Youtube Channel for ideas and tutorials for iPad accessibility features There's a special app for that
App Collection for Special Needs Students called PowerUp help students with special needs and learning disabilities. I think one of the possibilities of touchscreen and multimedia devices is that it can make a wider array of content more available to a wider range of students. CommonSense Media does a nice job of annotating the apps in this free list (which is also downloadable as a PDF) and putting them into various categories, and then sorted by difficulty/age levels.
Apps for Students with Reading and Writing Disabilities
A Handy Chart Featuring Some Good Android Apps for Students with Special Needs
Apps for Kids with Special Needs Categories include educational, speech and language, communication, scheduling, games and more. You can also subscribe to a weekly digest of what's new.
Avaz Communicate with someone with autism using this tablet-based augmentative & alternative communication app. IOS and Android
Breath, Think, Do (K - 3) This is a resource app for you to share with your child to help teach skills such as problem solving, self-control, planning, and task persistence.
StudyBlue allows you to create flashcards in three ways. You can enter text, take a picture, or speak into the app.
StudyBlue can also be used in a web browser.
Free Speech app is designed to assist students who have Autism and other speech and communication impairments. It provides a set of images and icons representing common household objects and activities. You can add more categories beyond the default and icons to the app by taking pictures with your iPad and labeling them. You can also add more categories and icons to the app by uploading them from albums on your iPad. The first time that you use the Free Speech app it asks you to fill in a bunch of information. I was able to use the app by only entering my name and email address making those other questions optional.
Phonics Studio glowing reviews from speech-language pathologists. The app provides flashcards to practice pronouncing more than 200 sounds. Each sound has a collection of flashcards. To practice pronunciation students can listen to a recording and then create their own recordings (open the preferences panel to turn on the built-in recordings).
There is a Special Student App for That
Apps for Students with Dyslexia
Dyslexia Toolbox This app “by dyslexic people for dyslexic people” has a suite of useful assistive technology features for older kids with dyslexia. One feature is a type pad with word prediction software that can help kids create messages for text, email and social media. Another is a digital overlay for reading text through a color screen. There’s also a digital document reader (for purchase) that takes photos of text and reads them aloud.
GEI BLOG ARTICLE
Tints: Dyslexia Friendly Reading — Helping dyslexic students find reading strategies that work can be life-changing. With this new app, users are able to try out changing the background tint to modify contrast and using a slide ruler that allows users to track the lines across the page/screen. This is an electronic variation of the reading rulers that can be purchased to help students keep their place while reading. If the app version improves the student’s ability to follow and comprehend text, then purchasing the tangible reading tool is a great next step for unlocking any text in book form. The free app offers chapter selections of several novels for students aged 8 to teen try out these modifications and content for parents/teachers. In app purchases can be made to unlock the entire text for each of the seven books that are currently available.
Web Reader — Text to Speech- For students with dyslexia, focusing on web-based text can be an arduous task. By using Web Reader, students can highlight any and all text found on a web page to hear the content. For older students that need to spend a lot of time researching, this can be quite the time-saver. By donning headphones or popping in some earbuds, dyslexic students are able to keep up with classmates when using the web for research and information gathering. This is a great tool for school, home, and future life usage. At only $1.99, unlocking the world of text for a struggling reader is well worth the investment.
Tell About This is an easy platform to inspire and capture children's thoughts and stories! They will love to explore and respond to any of the 100 interesting photo prompts using their voice. Craft custom prompts and add profiles to personalize the experience! Simple save/share options.
iHowTo-Book an interactive children's book application that enables all children to read a book independently. Unlike other children's books, this application focuses on teaching children the skills of Activities for Daily Living (ADL). It provides natural, calm voices with beautiful original artwork. What Rhymes?: Encourage reading comprehension with this reading comprehension tool for visual and auditory learners.
Breathe, Think, Do (Sesame Street) teaches children to keep calm and carry on by introducing three possible strategies for working through problems. It touches on familiar emotional challenges such as problem solving, self-control, planning, and time on task. Intended for very young children, this simple app gives players different scenarios in which the Blue Monster character needs to regulate his or her emotions using the breathe-think-do technique.
IF. . . The Emotional IQ Game (If You Can) promotes teamwork and collaboration, accentuating how to be in touch with our own feelings and the feelings of those around us. With this app, kids (recommended ages 9-11) learn to listen, make friends, and deal with bullying in an adventure story/game format. IF's motto: "Play Learn Grow: Succeed at school with friends in life!"
BulBul Apps – Free Kids Apps is a collection of stories presented in a library format. BulBul Inc. plans on offering one free story a week to their already extensive library.The stories are mainly for early learners, and are paced to keep the focus on the story. This means story lines are short and simple, but please don’t let that fool you, as most of the stories also displayed a tremendous sense of humor and warmth. The illustrations and animations are bright and cheerful as well as the narration. Both are free from visual and auditory clutter.
Talkulator: Talkulator can help students with visual problems count and do arithmetic.
Go Go Games is a set of iPad games designed to help children that have Autism Spectrum Disorders practice recognizing the features and patterns of objects. While these games were designed for students with Autism Spectrum Disorders any young child would enjoy them.
Speech Journal ideal for either digital storytelling or Special Ed. Allows users to add photos into a nice looking slideshow as well as record their voice to add to each image. It's a very a simple tool and can be used by any age group.
Autism Speaks Listing of apps
Apps for Autistic Students Apps based on common characteristics and traits that are typical of ASD
Moody Monster Moody Monster Manor is a place to learn about dealing with emotions through engaging and interactive games
Brain Parade’s See. Touch. Learn. is a free visual learning iPad app designed by a certified assistant behavior analyst specifically for those with autism and other special needs. This free app includes a starter set of high-quality images and 60 exercises. Additional libraries with more than 4,400 images and 2,000 exercises are available for purchase from within the app. Now you can access the Brain
Parade Communitywith thousands of lessons shared by others. Click Here to Visit iTunes App Store Plus: A Site Edition is available for private implementation in classroom, school and district settings. The package provides training sessions to educators and enables them to share custom content with teaching aides, therapists and parents in their private school communities.Click Here to Visit Website
Bitsboard uses beautiful photos, has 1,000 lessons and gives the ability to create your own new boards. There are Flashcards that have a word and picture. Students can play mini-games by touching the correct photo or matching up images to the correct word. Word and sentence builder have the child drag and drop letters or words into the correct sequence. It’s easy to create new boards that can be tailored to their curriculum. Grasshopper Apps offers numerous free and inexpensive early learning apps that offer flexibility and customization that is so important for our students.
See.Touch.Learn. - Built specifically for special needs education, your kids could benefit from this iPad app's easy-to-understand photographic flashcards. Includes a starter set of stunning, high-quality images and 60 exercises created by a certified assistant behavior analyst! Additional libraries with over 4,400 additional images and lessons are available for purchase from within the app. Now you can access the Brain Parade® Community with thousands of lessons shared by others.
Kindergarten.com has nineteen excellent ABA (Applied Behavior Analysis) flashcard apps that are worth exploring too.
iPad for All is designed to share resources with educators, occupational, physical and speech therapists, special needs students, and persons with disabilities iPad for All shares apps, user tips, accessibility features, accessories, and helpful resources.
Dragon Dictation voice recognition application that allows you to easily speak and instantly see your text or email messages.
Voice Text Pro: FREE
Dictating has never been easier! Voice Texting Pro doesn't need to learn your voice, no training is required. It works straight out of the box. By default, it uses the language appropriate to the settings of your device. So if you are in Spain, it recognizes Spanish, etc. You can change the language in the settings page.
iPhone, iPad and iPod touch Apps for Special) Education
Common Core Apps for Special Needs Students
Foldify 3.99 is an iPad app that students can use to design all kinds of 3D figures on their iPads. After designing their figures students can print their designs with directions for folding their designs into 3D paper objects. Foldify provides basic templates for objects like cars, houses, and people. Students complete the templates by coloring them in, adding their own pictures to the templates, and adding fun digital stamps to the templates.
Draw Your Stories It helps with visualizing the information which is a very important piece for comprehension skills It can be used for a variety of children including special educations students who have language learning deficits, reading comprehension deficits, and specific learning disability due to language weaknesses. Promotes language through motor skills modality It helps with active participation skills Promotes internal motivation to keep listening and interacting in the task
Apps for Special Needs Students
iPad Accommodations short video tutorials
Let's Be Social ($!5 )Let's be Social! targets the pragmatic skills of Recognizing Emotions, Solving Problems, Forming Friendships, and Predicting Outcomes. Let's be Social! comes standard with 25 high quality lessons created by licensed SLP's. Each lesson includes walks the user through different social interactions and asks questions to help encourage retention and carryover of skills. Custom illustrations to show emotions felt and actions taken during each stage of a lesson.
SoundingBoard is an accessibility tool that helps kids and adults who are unable to speak (or who have limited speech) to communicate. The design isn't as polished as the very similar app, TapToTalk, but the fact that SoundingBoard is free and offers the ability to create custom picture card sets makes it a good value. Customization is key with this app, so adults and educators should be prepared to put in some time creating picture card sets (called "boards") for kids.
Speech Journal by Mobile Education Store creates books that allow you to pair recorded voices with an image. Don’t let the name fool you, it’s not just for speech therapists. You or your student can create social stories,
Speech Therapy for Apraxia -Words (4.99) is a convenient, effective speech therapy iPad app for children with Childhood Apraxia of Speech/dyspraxia, adults with apraxia, use by anyone working with individuals with apraxia, either therapists or parents. It can also be used for traditional articulation practice.
Talk n Photos add text and voice recording to album covers as well as each entry (picture) within an album
Little Writer is great for students with occupational therapy needs! It has options for tracing uppercase letters, lowercase letters, numbers, shapes, and words. Great for practice on formation and sizing!
Number Line for iPad (also available as a web app) is a powerful virtual tool that helps children see relationships between numbers and interact with a number line.
App Collection for Special Needs Students called PowerUp help students with special needs and learning disabilities. I think one of the possibilities of touchscreen and multimedia devices is that it can make a wider array of content more available to a wider range of students. CommonSense Media does a nice job of annotating the apps in this free list (which is also downloadable as a PDF) and putting them into various categories, and then sorted by difficulty/age levels.
Apps for Students with Reading and Writing Disabilities
A Handy Chart Featuring Some Good Android Apps for Students with Special Needs
Apps for Kids with Special Needs Categories include educational, speech and language, communication, scheduling, games and more. You can also subscribe to a weekly digest of what's new.
Avaz Communicate with someone with autism using this tablet-based augmentative & alternative communication app. IOS and Android
Breath, Think, Do (K - 3) This is a resource app for you to share with your child to help teach skills such as problem solving, self-control, planning, and task persistence.
StudyBlue allows you to create flashcards in three ways. You can enter text, take a picture, or speak into the app.
StudyBlue can also be used in a web browser.
Free Speech app is designed to assist students who have Autism and other speech and communication impairments. It provides a set of images and icons representing common household objects and activities. You can add more categories beyond the default and icons to the app by taking pictures with your iPad and labeling them. You can also add more categories and icons to the app by uploading them from albums on your iPad. The first time that you use the Free Speech app it asks you to fill in a bunch of information. I was able to use the app by only entering my name and email address making those other questions optional.
Phonics Studio glowing reviews from speech-language pathologists. The app provides flashcards to practice pronouncing more than 200 sounds. Each sound has a collection of flashcards. To practice pronunciation students can listen to a recording and then create their own recordings (open the preferences panel to turn on the built-in recordings).
There is a Special Student App for That
Apps for Students with Dyslexia
Dyslexia Toolbox This app “by dyslexic people for dyslexic people” has a suite of useful assistive technology features for older kids with dyslexia. One feature is a type pad with word prediction software that can help kids create messages for text, email and social media. Another is a digital overlay for reading text through a color screen. There’s also a digital document reader (for purchase) that takes photos of text and reads them aloud.
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Tints: Dyslexia Friendly Reading — Helping dyslexic students find reading strategies that work can be life-changing. With this new app, users are able to try out changing the background tint to modify contrast and using a slide ruler that allows users to track the lines across the page/screen. This is an electronic variation of the reading rulers that can be purchased to help students keep their place while reading. If the app version improves the student’s ability to follow and comprehend text, then purchasing the tangible reading tool is a great next step for unlocking any text in book form. The free app offers chapter selections of several novels for students aged 8 to teen try out these modifications and content for parents/teachers. In app purchases can be made to unlock the entire text for each of the seven books that are currently available.
Web Reader — Text to Speech- For students with dyslexia, focusing on web-based text can be an arduous task. By using Web Reader, students can highlight any and all text found on a web page to hear the content. For older students that need to spend a lot of time researching, this can be quite the time-saver. By donning headphones or popping in some earbuds, dyslexic students are able to keep up with classmates when using the web for research and information gathering. This is a great tool for school, home, and future life usage. At only $1.99, unlocking the world of text for a struggling reader is well worth the investment.
Tell About This is an easy platform to inspire and capture children's thoughts and stories! They will love to explore and respond to any of the 100 interesting photo prompts using their voice. Craft custom prompts and add profiles to personalize the experience! Simple save/share options.
iHowTo-Book an interactive children's book application that enables all children to read a book independently. Unlike other children's books, this application focuses on teaching children the skills of Activities for Daily Living (ADL). It provides natural, calm voices with beautiful original artwork. What Rhymes?: Encourage reading comprehension with this reading comprehension tool for visual and auditory learners.
Breathe, Think, Do (Sesame Street) teaches children to keep calm and carry on by introducing three possible strategies for working through problems. It touches on familiar emotional challenges such as problem solving, self-control, planning, and time on task. Intended for very young children, this simple app gives players different scenarios in which the Blue Monster character needs to regulate his or her emotions using the breathe-think-do technique.
IF. . . The Emotional IQ Game (If You Can) promotes teamwork and collaboration, accentuating how to be in touch with our own feelings and the feelings of those around us. With this app, kids (recommended ages 9-11) learn to listen, make friends, and deal with bullying in an adventure story/game format. IF's motto: "Play Learn Grow: Succeed at school with friends in life!"
BulBul Apps – Free Kids Apps is a collection of stories presented in a library format. BulBul Inc. plans on offering one free story a week to their already extensive library.The stories are mainly for early learners, and are paced to keep the focus on the story. This means story lines are short and simple, but please don’t let that fool you, as most of the stories also displayed a tremendous sense of humor and warmth. The illustrations and animations are bright and cheerful as well as the narration. Both are free from visual and auditory clutter.
Talkulator: Talkulator can help students with visual problems count and do arithmetic.
Go Go Games is a set of iPad games designed to help children that have Autism Spectrum Disorders practice recognizing the features and patterns of objects. While these games were designed for students with Autism Spectrum Disorders any young child would enjoy them.
Speech Journal ideal for either digital storytelling or Special Ed. Allows users to add photos into a nice looking slideshow as well as record their voice to add to each image. It's a very a simple tool and can be used by any age group.
Autism Speaks Listing of apps
Apps for Autistic Students Apps based on common characteristics and traits that are typical of ASD
Moody Monster Moody Monster Manor is a place to learn about dealing with emotions through engaging and interactive games
Brain Parade’s See. Touch. Learn. is a free visual learning iPad app designed by a certified assistant behavior analyst specifically for those with autism and other special needs. This free app includes a starter set of high-quality images and 60 exercises. Additional libraries with more than 4,400 images and 2,000 exercises are available for purchase from within the app. Now you can access the Brain
Parade Communitywith thousands of lessons shared by others. Click Here to Visit iTunes App Store Plus: A Site Edition is available for private implementation in classroom, school and district settings. The package provides training sessions to educators and enables them to share custom content with teaching aides, therapists and parents in their private school communities.Click Here to Visit Website
Bitsboard uses beautiful photos, has 1,000 lessons and gives the ability to create your own new boards. There are Flashcards that have a word and picture. Students can play mini-games by touching the correct photo or matching up images to the correct word. Word and sentence builder have the child drag and drop letters or words into the correct sequence. It’s easy to create new boards that can be tailored to their curriculum. Grasshopper Apps offers numerous free and inexpensive early learning apps that offer flexibility and customization that is so important for our students.
See.Touch.Learn. - Built specifically for special needs education, your kids could benefit from this iPad app's easy-to-understand photographic flashcards. Includes a starter set of stunning, high-quality images and 60 exercises created by a certified assistant behavior analyst! Additional libraries with over 4,400 additional images and lessons are available for purchase from within the app. Now you can access the Brain Parade® Community with thousands of lessons shared by others.
Kindergarten.com has nineteen excellent ABA (Applied Behavior Analysis) flashcard apps that are worth exploring too.
iPad for All is designed to share resources with educators, occupational, physical and speech therapists, special needs students, and persons with disabilities iPad for All shares apps, user tips, accessibility features, accessories, and helpful resources.
Dragon Dictation voice recognition application that allows you to easily speak and instantly see your text or email messages.
Voice Text Pro: FREE
Dictating has never been easier! Voice Texting Pro doesn't need to learn your voice, no training is required. It works straight out of the box. By default, it uses the language appropriate to the settings of your device. So if you are in Spain, it recognizes Spanish, etc. You can change the language in the settings page.
iPhone, iPad and iPod touch Apps for Special) Education
Common Core Apps for Special Needs Students
Foldify 3.99 is an iPad app that students can use to design all kinds of 3D figures on their iPads. After designing their figures students can print their designs with directions for folding their designs into 3D paper objects. Foldify provides basic templates for objects like cars, houses, and people. Students complete the templates by coloring them in, adding their own pictures to the templates, and adding fun digital stamps to the templates.
Draw Your Stories It helps with visualizing the information which is a very important piece for comprehension skills It can be used for a variety of children including special educations students who have language learning deficits, reading comprehension deficits, and specific learning disability due to language weaknesses. Promotes language through motor skills modality It helps with active participation skills Promotes internal motivation to keep listening and interacting in the task
Apps for Special Needs Students
iPad Accommodations short video tutorials
Let's Be Social ($!5 )Let's be Social! targets the pragmatic skills of Recognizing Emotions, Solving Problems, Forming Friendships, and Predicting Outcomes. Let's be Social! comes standard with 25 high quality lessons created by licensed SLP's. Each lesson includes walks the user through different social interactions and asks questions to help encourage retention and carryover of skills. Custom illustrations to show emotions felt and actions taken during each stage of a lesson.
SoundingBoard is an accessibility tool that helps kids and adults who are unable to speak (or who have limited speech) to communicate. The design isn't as polished as the very similar app, TapToTalk, but the fact that SoundingBoard is free and offers the ability to create custom picture card sets makes it a good value. Customization is key with this app, so adults and educators should be prepared to put in some time creating picture card sets (called "boards") for kids.
Speech Journal by Mobile Education Store creates books that allow you to pair recorded voices with an image. Don’t let the name fool you, it’s not just for speech therapists. You or your student can create social stories,
Speech Therapy for Apraxia -Words (4.99) is a convenient, effective speech therapy iPad app for children with Childhood Apraxia of Speech/dyspraxia, adults with apraxia, use by anyone working with individuals with apraxia, either therapists or parents. It can also be used for traditional articulation practice.
Talk n Photos add text and voice recording to album covers as well as each entry (picture) within an album
Little Writer is great for students with occupational therapy needs! It has options for tracing uppercase letters, lowercase letters, numbers, shapes, and words. Great for practice on formation and sizing!
Number Line for iPad (also available as a web app) is a powerful virtual tool that helps children see relationships between numbers and interact with a number line.
SayText : App scans documents and then reads the text contained in the document to you. Simply place your device center of a document and double-tap the “Take picture” -button. Then slowly elevate the device over the document. When it detects your document, it will beep and start scanning. While the OCR is running, tap the screen to hear the progress status. When the camera is done scanning, swipe the screen to initiate a read back of the text. Cost: Free
Todo K-2 Math Practice Designed with learning differences in mind (including kids with special needs), Todooffers Common Core-aligned math activities for a range of learners in preK-2 grade levels. The lack of student accounts and dashboard make this app useful for independent learning.
Read more at http://thejournal.com/articles/2014/01/16/10-apps-to-introduce-math.aspx?=THEMOB#iVKXYY1oDzHwpAKM.99
Apps for Students with Special Need
Inexpensive Apps for Special Needs Students
Apps for Students | Dysgraphia & Writing Difficulties
Apps for Students with Dyslexia
Assessment Apps If you work with students, especially special-needs students, part of the process is documenting goals that are measurable. We now have apps that can assist us with tracking students' progress.
Speech Therapy for Apraxia for helping children/adults w/ speech problems such as Apraxia. To be used w/ Parents and Speech Therapist to help children develop their speech. This is done by selecting different word groups and patterns and listening to the words and sounding them out. As a user proceeds they progress through 9 different levels motor/speech articulation or they can choose what level they want to work. Progress tracking w/ detailed instructions on how best to use this app.
Todo K-2 Math Practice Designed with learning differences in mind (including kids with special needs), Todooffers Common Core-aligned math activities for a range of learners in preK-2 grade levels. The lack of student accounts and dashboard make this app useful for independent learning.
Read more at http://thejournal.com/articles/2014/01/16/10-apps-to-introduce-math.aspx?=THEMOB#iVKXYY1oDzHwpAKM.99
- iTalk Recorder a full-featured recording app with a streamlined and intuitive user interface.
Audio Note $4.99 ipad app recording and annotating notes. Can also use text and share notes with others
Apps for Students with Special Need
Inexpensive Apps for Special Needs Students
Apps for Students | Dysgraphia & Writing Difficulties
Apps for Students with Dyslexia
Assessment Apps If you work with students, especially special-needs students, part of the process is documenting goals that are measurable. We now have apps that can assist us with tracking students' progress.
Speech Therapy for Apraxia for helping children/adults w/ speech problems such as Apraxia. To be used w/ Parents and Speech Therapist to help children develop their speech. This is done by selecting different word groups and patterns and listening to the words and sounding them out. As a user proceeds they progress through 9 different levels motor/speech articulation or they can choose what level they want to work. Progress tracking w/ detailed instructions on how best to use this app.
Spatial Thinking
Pictorial Pictorial engages learners in a variety of activities involving spatial reasoning including for instance : recognizing the hidden pictures in a sky night full of starts, solving the mystery of the pirate’s map, or discovering the story behind the dance o snowflakes on the arctic blizzard.
Flow Free Connect matching colors with pipe to create a Flow. Pair all colors, and cover the entire board to solve each puzzle. But watch out, pipes will break if they cross or overlap! Free play through hundreds of levels, or race against the clock in Time Trial mode. Gameplay ranges from simple and relaxed, to challenging and frenetic, and everywhere in between. How you play is up to you. So, give Flow Free a try, and experience "mind like water"!’
P.O.V. - Spatial Reasoning Game and Left Right Discrimination a set of 3 activities designed to teach spatial reasoning skills through fun, challenging, interactive activities.1)Intro & Explore- Learn about the game mechanics and 4 different points of view. 2)Vantage Point - See a top view and side view of objects and choose the matching side view. 3)Make a Scene - Move the top view objects to match the side view. Players must think their way through the activities, which get increasingly difficult as each level is mastered. Players are timed and are challenged to continually improve on their best times.
Flow Free Connect matching colors with pipe to create a Flow. Pair all colors, and cover the entire board to solve each puzzle. But watch out, pipes will break if they cross or overlap! Free play through hundreds of levels, or race against the clock in Time Trial mode. Gameplay ranges from simple and relaxed, to challenging and frenetic, and everywhere in between. How you play is up to you. So, give Flow Free a try, and experience "mind like water"!’
P.O.V. - Spatial Reasoning Game and Left Right Discrimination a set of 3 activities designed to teach spatial reasoning skills through fun, challenging, interactive activities.1)Intro & Explore- Learn about the game mechanics and 4 different points of view. 2)Vantage Point - See a top view and side view of objects and choose the matching side view. 3)Make a Scene - Move the top view objects to match the side view. Players must think their way through the activities, which get increasingly difficult as each level is mastered. Players are timed and are challenged to continually improve on their best times.