Resources for Students with Autism
What is Autism?
Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a range of neurodevelopment disorders. It can effect a person's social skills, mobility, and contribute to certain obsessions. Autism is possibly caused by genetics, problems during birth from different infections, dietetics, or from environmental factors. The actual cause of autism is unknown. Autistic Students are usually extremely successful in one specific area like math, art, music ect. General symptoms of Autism are:
- Difficulty with verbal and nonverbal communication
- Inability to make friends and preferring to play alone.
- Difficulty adjusting to changes in routine or familiar surroundings
iPadThe Apple iPad is great for students with autism. The buttons and touchscreen are intuitive in ways that keyboards are not. An app that is very helpful is Dragon Dictate, which is a voice-recognition program. Proloquo2go is another great app that offers text-to-speech, communication symbols and an extensive vocabulary of over 7,000 words.
http://www.greatschools.org/special-education/other-disorders/2073-iPad-essay.gs?page=1 |
Autism XpressAutism Xpress is an application that can be used with an iPad, iPhone, or iPad Touch. The program allows one to communicate with others how they are feeling, without dialogue or charades. The application also displays different facial expressions that correlate to the emotion. This is done in a fun way, using bright colors and silly noises. Autism Xpress helps alleviate the communication barrier between autistic students and teachers, parents, etc. In turn, this allows the student to feel more comfortable in his or her environment.
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/autismxpress/id343549779?mt=8 |
Behavior BreakthroughsBehavior Breakthroughs is an application which can be used with an iPad, iPad Touch, or iPhone. It is a simulation activity in which parents, caregivers, and educators can practice using different interventions to control a child's behavior. Through this activity, those who care for the child will learn how to implement different behavioral strategies, reinforce positive actions, and decrease inappropriate actions.
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/behavior-breakthroughs/id418987677?mt=8 |
Model Me Going PlacesModel Me Going Places is an application which models appropriate behaviors at various locations: hairdresser, mall, doctor, playground, grocery story, and a restaurant. This assists students by allowing them to see how to act appropriately at these areas. Being exposed to these locations, via the application, also helps alleviate the stress and uncertainty of what students may encounter.
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/model-me-going-places/id347813439?mt=8 |
My VoiceMy Voice is an application which can be downloaded for either an Android or iPhone, as well as an iPad or iPod. My Voice provides assistance and expression to those who have speech and language challenges. It has a feature called location-awareness which works similarly to a GPS in that it will show you relevant places based on your location. However, location-awareness also provides related vocabularies to the area so that one will have no difficulties communicating. The application also includes a feature called expressive voices. This feature allows one to communicate without verbal dialogue. It comes with phrase packs, and more packs can be downloaded. Something unique expressive voices offers is that it can add emphasis, exclamation, and inflection to speech. This program would assist an autistic student who struggled with verbal and social skills, as it would provide him or her a way of communicating. It would also not limit the student to travel because of the location-awareness feature.
http://myvoiceaac.com/ |
Time TimerTime Timer can assist autistic students, especially those who cannot tell time. It features large numbers and a colored dial so students can tell exactly how much time they have left. The Time Timer also has an ultra-quiet operation for those students who may be alarmed or distracted by excessive noise. The timer can be used to keep students on task, help them monitor their own time, and remind them of different tasks they may have.
http://www.timetimer.com/applications/special_needs.php |
Are you a teacher?
Here is how to implement these tools in your classroom!
In the classroom, these tools can be used as a communication device. Many times, students with Autism have a hard time expressing how they feel about a situation or why they are happy or upset. Autism Xpress can be used to discover how the child is feeling. When going on field trips to different parts of the community, Model Me Going Places can be shown to students on the proper ways to act in public. For example, yelling and screaming is not good behavior, but listening and following directions is. These tools should be shown to parents so they can have different resources and tools to connect with their child.
Scholarly Article: This article highlights the positive results parents have seen in their children when they have the iPad as assistive technology.
Scholarly Article: This article highlights the positive results parents have seen in their children when they have the iPad as assistive technology.
ipad_and_autism.pdf | |
File Size: | 144 kb |
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