Educational applications for Kids with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) can be helpful for their learning and social development. Mobile technology has greatly increased and has its influence almost every industry and domain.
Kids who have Autism Spectrum Disorder often fall into the following category:
1) Social Interaction
How communication or interaction takes place between two or more people? It is understood one-on-one, in small groups, etc. It is the inception stage where rules, regulations, and systems start.
2) Repetitive behaviors
How do they develop proper thinking? Repetitive behaviors can also include banging head to the wall, rocking, etc.
3) Verbal and Non-verbal Communication
How do communicate with or without or words? We receive and send info via verbal and non-verbal signs whether it is body language, face-to-face, pictures, and more.
Mobile applications let kids learn in their own space and time. Of course, there are different apps for different purposes. Having too many number of apps is one thing and finding the right one is altogether another because every app is different in its own style and needs. All it takes a little research and a little knowledge.
Here are some educational apps that are highly recommended for children with Autism
- iPrompts
iPrompts, a special educational mobile application that supports organizational skills, sets great expectations for performance, supports, and reminders. In addition, users can create and edit visual activities along with setting timer with images that will display how much more time is left for the kid to complete an activity.
The following are the features of this app:
Visual Schedules
Create and present sequences of pictures, breaking down tasks into discrete steps or presenting upcoming events in an easy-to-understand visual format.
Visual Countdown Timer
Display an image alongside graphical numeric countdown timers (set to any duration), to demonstrate how much time is left until a current activity ends, or before the next activity begins.
Choices
Offer choices between images, empowering those who cannot vocalize their preferences. Up to six choices may be presented on the screen at once. Tap an image to highlight it visually and trigger a voice recording.
Stories
Create and present your own Social Stories, or customize one of Carol Gray’s “Classics”.
Academy
Learn to write effective Social Stories by completing a series of short training modules created by Carol Gray.
Email & Print
Schedules, choices and stories can be emailed as a PDF, then forwarded to other caregivers or printed from a computer.
Audio Prompting
Record your voice to narrate the schedules, choices and stories you create.
Lots of Image Sources
Starter library includes hundreds of useful illustrations and digital pictures. Add your own camera pictures, or search Google, Bing and Flickr from right within the app. You can “tag” each image into as many categories as you’d like, then search or filter to find what you need.
Video Prompts
More than 30 video modeling clips are included, demonstrating “School and Social” behavior. You may also add your own video modeling clips to the Library and play them back using iPrompts®PRO.
Voice Chart
Like a “voice thermometer,” Voice Chart provides real-time feedback on loudness of speech. Speakers are shown visually whether they are “Too Loud,” “Too Quiet,” or “Just Right”. Sliders allow customization of the thresholds between each volume zone. An animated meter and graphics change based on the current volume level.
Voice Match
Provides visual and aural feedback on stress, rate and rhythm of speech by comparing a “Teacher” voice recording to a “Student” voice recording. The Student voice sample is compared both visually (via a waveform graphic) and aurally (via audio playback) to the Teacher recording, which serves as a target or model phrase. The Student attempts to “match” the Teacher waveform by repeating it aloud. Visual differences between the two audio recordings can then be highlighted (e.g., point to the differences on the screen and discuss).
- My Talk Tools
This is a creative and effective mobile application that enables kids with communication issues to express what they want and need utilizing a set of words, pictures, and various sounds. The app can be configured to feature particular sounds and pictures for a specific kid to help in the best way possible.
My Talk Tools Mobile is a next generation AAC app that helps people with communication difficulties say what they want with sequences of words, sounds and images.
You choose the content (simple grids or boards with bold images) and play recorded sounds when you touch a cell. The sequences can even form complete sentences.
MyTalkTools Mobile for the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad -enables people with communication difficulties to express their needs and desires, -enables video modeling for speech therapy, -is used for curriculum based lessons, -facilitates inclusion in a school setting -and much more.
Screen Shots:
- Learn with Rufus
Being a completely user-friendly app, Learn with Rufus is made to teach emotional words, facial expressions, etc. to kids who are facing difficulties communicating. Also, the application can be utilized to develop language, communication, and social skills. Feelings and Emotions aims to help children learn the facial expressions that correspond to feelings and emotions including happy, sad, angry, afraid, disgusted, and surprised. Children will learn how to identify easier fully-formed emotions and more difficult subtle emotions. The game is highly customizable to meet the needs of children with varying skills, ability levels, and learning styles.
Feelings and Emotions is organized into three parts, a learning phase and two separate games:
* Learning – A preview of the facial expressions is shown to the child before the game starts.
* Find It! – Shown a number of facial expressions, the child is directed to select a specific emotion.
* Name It! – Shown a single facial expression, the child is asked to name the emotion.
- AutisMate
Blending features of various apps into one, AutisMate is an excellent mobile app for kids where they learn to do their everyday chores. This app lets parents set up dynamic situations such as a kid tapping on the faucet and see how to properly wash hands. Apart from this, there is a visual scheduling feature and sentence formation category.
- First-Then Visual Schedule
This application offers visual schedules to assist children with transitions and reduce anxiety. First-Then provides the excellent and language capabilities to make them understand and learn each and every activity and upon successfully completing it what the reward will be.
- E-Mintza
This is bilingual mobile app is customizable and is created for augmentative communication utilizing a family’s own images. E-Mintza app is 100 percent free.
- iCommunicate
A visual scheduling app, iCommunicate enables users to keep a track on their own audio. This application integrates text-to-speech with more than 20 different voices and languages including Italian, English, Spanish, Swedish, and many more. Users can also share images through iTunes and email.
- Autism Xpress
A highly user-friendly mobile application developed to assist autistic kids express their emotions and let other people what they want or need. The app is focused to help autistic children especially in rural areas in Bangladesh.
- Endless Reader
Reading is one of the most complex tasks for kids who have autism issues. The Endless Reader app, very much blends visual and audio leanings. It pairs words and images so that kids can start to understand the basic steps of reading.
- Dreampad
Usually, putting autistic kids to sleep is no less than any challenge. In situations like these, Dreampad app comes quite in hand to help them in the process of putting their kids to sleep. The app utilizes a special pillow that plays soothing music along with vibrations. In addition, the app also helps in calming the most hypersensitive kid.
- The Social Express
This app offers various social skills that kids with autism suffer. The Social Express addresses interactive and social life that most autistic children face social learning challenges by utilizing extremely interactive and animations to make kids understand and practice social skills in an engaging way.
- Pictello
It is an easy app to create visual stories and talking books. The app contains images, short videos, and short texts that teach social skills and assist children in remembering events, and also support non-verbal children in communication with others.
- Cognoa
Cognoa, an evaluation tool that finds autism behavior by tracking a kid’s behavior and milestones to assist teachers and doctors. Its features include recommended tasks that can help kids with autism who are facing issues with socialization, interaction, tantrums, and more.
