I’m a very technological person and
I love new gadgets. I love getting news phones and customizing them. I
currently have the Galaxy S III and I completely customized it by downloading
theme apps. I have a MacBook air and I love the ease of use made by all the
“corners” options, and the 2, 3, and 4 finger swipe options! However, funny
enough, when I got my iPad I wasn’t to impressed. I don’t really use it because
I feel like it’s a larger version of my phone. But, I do have a lot of
educational experience with it. I personally have used my iPad as an eReader,
and I have downloaded textbooks to read on it. I really loved doing that
because I didn’t have to carry a large textbook with me wherever I went, and I had
access to the material at all times. I also liked that I could look up words I
didn’t know, tag pages that I felt were important, and add text boxes for
notes. That’s why I really liked subtext, because it has so many of those
features. It makes reading easy and accessible.
In the classroom my first experience
was with Proloquo2go. I mentioned in one of my posts on edmodo, that I have
worked in an ABA school, with children who are non-verbal. Their form of
communication device was a very cumbersome DynoVox, which is a huge machine
(extremely heavy) that is programmable to press buttons that have pictures and
words on them, with voice-overs. Once the iPad came out and Proloquo2go, it was
an even better program and a fraction of the size! My students use it with
ease, and they can have full conversations because of it! There are other
great educational games for my students, and it also serves as a very stronger
reinforcer for them to work for!
After playing around with subtext
and all the accessibility options that we explored on Monday, I realized how
awesome the iPad is. At first it was tricky because I got stuck in voice over
(my volume was off) so I didn’t realize I needed to click on the buttons twice
and I thought the iPad froze! I also got stuck in the zoom mode because I
didn’t realize in order to navigate the screen you had to use 3 or 4 fingers.
After I got past that, it’s awesome! I can see that it would definitely take
some training to fully utilize the accessibility to it’s maximum potential. I
think it’s important to train professionals as well as students. (However, the
students usually get it faster than the teachers; go figure!)
When looking at some of the
learning profiles I can see how an iPad would be beneficial for these students.
For a student like Rebecca, an iPad would be amazing because there are multiple
apps that convert audio (such as a teacher speaking) to text. This would truly
benefit her because she has trouble following along because of her hearing
impairment. She could even have the iPad set up so that it is recording the
teacher, and Rebecca could have a set of earphones to help her amplify what is
being said. An iPad would also really benefit Sarah who uses Smartscan32 as her
communication device. Smartscan32 is very limited, and cannot be continuously
added to. Therefore, there are many words and needs that cannot be expressed.
Switching to an iPad and using Proloquo2go for example, would give Sarah so many
options, and a plethora of vocabulary to help her communication. The options
are really endless, and as the iPad becomes more widely used, the more
education and assistive applications that are developed!
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