Friday, September 2, 2011

    Autism Apps

iAssist Communicator The iAssist Communicator was designed for individuals with autism and other developmental disabilities. Unlike other iPhone - iPod Touch applications, the iAssist Communicator is specifically focused on the needs of young learners and individuals on the autism spectrum and others who are more cognitively challenged. With the unique needs of these individuals in mind, the application incorporates photos rather than more abstract drawings, larger images and functional language.itunes.apple.com
iCommunicate
Create pictures, flashcards, storyboards, routines, and visual schedules. Record custom audio in any language. Converts any words with Text to Speech that do not have custom audio recorded. We include 100+ pictures(first 5 have audio) to get you started. Add pictures with your camera, or from your camera roll, or use online image search. Utilize as audio visual prompting tool or AAC device.itunes.apple.com
iPrompts
iPrompts is a mobile, visual support aid for the iPhone and iPod Touch. This app provides several picture-based prompting tools (no voice output) for caregivers to help individuals transition from one activity to the next, understand upcoming events, make choices, and focus on the task at hand.www.handholdadaptive.com
Learn to Talk
Learn to Talk is an innovative flash card application for toddlers on the iPhone and iPod Touch. It uses both sight and sound to teach your toddler basic vocabulary words and boost their language skills. Highly interactive, colorful flash cards engage and motivate children to learn by themselves.ilearn2talk.com
ABA My First Words
The ABA My First Words App allows kids to view flash cards of some common first words as well as a matching game for pictures and words. The flash cards now have audio.itunes.apple.com
Proloquo2Go: AAC In Your Pocket
Proloquo2Go is a new product from AssistiveWare that provides a full-featured communication solution for people who have difficulty speaking. It brings natural sounding text-to-speech voices, up-to-date symbols, powerful automatic conjugations, a default vocabulary of over 7000 items, full expandability and extreme ease of use to the iPhone and iPod touch.www.proloquo2go.com
ChoiceBoard Maker
ChoiceBoard Maker is the perfect app for creating customizable choice boards for the unique needs of individuals with communication challenges. It reinforces correct choice by expanding the selected image as well as playing the customized auditory rewards.itunes.apple.com
School Skills
School Skills is an iPod/iPad app that addresses social skills using expected and unexpected behavior. The expected and unexpected behaviors gives the student a concrete understanding of the specific social skill. Target areas in school includes Conversations, Classroom, Cafeteria, PE, Recess, Playing Games with friends and the feelings Anger, disappointment waiting, and responsibility. The app also explains in a social story type fashion about the social skills needed.itunes.com
Sosh: Improving Social Skills with Children and Adolescents
SoshTM is an approach to social skills based on a decade of work with children, adolescents, and young adults who struggle with social difficulties. The Sosh framework divides social functioning into five areas essential to social skills development and success: Relate (Connect with Others), Relax (Reduce Stress), Regulate (Manage Behaviors), Reason (Think it Through) and Recognize (Understand Feelings). These "5R's" serve as a road map for individuals who want to be social, but may have faced obstacles in the past, and also serve as a guide for parents, teachers, and therapists hoping to encourage and assist individuals with their social goals.www.mysosh.com
Communicating Basic Needs App
Special Learning, Inc.'s Communicating Basic Needs App for iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad is a clever tool which makes it easy for non-verbal children to let parents, teachers and caregivers what they want quickly and easily. At the same time it helps the child learn what words mean and what they sound like in an entertaining way, holding the child's interest and keeping him or her busy for long periods of time. Communicating Basic Needs App makes use of colorful and attractive real images and customizable real voices for easy application to everyday life settings.itunes.apple.com
Dance Party Zoo by FizzBrain
Many children need practice is balance, coordination and rhythm. Dance Party Zoo is a fun way to do it! This fun dancing game helps children practice basic motor and balance skills.

itunes.apple.com

All About Me All About Me is an application offering picture and text support to individuals learning their personal information. Twelve icons representing the child's name, address, birthday, home address, telephone number, family members names, pets, school, friends, favorite items, things I like, places I go and computer favorites are all included. These icons can be individualized with written text, audio and personal photos for added visual support
igetitapps.com

Wednesday, August 31, 2011

     Listening Games for Kids


           Top 5 To Try
"A student's listening skills have an impact on most aspects of school life. When learning to read he will use listening skills and auditory memory to blend sounds, at sentence level he needs his memory of what has gone before to help decipher the next word. Listening skills also affect a student's ability to understand language."  

Read on...  http://www.ehow.com/info_8637839_listening-games-kids.html 


      

Dr. Ann Corwin: Getting Your Child to Listen

 

Dr. Ann Corwin has 25 years experience in parenting consulting and child development education. With a Ph.D. in Marriage, Family and Child Therapy and a Masters Degree in Education, Corwin has made it her life's work to design and develop programs to ensure the health of families.


Take a look at some of her other videos at "Better Life Coaches"
           

Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Books

Product Details"The Way to A" written by Hunter Manasco, Kari Dunn Buron and Katharine Manasco is a great book to read with elementary students to teach social skills.  It clearly explains behaviors that are acceptable and unacceptable at school or at home. "A" choices are safe, fun and everyone has agreed on how to work out a problem. Everyone is happy!  "B" choices are unsafe or unfair situations that hurt one or more people. Using the book as a resource helps young children identify their feelings, feelings of others and solve conflicts.
                              
Promoting Relationships and Eliminating Violence


This is a very comprehensive site ... there is something here for everyone about bullying. See below description as quoted from the PREVNet site.

"PREVNet is a national network of Canadian researchers, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and governments committed to stop bullying. Bullying is wrong and hurtful. Every child and youth has the right to be safe and free from involvement in bullying. It affects children and youth who are bullied, those who bully others, and those who know it is going on."  (Quoted from the PREVnet site)                                                
              
          
      A must see website: 
       http://prevnet.ca/Home/tabid/36/Default.aspx
                                         
 

PREVnet is listed as "Top Ten Trusted Resource for Parents" 
           as part of RBC's Childrens Mental Health Project!










Sunday, August 28, 2011


       Auditory Processing Disorder  (APD)


An APD also known as Central Auditory Processing Disorder (CAPD) is a physical hearing impairment, but one which does not show up as a hearing loss on routine screenings or an audiogram. Instead, it affects the hearing system beyond the ear, whose job it is to separate a meaningful message from non-essential background sound and deliver that information with good clarity to the intellectual centers of the brain (the central nervous system). When we receive distorted or incomplete auditory messages we lose one of our most vital links with the world and other people; in other words one cannot process the information heard the same way others do.

Read more: 

    http://kidshealth.org/parent/medical/ears/central_auditory.html
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auditory_processing_disorder 
    http://www.asha.org/public/hearing/disorders/understand-apd-child.htm 

My son was diagnosed with APD by an audiologist. First we thought possibly a hearing problem since he spoke very loud but his hearing results identified he hears at -10 decibels indicating his hearing is better than most. Since he hears so well he has the need to talk loud to match the way he hears. APD was identified in his left ear so when the sound messages travel from the left side of the brain to the right and then back to the left his decoding of what he hears is scrambled beyond understanding. For this reason he is best seated at the left of a classroom from where his teacher does the lesson so to process the information in his right ear.

Sensory Processing Disorder

Here is a great video that helps one understand how
 sensory processing disorder effects an individual.



A very useful and informative site about Sensory Processing Disorder:
http://www.sinetwork.org/about-sensory-processing-disorder.html

This site is good too if you do not mind the advertisements 
http://www.sensory-processing-disorder.com/sensory-processing-disorder-checklist.html




Create quick, easy and free worksheets

School is starting and it's often hard trying to find all of the parts and pieces of what you might need to create communication overlays. Here's a quick, easy and free solution. Use the online my own worksheet website. Templates are available for a variety of devices and layouts. Create your own instructional tasks too. No more late nights trying to pull everything together. Check out the website:  My Own Worksheet

my own worksheet.png


Free Communication Symbols

A great free resource. Check it out  http://www.patrickecker.org
This site was designed to be an active community for sharing graphics, pictures and visual supports. Quickpics is a free windows-based software program to use and share with others. All students need a way to express their thoughts and ideas! 
                                  quickpics
In The News:
Cyber Bullying
The issue of bullying has been thrust back into the spotlight by Port Coquitlam, B.C., teen Amanda Todd who took her own life Wednesday, weeks after posting a YouTube video...
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2012/10/12/bullying-prevention-funding.html

What can parents do to stop Cyber Bullying?

For a week in the spring of 2012, CBC-TV's Connect with Mark Kelley set up a video booth in a school in Gatineau, Que. More than 150 students...
read more in this story here:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/interactives/bullyproof/