One word about iPad is potential, have a read of this story I found:
An amazing story! A few weeks ago, one of our iTaalk Volunteers was contacted by a local family and asked to spend some time with their adult son. He had been having some abnormal aggressive behaviors, and after seeing the 60 Minutes episode on the iPad, his parents thought it might help their son. After our volunteer spent a few minutes with him on the iPad with some cause and effect apps, she presented the app Verbally(the family knew he could write and copy some words). He immediately selected and typed, "My eyes hurt." The family had no idea he was experiencing pain, nor did they know he could read/type full sentences. Within 24 hours he was diagnosed and receiving treatment for retinal detachment, and is doing much better. Understandably, his behaviors stopped immediately, and the best part of the story...within a week, he received a grant for an iPad from Ohio charity, Special Kids Therapy, Inc. I am beyond moved by this whole story...and cannot wait to hear more stories of success from this family.
What is amazing is what can be done, just about anything has an app that will help if you can find it that is. So what this page is about is how an iPad can help a child with Selective Mutism. To start of with I need to tell you prior to the iphone and iPad I was particularly anti Apple so for me to buy an apple product is not my natural leaning. When it come to tax time and we were given money for Josiah to use for his disability I considered an iPad.
So fast forward a few months let me tell you what we use it for
Firstly recording videos of Josiah reading his school books, his sight words, reading news and other activities for his teachers so that they can assess his learning. Also recording videos to send to the speech therapist so that they can see what Josiah is like without his anxiety
For developing his speech here are the apps we use:
Artikpix and Phonopix to work on his speech sounds, this app is fantastic because it used the record function so that the child can hear how they sound and it gives them audio feedback so that they can hear what they need to say.
Mobile Education store apps such as Conversation Builder, Story Builder, Preposition Builder and the rest of the apps from the store. The advantage of this app is Josiah can record his conversations and practice talking and the speech therapist can listen later and it can be emailed straight from the app. -
iModeling which is an app that you can use to record, edit and make a short video to use for social stories, speech therapy or anything you want your imagination is the limit.
In terms of his development we can also use it to develop other skills such as fine motor skills with Dexteria or other apps that teach sight words, reading, numbers, letters and phonics.
By far the most helpful tool is being able to record videos easily and quickly, I upload the videos privately to youtube and then sent the professional a link for the videos. It is so easy to do and bridges a gap, it makes such a difference for a parent to know that other people can hear and see what your child really is like otherwise in some and most situations they would not hear Josiah speak at all and they don't have any idea of what is learning, seeing and doing.
This summary is just a short testimonial of what the iPad has done for us, please write to me if you need any hints of what apps to use how to get hold of a iPad and so on. If you are wondering about how to know whether or not to buy an app look on the website of a4cwsn as Gary James has developed videos to show the apps that are specific or usual for children with special needs.
