Multiple Meaning Library App Review

Multiple Meanings Library is an app released this May through The Virtual Speech Company.

When I explain learning vocabulary concepts to parents, I often equate it to the filing cabinet of our brain. We have to understand that words can fall into multiple categories, ie: a banana could be in the ‘yellow items’ file, or the ‘fruit’ file. Students must understand the multiple characteristics of vocabulary and understand the multiple relationships between words. The Multiple Meanings Library targets your clients’ semantic skills through multiple activities:

•                Auditory bombardment

•                Definitions

•                Picture identification

•                Fill-in

•                Make up sentences (with audio recording feature)

The app can be used with multiple students during a session. At the beginning of each session the clinician can determine which vocabulary to target for each student. Students can also complete different tasks in the same session. For example, one student might be working on receptive identification of a sentence, while another is working on expressively developing a sentence. This specificity to each student allows the app to be used with students working at a variety of skill levels within the same group. The app contains 122 words. When you select certain vocabulary words, they are saved for the next time you use the app with that student. 

 The app features real pictures and contains vocabulary appropriate for children in elementary and middle school. The app has a few features that you can customize. For example, I turned off the automatic paging feature. That gave me the opportunity to review answers that my students answered incorrectly. I think sometimes app developers forget we have to be able to slow down and work on TEACHING our kiddos, not just quizzing them with the app – and this feature allowed me to slow them down to reflect on wrong answers.

I really love the data collection on this app. When you finish a group of students, the data page lists each student and their percentages. This is perfect for how I collect data, because I can add the results to each data sheet at the end of the group. The other way to look at data is to use the Report button on the home page. That allows you to look at a single students progress over time.

While the app targets multiple meaning words, it could also incorporate a host of other goals. Identifying missing words for sentences, developing grammatically correct sentences are a few of the goals I simultaneously targeted this week.

If I could make a change to this app, I'd love it if the vocabulary was grouped by difficulty level. It takes a bit of time to scroll through and pick out words from the 122 listed. I'd love them to be grouped by level, so that I could select an entire level and just add/remove a few from that grouping if needed. 

Check out this video to get a better idea before you buy!

 The app is currently available for $14.99 in itunes. A copy of this app was gifted to me by The Virtual Speech Company in order to complete a review. The opinions in this review are explicitly mine.