iPads Provide Needed Tool for Conn. Autism Students

By Maggie Gordon, The Stamford Advocate, Conn. (MCT)

Olivia Shea swiped her finger across the bottom of the screen, bringing her iPad to life.

"Welcome back to Sentence Builder," the tablet pronounced after another swipe and a tap.

A moment later, Olivia was working on syntax and conjugation as she constructed sentences to correspond with images on the screen as part of her reward for completing her money-counting class assignment.

Olivia, along with her seven classmates in Stamford High School's autism spectrum disorder classroom, is just beginning to learn how to work with the iPad, a tablet produced by Apple Inc.

Autism, a developmental disability, causes social impairments as well as communication and behavioral challenges.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one in 110 American children falls on the autism spectrum.

"I like it," Olivia, 16, said as she sat at a table in the back of her classroom with one of the ASD program's para-educators, Mike Schacter, Thursday morning.

A local non profit organization, Stamford Education 4 Autism, purchased iPads for the district's ASD program teachers in December.

"So we have one iPad for eight kids in this class, and we're just starting to figure out how to use it. But I ultimately think it has an extremely positive potential for the kids," said Olivia's teacher, Sheree Cook.

The students became familiar with the technology when Schacter brought his personal iPad to the classroom.

"The kids really already know how to use it without being taught," Schacter said. "It just comes so easily to them."

According to Fred Volkmar, M.D., director of the Child Study Center at Yale University, there are several reasons students with autism spectrum disorders have had such positive reactions to iPads: the devices are portable, visually oriented, relatively affordable and can be customized.

"The nice thing is that it's high-tech, but it's relatively low-cost," Volkmar said. "Some of the devices that have been out there to help children can cost $4,000 to $5,000, and if you're dealing with a person who has trouble with impulse control and anger, they can be throwing stuff across the room."

Base iPads retail for $499, which Volkmar said is a better bargain than some items on the market.

Jim McClafferty, a Stamford-based software programmer who is developing an application for students on the spectrum, said iPads are also an option for many ASD students who lack the dexterity to control a mouse.

"You can also customize it. You can put in alarms or the child's picture and make it personal, which makes it more real," Volkmar said.

"Children with autism, as a general rule, do better with visual as opposed to auditory information," Volkmar said.

In his book, "A Practical Guide to Autism," Volkmar writes that the tendency to take an interest in visual images "frequently starts with an interest in things like signs or hood ornaments on cars, but often extends into letters and numbers."

As Olivia sailed through the sentence builder game, she was greeted by cartoon congratulations each time she correctly completed a sentence. She smiled as she prepared to swipe the next sentence into place.

"This technology just relates to kids with autism. It's concrete and very visual, with a lot of auditory benefits to it," Cook said.

"When the iPad came out last spring, I said it would create opportunities that didn't exist before," McClafferty said as he sat in his home office on Bertmor Drive in Stamford. "Tablets have been around for a while, but Apple got it right."

Intuitive technology fills a need in the autism community, McClafferty said.

"The technology for children with autism was severely lacking. It was just old-school technology, like going to the library and searching through the card catalog," he said.

McClafferty is in the final stages of developing an iPad application for ASD students, which will help with speech and language skills.

"Typically, ASD teachers carry around a whole bunch of flashcards to help teach verbal skills. It can get expensive, and there's really only one of each card in a deck," McClafferty said. "What I created on the iPad is a replacement for that with enormous flexibility."

His app—See. Touch. Learn, which will be released in March—is designed to provide teachers and parents with a digital library of flashcards to assist in language development. McClafferty said the app will be a free download, and will include a basic library of cards; additional libraries could then be purchased at a cost.

He said the app is in the final stages of development.

"I put this in front of people, in front of parents, and they're emotional about it. They say, 'You're building this for us.' You don't get that in the corporate world," he said.

McClafferty expects his app, which he plans to distribute to local families with children on the spectrum, will be the first of many.

"I think the iPad is being adopted very quickly," Volkmar said. "Sometimes (devices) kind of flash in the pan, but I think this one is more likely to be around for quite a while."

Reference:

http://www.edweek.org/dd/articles/2011/02/08/mct_ctipads.html

Joyce Reaction about the issues:

children will special needs are also entitled to have quality education. They should also receive what a regular child receive. We should give them an opportunity to experience and explore things. We are now in modern community and we can used different devices and gadgets that are available in our society. One of these is the use of i pads in assessing special learners specifically children with autism. It is useful for them because they do better with visual as opposed to auditory information. Special learners are also human/individual, they have the rights to have a quality education.