Universally compatible with
all Apple devices
Turn Taker
As the name plainly states this iPhone app is for teaching and helping young children to take turns. It's also great to help teach your autistic kid how to share more easily. Of course you realize that sharing and taking turns are pretty much the same thing.
As the developer's description says, "Turn taking is a key social skill for all children. Learning to appropriately take turns is imperative to create and maintain social relationships." I couldn't say it better myself, so why try? That statement validates the need for an app like this and also emphasizes its value.
Turn Taker is simple, but nicely designed. All it does is indicate when it's somebody's turn by showing a big hand, pointer finger extended, and saying either, "My turn" or, "Your turn" in a nice soft voice. As you can see in the screen shots, the hand looks much like the mouse pointer on your computer when you hover over a link. That hand gently moves forward and back as it points to the child whose turn it is.
Turn Taker has two different modes. Turn 'Game Play' on or off to toggle the modes. While game play mode is on you don't set the length of time for each child's turn because, while playing a game, the length of each child's turn can vary. 'My turn' is indicated until you tap the little 'finished' icon which then enlarges the icon to fill the screen and audibly says, "All finished." Then, as you might guess, the app indicates it's 'Your turn', and so on. At anytime just double-tap the giant hand and pointer finger in order to return to the app's opening screen.
When game play mode is off you control the length of time for each child's turn. You can set it to allow "My turn" to be one length and "Your turn" to be another length of time, in seconds. The developer points out that these features are adjustable because, "This helps to lessen the anxiety the individual may feel when it is not their turn. Once the target individual has mastered turn taking in this phase the other individual's turn can be slowly made longer until the two times are equal." Likewise, I think it's safe to say the 'interval' is adjustable for similar reasons. That's a very nice touch that ads flexibility to Turn Taker! In both modes you set the interval. Change that setting to a longer amount of time if you don't want to hear Turn Taker say 'Your turn' every 5 seconds.
With game play mode off, when a child's turn is over you'll see the American Sign Language (ASL) sign for 'finished' dominating the screen. Tapping that sign switches to the other child's turn and it then runs for the duration you set.
The in-app instructions, found by tapping the words 'About Turn Taker', tell you about the two modes and how they are intended to be used. In-app instructions are appreciated!
The only issues I noticed while testing Turn Taker are that the app doesn't force the iPhone to remain on during use, and it doesn't remember your settings when you exit. This means if you set someone's turn to be too long, your iPhone will go into sleep mode, therefore disabling Turn Taker. And whenever you exit Turn Taker it will show its default settings next time you go into the app. The issue of the iPhone sleeping needs to be completely remedied. The settings issue should be fixed by adding the option to have the app remember your settings. It'd be nice if that feature could be enabled or disabled on a per user basis.
I think Turn Taker is a valuable audio and visual cue for helping children learn how to take turns and to share; simple, yet fills a good niche in the world of autism.
