EducationWorld is pleased to present this article by Luis Perez, author of Mobile Learning for All: Supporting Accessibility with the iPad; Betsy Furler, a speech language pathologist; and Cristen Carson Reat, co-founder of Bridging Apps, a community of parents, therapists, teachers and doctors who share information on using mobile devices with people who have special needs. This article originally appeared in TechEdge, a quarterly magazine published by the Texas Computer Education Association. To join or for more information, visit www.tcea.org.
One of the great challenges confronting teachers is addressing the unique needs of students with varying abilities. In the world of special needs, professionals often refer to such abilities as “scattered skills.” Such challenges bring opportunities for educators to explore new techniques for engaging learners, finding creative methods of modifying curriculum, and employing a range of materials – including technology tools – to help students succeed.
The good news is that with the advent of touch tablets and their ubiquitous use in schools, there are more opportunities than ever to leverage the power of technology to help a variety of learners. When it comes to technology, we want to help professionals go beyond “which are the best apps” and focus instead on “how can I best support learning with the tools at hand?” In addition to these ideas, we have included names of particular apps for the iPad, and in some cases the Android platform, that we find particularly useful when it comes to supporting students who have special needs.
A growing collection of apps provides options for parents and educators looking for a solution to address a specific need. New apps are released every day, and many of them have been developed by parents of children with special needs who were not satisfied with the other apps on the market. The variety of apps that are available gives the iPad a degree of flexibility that is often missing in other technologies.
Features
The iPad (and similar tablets) are unique personal computing devices that can be customized through the inclusion of apps and built-in accessibility features to meet a wide range of special needs. The number and variety of apps and accessories available for it have helped make the iPad the market leader in the tablet category, especially in education. Along with the robust ecosystem built around it, a number of other factors have drawn educators and other professionals who work with individuals who have special needs to the iPad, including:
Communication
The iPad can be used as a communication device. It could be a dedicated device for a student who is nonverbal, but it could also be used as a choice board in a classroom for multiple students to express their needs. Even with the relatively high price of communication apps, the iPad still provides a less costly solution than similar communication devices costing in the thousands of dollars. Some of the more popular communication apps for the iPad include:
Writing
Many students face significant challenges when it comes to expressive language and writing. So much of school life and preparation for the next educational environment centers on expressing oneself orally and in writing. Students with special needs, especially those with dyslexia and other learning disabilities, often get turned off of writing at a young age and experience failure with the writing process. It’s vitally important to give them the support they need to make writing an enjoyable task and offer opportunities for success.
Mobile devices can be quite helpful for students with special needs when it comes to writing, as such technologies can level the playing field for students by offering alternative ways to express themselves with easy-to-use tools. Apps and mobile devices offer support with spelling, grammar, and word finding. Apps can also walk a child through the storytelling process and make it easier to put thoughts into words.
Several apps that are helpful for storytelling and narrative writing are My Storybook Maker ($3.99), PicCollage (free), and Toontastic (free). Apps with speech-to-text capabilities, such as Dragon Dictation (free), can help a student who is overwhelmed by a blank page get their words onto paper. (A student must have reasonably good articulation to benefit from this app’s use). The student can then go back and then edit his or her work using tools built into the word processing app.
Storybook Maker helps a student build a story, whether fiction or non-fiction. It allows users to import pictures as well as text and audio to develop their own customizable storybooks. Support can be scaffolded easily with this app, as some children can develop an entire book independently, and others can choose their own pictures and record audio as a peer or teacher puts in the text. The possibilities are numerous, and it is appropriate for many levels of students. Toontastic can also help students develop a story sequence by walking the student through the story-building process.
Likewise, using apps with text-to-speech functions can help with the editing process, as students can listen to what they have written. An amazing writing platform that gives students access to literacy is Abilipad ($19.99). It features word processing capabilities, text-to-speech, and also word prediction. Word prediction capabilities help students by allowing a student to type faster. Abilipad is also fully customizable with the availability of different keyboards (ABC, QWERTY, pictures, symbols), different languages, and downloadable activities.
Educators have been using Inspiration software for years, but accessing their apps can be a revelation in using a flexible graphic organizer. Kidspiration Maps ($9.99) for younger users and Inspiration Maps ($9.99) for those in higher grades are helpful tools for getting a student organized and ready to write a narrative. Using Inspiration Maps, a child can brainstorm ideas, make a mind map or web of ideas, and then, with the click of a button, transform his/her work into an outline that s/he can then use to create a narrative.
Accessibility
While most educators focus on the many apps available for the iPad and other tablets, they may not know that many of the accessibility features their students need are already built in to their devices and just need to be activated in the settings. Out of the box with no additional purchase, Apple provides the following built-in accessibility features on the iPad, right at your fingertips:
Accessibility on the Android platform is not as robust, but it has improved significantly in recent versions (the latest of which is 4.3, code named Jelly Bean). Android tablets now have support or a gesture-based screen reader called TalkBack (free), and with the installation of a free service called BrailleBack, they can connect to a number of Braille displays.
Screen magnification is also supported with a triple-tap gesture. While a feature similar to Speak Selection is not available on Android tablets, a free app called Easy Text to Speech provides a workaround. When this app is running in the background, any text that is copied to the clipboard will be automatically spoken aloud using the built-in text-to-speech voice. Android tablets are often available at a lower price than the iPad, but their adoption in education has been slowed by the limited selection of apps.
These devices provide a flexible toolkit educators can leverage to empower students of all ability levels. The challenge now is to navigate the many available options. Our goal has been to help you stay out of the “app race,” a phenomenon where the number of apps becomes more important than our reason for selecting the technology in the first place: empowering students to realize their full potential in order to live self-determined and fulfilling lives.
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