Clicker 5 is a very popular writing support tool for primary school students – and comes with over 2000 engaging pictures to support and motivate younger students’ writing. One of the most commonly asked questions from Special Education settings however is, “My students need more pictures to support their writing. Can I import the Boardmaker symbols in Clicker 5?”

The short answer to this is that you used to be able to import the Boardmaker symbols and have them appear in Clicker 5. This was when the PCS symbols which appear in Boardmaker were available to be purchased as separate image files (in Windows Metafile format). They are no longer available from Spectronics to purchase in this form. If you have Boardmaker only, there is no way of linking the PCS symbols in there so that they automatically appear in Clicker 5’s grids and the Clicker Writer document. These options are discussed in more detail under the Clicker Help Sheets section of our website.

An alternative option is to set up the Widgit Literacy Symbols to appear automatically in Clicker 5. The Widgit Literacy Metafile collection is a set of over 7,500 vector drawn Widgit Literacy Symbols in both colour and black-and-white, for use with Windows compatible machines. Charlene Cullen, one of Spectronics’ team of Speech Pathologists, has just completed a handy Help Sheet that shows you how to import the metafiles into your Clicker picture library so that they automatically appear as your student is writing or as you are building grids to support their writing. Click here to download the Help Sheet (PDF) or view it online on the Spectronics website.

Oh by the way – we have just heard that free online collection of ready-made grids for Clicker 5 at LearningGrids.com has just topped over 100,000 registered users! A very popular and time-saving resource for all Clicker 5 users – worth visiting regularly!