How iPad can Help Students With Learning Disabilities

Technology has proved its worth time and again by showering on us, its immensely useful products that are being churned out by the minute. These have made education more accessible, classrooms global and lives easier. One such device is the iPad. With its incredible effectiveness and several features for customization, the iPad has created immense ripples in the education industry.

This comes as no news that almost every classroom nowadays has integrated the iPad into its list of teaching equipment. What’s new is that the iPad has been found to be a highly beneficial tool for students with learning disabilities.

Technology sure does catch up fast. In fact, 4 years back, Steven Moshuris, a 7-year-old child with autism could convey to his teacher that he wanted to have pizza and  chicken nuggets for lunch using an iPad.

Apple introduced the iPad to the world quite a few years back. Every year since, it has turned out to be increasingly popular among teachers and students, so much so that its effectiveness has probed into the classrooms of special needs’ students. And the results have been promising.

Let’s look at how the iPad has been helping students with learning disabilities.

The iPad is a User-Friendly Device

 The iPad operates on the enormously useful touch technology. It is easy to navigate and is intuitive. The primary actions required to operate an iPad are tap and swipe. These do not require any heavy duty work and are simple to carry out. Therefore, students with learning disabilities do not find it complex to comprehend and implement these.

The touch function of the iPad has been notable as the most convenient function of the iPad. This doesn’t require much effort and is accessible. This makes the iPad a perfect solution for students who are suffering from an impairment in motor skills.

Additionally, a sufficiently large screen that can be held in your hands makes it easier for students to operate on without having to shift focus repeatedly. The screen serves as a keyboard which is extremely convenient. This makes the iPad a wonderful therapeutic device that helps in improving fine motor skills.

Powerhouse of Useful Apps

 The iPad is quite the functional tool for just about anyone. For students with learning disabilities, reading, solving problems, recalling or reasoning could be difficult. This is where the iPad comes in. It forms the perfect bridge between such students and their academic success. What makes it a complete success story are the useful apps developed specifically for this device that can be downloaded in a jiffy. These apps have made learning a lot more personalized according to the requirements of every child.

If you happen to stroll down the app store, you would find a number of apps that have been created keeping learning disabled children in mind.

You would be surprised to know that there are apps that can convert a PDF file into an audiobook. This can be a great help for students with reading disability. An app that goes by the name of ‘openWeb’ has a feature that converts the text of any article you search for on the web into a more readable format. This readable font is also known as the ‘OpenDyslexic’ and has been specifically designed for students suffering from dyslexia. Another useful app is the ‘Talkulator’ that speaks out the numbers in 7 different languages.

Here is a list of 40 incredible iPad apps that can be of help for students with learning disabilities.

Watch parents talk about how the iPad has been of huge help for kids with learning disability.

The iPad Works as a Communicator

 Ann Kaiser is a professor at the Vanderbilt Peabody College of Education and Human Development. She decided to carry out a study on kids aged between 5 and 8 years with speech disorders using the iPad. It involved encouraging the children to use the iPads in their everyday routines where they had to select options on the screen to listen to the instructions before repeating them.

The primary reason behind this was to eliminate the inconsistencies in the acoustic characteristics of words when they are spoken in different contexts. And the iPad makes it possible by making the words sound exactly the same every time they are repeated. The results were mindblowing.

It was found that every child involved in the study learned new words and could even produce sentences. According to Kaiser, “For some parents, it was the first time they’d been able to converse with their children. With the onset of iPads, that kind of communication may become possible for greater numbers of children with autism and their families.”

More studies have come up with similar results backing the burgeoning iPad usage as a communicator for children with special needs up with  concrete evidence.

Watch this heartwarming video about how severely disabled children form an orchestra using iPads.

It Makes Them Feel Like a Part of the Crowd

 Students with learning disabilities generally feel singled out among a group of similarly aged children since they require special attention and devices that other children do not. Such social stigma stings and proves to be a factor for the setback in their education. The iPad, on the other hand, has found itself as one of the ‘cool’ devices that has something for every child, regardless of the presence of absence of learning disabilities among children.

Therefore, the iPad makes students with special needs fit right in with just about any kids their age. This places them on the same level as anyone in the class.

With such steep achievements that the iPad has been witness to, it has a promising future ahead. IPads are changing the way education is being imparted and moving forward, more remarkable outcomes are expected to occur.