Boardmaker® is a great combination of a simple drawing program and a database of more than 4500 PCS pictorial communication symbols. The symbols are available in black and white or in color, in 44 languages. With Boardmaker, you also get more than 350 printable templates and ready-made cards.
You can use it to create communication cards, timetables, exercises, picture stories and fun games. You can use ready-made templates, create your own or adapt existing ones. They are suitable for working with children with special needs, but they are also practical as an aid in working and teaching with children, regardless of their abilities.
Ideas for application
With Boardmaker, you can create picture stories to develop social skills in children with autism spectrum disorders. You can also create different picture lists, layouts and the like for them. For children who are already reading, words can be added to the pictures.
The program provides opportunities to create different materials for developing educational, functional and social skills. Thus, it offers ready-made templates for games of connecting related terms, sorting subjects by topic, exercises for learning to count by adding and subtracting pictures, forms for creating stories with pictures. You can invent and create the materials yourself.
Picture communication symbols can be used to create reading practice cards or books that are great for beginning readers. Since the possibilities of combining pictorial symbols, letters and words are unlimited, Boardmaker is also suitable for creating materials that serve to prepare for learning to read. You will easily create pages or books with stories and songs for preschoolers using ready-made templates or creating your own.
Learning English with Boardmaker is cheerful and fun. For language learning, cards can be created for easier memorization of words, games for finding and combining concepts of the mother tongue and English, as well as various types of worksheets, auxiliary materials and fun forms.
Tools that save your time
Boardmaker® was developed and refined to save you time when creating and customizing student materials. Here are just some useful tools:
- convert to symbol - a function that automatically inserts symbols into the text when typing,
- swap places - with this function you can instantly change the content, appearance or action between two or more buttons,
- drag and drop - download images from the Internet or your digital camera with the help of this function,
- shuffle – to create sorting activities and raffle cards,
- line drawing tool – draw solid or dashed lines for worksheets and cutting materials.
Create and customize
You can add your own symbols, digital photos or other graphic elements to Boardmaker's symbol database. You can also combine elements of different pictorial communication symbols to create new symbols according to your needs, and if you need more symbols, look for additional PCS symbol collections .
Create stories, language exercises, games and more using a combination of pictorial communication symbols, photos or illustrations.
You can customize buttons with dashed and solid lines or colored borders. It is also possible to install symbols characteristic of certain countries, such as those for holidays, famous people, food and money. Cutting materials are easy to cut along dashed lines that can be added.
These are just some of the functions of Boardmaker® software. Play around and explore for yourself and find much more to make your work easier and more fun!
Software requirements
Boardmaker® is compatible with Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows 7, Windows 8 or Windows 10, and Mac OS X 10.4.11 or later - compatible with Mac OS 10.7.X (Lion) and Yosemite OS 10.10.
This software requires 256 MB of RAM and 1 GB of hard disk space. When using the program, the CD must be in the optical drive (CD reader).