Turtle Pacing Board vs NeoCardioLab

Turtle Pacing Board is a professional speech therapy app designed for children who have unclear articulation due to a fast rate of speech. It is also suitable in the treatment of stuttering and cluttering. How is Turtle Pacing Board different to a traditional paper-based pacing board? Pacing boards are often used in speech therapy to help children to slow their rate of speech. The child taps on a circle or turtle and says one word or syllable per tap. However, when using a paper-based pacing board many children will often begin to tap on each circle or turtle too quickly and then their speech gets faster too. Unlike traditional pacing boards, Turtle Pacing Board offers fun visual cues to help children to slow their rate of speech correctly and improve their articulation and speech intelligibility. How does Turtle Pacing Board work? The child chooses a conversation topic and answers conversation questions using the Turtle Pacing Board. They have to press and hold down on a turtle and say one syllable or word per turtle.   When the turtle has completely filled with colour and increased in size, they can then move on to the next turtle in the pacing board and say the next syllable or word.  If they move on before the turtle has filled with colour and increased in size, "Too Quick" flashes on the screen.  The speed at which the turtles fill with colour and get bigger can be adjusted in Settings using the slider bar. Children with a faster speaking rate and less intelligible speech benefit from having each turtle in the pacing board filling with colour more slowly. The conversation questions are optional. Turtle Pacing Board can also be used as a pacing board without conversation questions or as a speech therapy tool when practising saying longer, multisyllabic words and breaking them up into syllables. Who is Turtle Pacing Board for? - Parents - Teachers - Speech language pathologists / speech and language therapists - Children with unclear articulation due to a fast speaking rate - Children who need support to say longer, multisyllabic words clearly - Children who have a stutter - Children who clutter their speech Turtle Pacing Board Therapy Tips Try to be a good model for the child by using Turtle Pacing Board when you speak. This will show the child what to do and it will also encourage them to speak more slowly. Try to keep conversations natural by making comments and keeping the conversation going rather than quickly skipping ahead to the next conversation question. Features - A bright, colourful and engaging turtle pacing board - An animated sea background - Six categories of conversation questions for lots of speech pacing practice - The option to have conversation questions spoken aloud, text only or both - Optional audio feedback to indicate when a turtle has fully filled with colour in addition to the visual cue - iOS voices (an enhanced voice if one has been downloaded on your device) - Adjustable settings: voice speed and the speed at which each turtle fills with colour All Aptus Speech Therapy apps participate in the 50% off Volume Purchase Program, so Turtle Pacing Board can be bought in bulk at a discounted price.  If you would like to learn more about our other speech therapy apps for children, please visit our website: www.aptus-slt.com

The NeoCardioLab is a research laboratory interested in clinical and epidemiological neonatal cardiovascular research, as well as education in neonatal hemodynamics. The principal investigator of the NeoCardioLab is Dr. Gabriel Altit from the Montreal Children’s Hospital (at McGill University). On the NeoCardioLab website, we have made available for the learners a whole array of content (clips, videos, presentations, reading material, articles, etc.) as a learning opportunity on echocardiography (2D and 3D), TnECHO (targeted neonatal echocardiography), point of care ultrasound (POCUS) and near infrared spectroscopy (NIRS). You will find on the website, our comprehensive “Atlas” for the expected normal complete neonatal echocardiography (with clips of various views and explanations), as well as clips for selected congenital heart defects. Our training modules are: on NIRS in the neonatal intensive care unit, as well as on POCUS/TnECHO. We offer modules on TnECHO (Targeted Neonatal Echocardiography; with clips outlining all the views and measurements, pulmonary hypertension, PDA, normative values, etc.), POCUS (as well as the example of the use of a hand-held device and how to obtain views) and Congenital Heart defects, as well as modules on Strain/Speckle Tracking and Near Infrared Spectroscopy. We also now host the Neonatal NIRS consortium page and all the recordings of their webinars. Please feel free to navigate the app and use it for training purposes and as a resource to complement your other learning materials. We are constantly updating the website and adding new content. You will also find information on the McGill University Neonatal Hemodynamics Clinical Research training program, if you are interested. Our research uses conventional and advanced echocardiography (speckle-tracking echocardiography on 2D and 3D acquisitions) to better understand the cardiovascular adaptation of newborns with various conditions (such as: prematurity, bronchopulmonary dysplasia, congenital heart defect, congenital diaphragmatic hernia, omphalocele and hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy). We also study cohorts of patients once they have graduated the neonatal intensive care unit (in neonatal follow-up, in the pediatric clinics, as well as during adulthood). Please feel free to contact us if you have questions or suggestions: info@neocardiolab.com. We also have Twitter (@CardioNeo) and Instagram (@NeoCardioLab).