TeachMeet Tablet - Using the iPad to support Learners with Additional Support Needs

Craig Mill - Using the iPad to support Learners with Additional Support Needs 
{Live capture but with later edits and additions.}

Craig Mill - CALL Centre Edinburgh
CC 2013 by-nc-sa
Photo by David Muir

Seven ideas in seven minutes. A whistle-stop tour through how the iPad supports learners with additional support needs.

Talked first about CALL Centre and some of the resources they make available, for example, iPads for Communication Access Literacy and Learning, a free downloadable eBook. A new eBook for supporting children with dyslexia on its way.

Safari browser on iPad has a Reader button to make the text of a page easier to access, as Craig said, “It unclutters it all”. When using Reader, you can change the font size as well as access all the built in iPad tools such as define, copy, speak etc.

Other built in tools make the iPad a great device for pupils with Additional Support Needs. Shortcut to accessibility functions is to triple click on the home button. He demonstrated VoiceOver with a screen curtain on. VoiceOver has transformed the lives of many visually impaired people. He also demonstrated the zoom feature. Assistive Touch makes the volume controls, screenshots, and gestures such as pinch can be made accessible. There are also a growing number of accessories, such as wheelchair mounts, keyboard guards, mouth sticks, switch access tools, etc.

As he ran out of time, he switched to demonstrating, and saying a brief word about, a range of apps. These included:

• Burp and Fart Piano: encourages interaction. A great tool for getting children engaged. (Also available for Android and online.)
• Gravitarium: encourages children to interact.
• ClaroSpeak: with word prediction and customised lexicon.
• Clicker Docs and Clicker Sentences: is also available for the iPad. Word banks, text to speech, pictures...
• Pocket Phonics: for young readers – encourages the sounds to sad and letter shapes to be traced.
• Voice Dream and Voice Dream Lite: text to speech, highlight areas and more. 

…And more that I probably missed!

Watch the unedited video of TeachMeet - Craig's section runs from about 12:00 to 22:00. (A ten minute mega presentation!)