6. They Can Build Social Awareness
For more nonverbal students, there are many touch-to-speak apps (technologies that used to be prohibitively expensive) to help them communicate, including Proloquo2Go, Assistive Express, and Yes|No. Respectively, these apps give students a voice through touch, predict sentence completion, or simply let students answer “yes” or “no” quickly to questions. Apps like these not only ensure students with learning disabilities are heard, but they also take the pressure off of them to say something “right,” in turn helping them be more expressive overall.
2. They Keep Students From Getting Overwhelmed
7. They Help Track Behavior
8. They’re Great for Organization
Unlike many other devices and previous technologies, touch technology is intuitive to use. This means that iPads just make sense for students whose disabilities cause them to struggle with visuospatial awareness, as apps are easily organized and even more natural to navigate.
All students have their learning strengths and weaknesses; it’s just that they’re pronounced in students with learning disabilities. As such, what might seem like a simple task to one student might be overwhelming to another. This is overwhelming to students with learning disabilities, and can lead to both frustration and inefficiency.
9. They Don’t Come With a Stigma
Another aspect to this focusing is that iPads are multisensory, meaning that students can take the learning approach that makes the most sense for them. This, too, keeps students from getting distracted by approaches that aren’t crucial to the learning at hand, and instead are just meant to be a route to it. If that particular route doesn’t speak to them, they don’t need top custom essay reviews to attend to it, and can concentrate on what’s really important.
As such, the iPad can actually make an effective bridge technology in developing these motor skills, as we can see in the case study of Vincent, a student with Down syndrome, detailed in this Mashable article. In sticking just to the screen and writing with his finger, Vincent developed the same fine motor skills he would need to a hold pencil. In this way, the iPad is not only easier for students with motor impairments to use, but it is also an effective way to improve motor skills.