At the Lehmann Center, a school for special needs kids in Lakewood, New Jersey, an 18-year old student got the chance to play the guitar. He has a disorder that makes it really hard for him to speak…and he has virtually no muscle control. His name is Anthony Leuck. Anthony communicates primarily through eye gaze or by spelling out words by using his head to push on a switch on a device that allows him to type out words. But today Anthony gets to play the acoustic guitar.
Anthony slides his knuckles over the digital image of a guitar on the I Pad. As he touches the screen he creates music…and a big grin shows on his face.
Anthony and lots more students are beginning to benefit from iPad devices used in classrooms all over the country. For those of you not familiar with the Apple iPad, it was launched in April 2010 and is selling like hot cakes. Three million iPads were sold in the first 80 days.
The iPads can be customized to the particular needs of any given student. They are reasonably prices, very portable and light weight…a great combination for a device to move around from home to school or from classroom to classroom. With the iPads, a non-verbal autistic child, for example, can tap on a screen to tell his or her teacher what he wants, how he is feeling or maybe to just play a guitar.
"These children can access and enjoy everything a typically developing child would enjoy — they just have to access it differently," said Gina Shulman, a social worker working in the school. "We have that fine motor skill; we can take a finger and press all those tiny keyboard buttons and little tiny switches. Now, our children, with just a gentle touch, can color; they can play instruments."
The school system in New Jersey which Anthony attends bough 60 iPads to use to help special needs students this year after seeing the initial success from a few iPads last year. Robert Klein, the director of special services said that an autistic student who started using an iPad last year "initiated, really, one of his first conversations ever using the iPad with staff."
Many people with autism make little if any eye contact. Making eye contact is tough to teach to a person with autism. But an application in the iPad is teaching and helping students with this challenge.
Another application allows students to express emotion…to tell us how they are feeling and what they want or where they want to go. Some of these apps are free but many cost from $200 or more.
“It’s turning out to be, really, a magical thing,” Klein said. “The disability is such that (children with autism) live within themselves. The iPads draw them out.”
A clever app allows students to type then hear what they typed spoken out loud. The opposite is also true. Students can speak into the iPad and it will type out their words as text.
Can an iPad teach organizational skills? Apparently yes. One application that is especially helpful for children with autism and Asperger's teaches organizational skills. For some reason, people with autism tend to have a great deal of trouble staying organized. Having to arrange myriad tasks in a specific order can be very difficult. Changing classrooms in school and organizing homework can overwhelm many children with autism.
To teach organizational skills, the app displays a series of bubbles on the iPad's screen which are used to organize daily activities, thoughts or homework assignments. Many children with autism are very visual. Being able to see their assignments in bubbles and move them around allows the brain to understand the organization better.
Apple offered a training session to help the school system with the iPads and applications. Schools have used technology in the past to help children with autism communicate. But these devices have tended to be much bulkier and much more expensive than the iPads which run around $500.
The special needs students who have benefited, so far, from the use of the touch screen iPads include those with autism, attention deficit disorder (ADD),dyslexia and auditory processing issues.
If you do not have an iPad, or cannot afford one, there are applications that you can use with your children that can help them that run on an iPhone or other smart phone like a Droid. While these are not practical for school use, many of these apps can be very helpful when working with your children from home, to help them communicate in the car, or to take on vacation.
We are just beginning to see the amazing advances that relatively low prices and light weight touch screen tablets, such as the iPad can do to help our children with autism. Especially for children who have limited speech capabilities, this could be a Godsend. If your school does not offer these devices, bring this to the school's attention. And check out the Apple iPad app store to find applications that may help your child communicate and learn better.
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