The following list is a collection of wcsLink’s parent recommended apps and app information. This is meant to be a constantly expanding list and we want your input! Let us know if your child uses an app that you’d like to share with other parents of gifted and special needs children. Email the app name and a few sentences on why you recommend it to wcsLink. Our goal is to share these valuable resources with other families that have our same needs and interests.
Recommended App websites:
Tennessee Board of Regents eLearning Initiative
Check this website out for an extensive education apps resource bank. Contains apps from all subjects, including special education.
Apps for Autism: Communicating on the iPad
CBS 60 minutes video from October 23, 2011
People with Autism whose condition prevent them from speaking are making breakthroughs with the help of tablet computers and special applications that allow them to communicate, some for the first time. Lesley Stahl reports.
Recommended Education Apps list:
iPAD APPS List for Education
Recommended Apps:
See, Touch, Learn by Brain Parade
See.Touch.Learn.™ is a picture learning system designed by professionals specifically for those with special needs. See.Touch.Learn.™ makes traditional picture cards obsolete. Parents and professionals use See.Touch.Learn.™ to build custom picture card lessons and automatically track their child’s responses. Includes a starter set of stunning, high-quality images and 60 exercises created by a certified behavior analyst! Additional libraries of images and lessons are available for purchase from within the app.
Why recommended: See Touch Learn has been a very effective tool for our 9 year old son. The pictures used in the program are high quality and visually interesting. There are a large number of prepared lessons on a range of topics that make it easy to use and allow for swift changes between topics to keep interest high. The program also has a computer-generated voice feature that can read the questions. This has helped our son use it more independently. He also finds the cheering for correct answers to be reinforcing. It has also helped improve basic iPad skills. If you’re especially ambitious the libraries of available images are large and you can create your own lessons. Our son finds it fun and highly engaging. Very highly recommended.
Cost: Free version has limited image library. Full version is $24.99 and contains thousands of high resolution images.
The Reading Machine
The Sharp Curiosity Reading Machine gives young readers new power and gives parents and teachers a new tool for raising great readers. Now kids can spend more time reading without getting stuck on any words, as they teach themselves to read with real books, or with words from anywhere in their world. When children come to a word they don’t know, they type it in the Reading Machine. The Reading Machine doesn’t just tell them the word: first it shows them how the letters and sounds go together, so they can try figuring it out themselves.
Why recommended? This is a great app to support struggling readers because by helps them become independent. By typing in a word it pronounces it in syllables so kids can use the skills they have to say it themselves, or press again and it reads the word. My son loves using it. Cost: $1.99
Prologuquo2go
Proloquo2Go™ is a product from AssistiveWare that provides a full-featured communication solution for people who have difficulty speaking. It brings natural sounding text-to-speech voices, close to 8000 up-to-date symbols, powerful automatic conjugations, a large default vocabulary, full expandability and extreme ease of use to the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad.
Why recommended? Prologuquo2go is a great app for nonverbal children and adults- great pics and also has text to speech modality. It is expensive but the best app for pics and text to speech I have found. (Recommended by a wcsLink parent who is also a speech therapist). Cost: $189.99
