Gabriela Salinas Professor Brandon EDUC 1070 November 8, 2013

iPad Discussion

There are many beneficial Apps for the iPad that assist learning. There are even Apps available that assist children with special needs. I found two applications to help with the development of special needs children. I found one App for students with cognitive disabilities and one app for students with sensory disabilities. The app I found for cognitive disabilities is called Video Categories for ICanDo Apps. The app I found for students with sensory disabilities is called Language Builder. These Apps are both beneficial for those individual students. A child with cognitive disability is an individual who has certain limitations in mental functioning and skills such as communicating, social skills and daily tasks like taking care of themselves. These limits will cause a child develop and learn slower than the average child. The App I found that would benefit a child with a cognitive disability is Video Categories for ICanDo Apps. It is a free App that involves categorization. Categorizing is a cognitive linguistic skill. A students capability to classify correctly allows children to learn new words, increase their reading skill and increase receptive and expressive skills. Categorizing helps students make connections between concepts. This App can be used by teachers, parents, therapists and individuals who need to develop additional listening skills, reading comprehension, recognizing words, reasoning, and problem solving. This is a free App available for the iPad and other Apple products.

A child with a sensory disability is a condition that exists when sensory signals dont join together to deliver appropriate responses. An App I found that I think would benefit the improvement of a sensory issue is the LanguageBuilder App. It is a free App that you can use as a trial before buying the complete App at $1.99. Like the other App I mentioned, The LanguageBuilder App is designed to help progress receptive and expressive language. There is a broad use of audio clips that encourage improved auditory processing skills for children with sensory processing disabilities. The childs voice can be recorded and it offers reinforcement to benefit their language development. I think it is important that there are Apps that benefit children with special needs. It is important to continue developing their skills and with technology improving more and more, it makes it easier to integrate technology into their development.