottom of the page by holding down the Shift key while you click in the text box. Once the cursor appears type “At the zoo we saw an elephant”.
   
2. Click on the Pictures button on the Editing Tools toolbar.
   
3. Find the picture of an elephant and drag the elephant picture onto the large cell in the centre of the page.

Move forward to the second page and customise it.

1. Add the text “At the zoo we saw a camel” to the text box at the bottom of the page.
   
2. Add the picture of the camel to the large cell.

Move to the third page and customise it.

1. Add the text “At the zoo we saw a polar bear” to the text box at the bottom of the page.
   
2. Add the picture of the polar bear to the large cell.

Move to the fourth page and customise it.

1. Add the text “At the zoo we saw a tiger”.
   
2. Add the picture of the tiger to the large cell.

You have now almost finished your book!

Deleting Grids

If you remember, when we created this grid set there were 12 pages in it and we have only used four. We need to delete all the remaining grids except the last one, so we can create a final page.

Clicker Explorer

To look at all the grids in the grid set, go to Clicker Explorer. Click on the Explorer icon on the Editing Tools toolbar.

You should see a screen like this.

At the top are all the grids in the grid set. Double click on cover1 and you will see the cover page you have already made. Click the Explorer icon on the floating toolbar to go back to Clicker Explorer.

Double click on page1 and you will be in the first story page you made. Go back to Clicker Explorer.

You can go in and look at pages two, three and four.

Since we don’t need all the extra pages we will now delete them:

1. Right click on page5.
   
2. Choose “Delete” from the pop-up menu.

Repeat this and delete page6, page7, page8, page9, page10 and page11.

Double click on page12 and create the final page:

1. Add the text “We saw butterflies at the zoo”
   
2. Find a picture to represent this and put it in the large cell


3. Close the Editing Tools toolbar to get back into Run Mode.

Read the Story

Go back to the start of the story.
Click on the Speaker icon on each page and you will hear each page read out. You could click on the Microphone icon and record an audio for each grid.

Change the Sequence of Pages

It is possible to easily change the sequence of pages in your grid set.

1. Go to Clicker Explorer from the Editing Tools toolbar
   
2. Click on and then drag any page (except the cover page) in the sequence to where you would like it to go
   
3. Now double click on the cover page and take a look again at the sequence of pages you have created.

Save your grid set as “Our Trip to the Zoo” in the Workshop Activities folder.

Talking Books with Pop-ups

Go to your Home Grid, then double click on “Examples”.

Now double click on “At the Seaside – Write”.

This is a version of the talking book for the student to author with their own words. “At the Seaside – Write” shows many of the new features of Clicker 5, including word and picture pop-ups and the ability for students to easily record their own messages. Notice also how the sentence is read out to the student after they have composed it and before they close the pop-up, giving them the opportunity to edit their own work.

Go through “At the Seaside – Write”, making your own version of the story as you go.

When you have finished click on the Explorer icon on the toolbar and return to the Geography examples. When the message appears asking if you would like to save changes to “At the Seaside – Write” say no.

Making a Talking Book with Word and Picture Pop-ups

1. Go to the File Menu and choose “New Grid Set…”
2. Double click on “Book Making”
3. Double click on with “Word and Picture pop-ups”
4. Double click on “Landscape 12”
5. Click “Create”.

For this exercise we are going to make the book about the excursion to the zoo but with picture and word pop-ups.

Format the Title Page

Give it the title “Our trip to the zoo”, put an appropriate picture in the large cell and put your name in the author box.

Formatting the Pages and the Pop-ups

Go on to the first page of your book and customise it following these steps.

Customising the picture pop-up

1. Move into Edit Mode
   
2. Click on the icon of the picture pop-up. It looks like this:
   
3. The picture pop-up will appear.
   
4. Add a picture of an elephant to the first cell.
   
5. Add a picture of a camel to the second cell.
   
6. Add a picture of a polar bear to the third cell.
   
7. Add a picture of a tiger to the fourth cell.
   
8. Add a picture of a penguin to the fifth cell.
   
9. Close the picture pop-up.

Customising the words pop-up

1. Stay in Edit Mode
   
2. Click on the icon of the words pop-up. It looks like this:
   
3. The words pop-up will appear.
   
4. In the first cell add the word “At”
   
5. In the second cell add the word “the”
   
6. In the third cell add the word “zoo”
   
7. In the fourth cell add the word “we”
   
8. In the fifth cell add the word “saw”
   
9. In the sixth cell add the word “penguins”
   
10. In the seventh cell add the word “elephants”
    
11. In the eighth cell add the word “polar bears”
    
12. In the ninth cell add the word “camels”
    
13. In the tenth cell add the word “tigers”

Try your page out!

Now, go and alter the pop-ups on the next four pages. Try making them different – scramble the words up to make it more difficult for students.

And finally, delete the pages you don’t need.

Special Access Features

Clicker 5 can be used with a mouse or mouse alternative as well as with a single or multiple switch setup.

A pop-up onscreen keyboard is available for entering text and is accessed from the grid toolbar. This is available in qwerty or abc layout.

It is recommended that you use the Crick Switch Interface box to attach your switches to. Step scanning and automatic scanning functions are available.

It is also possible to use keyboard keys F7 and F8 in scanning modes.

Visual Access Features

The following features may help students who need materials modified to support their vision needs:

• the ability to change colours of grids
  
• screen magnification to 500%
  
• the ability to change and limit toolbar icons
  
• the ability to change background colour of document page.

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Spectronics is Australia and New Zealand’s largest supplier of special needs software and assistive technologies. These “inclusive learning technologies” foster real success and real inclusion in classroom or community-based settings for students with disabilities and/or learning difficulties. While many of the technologies are not difficult to use – it still helps to have training and support to assist with the process of making these technologies really WORK for your students! And Spectronics is 100% committed to assisting with this training and support!

This Clicker 5 Training Guide has been prepared for you by our experienced professional training team – who come from a variety of teaching, speech pathology, occupational therapy, and technical backgrounds. All have many years experience in the inclusive learning technologies arena – and are keen to share their expertise with you if you require training services.

We have several popular “ready-to-go” half-day and full-day workshops available. Alternatively, we can customise workshops to meet your individual requirements.

Please contact Spectronics on email mail@spectronicsinoz.com or phone (07) 3808 6833 for details of workshops and for the Schedule of Fees for our training services.