From Non-Verbal to Communicative, Autism & Technology
Teachers at Ontario’s Beverly School were beginning to lose hope when six weeks after introducing Apple’s popular iPad tablet to a classroom that serves kids with severe autism, they detected no change in how the children behaved. The key was patience — slowly but surely, those changes did come.
First it was it was only a slight lengthening of the time that kids paid attention to the tasks in front of them. Then they began to recognize words. And after a few days more, for the first time, students for whom making social contacts is a huge hurdle, began to interact with their peers.
Special education teacher Stacie Carroll called that “a huge deal,” because the iPad gave these students a tool to use to communicate with each other and the world. She said that being able to let someone know how you feel, or what you’d prefer for lunch, or which things make you happy or sad, is akin to finding “a golden key” for a severely autistic child.
The benefits of the technology, however, come with a warning: the devices can open up lines of communication but may further isolate autistic children, who already struggle to socialize. Bridget Taylor, a researcher who founded the Alpine Learning Group, a private school for autistic children in New Jersey, says autistic children can become too focused on the devices.
Question: Have you had positive experiences with technology in education?
