An Incredible and Unexpected Gift

Yesterday, the UPS man brought a special gift for Joseph.

Since we got Joseph his iPod Touch, one of my new favorite websites has become A4CWSN (Apps for Children With Special Needs). I mentioned the site previously in my most recent post about Joseph and his iPod. Gary James records comprehensive video reviews of all the apps listed on his site, which is wonderful because it can be hard to determine if an app will suit your needs from the description alone and there are so many apps to choose from in the iTunes app store that it can be hard to find the good ones. Gary himself is the father of five children, two of whom are autistic.

Gary read about how much we appreciated his website, and that Joseph had only an iPod Touch and not an iPad yet. He offered to help us get an iPad for Joseph, and a week later UPS was delivering one.

I cannot express how grateful we all are to Gary for this generous and unexpected gift. Joseph loves it, and wouldn't put it down for hours after I loaded his apps on it. I couldn't even get him to let me touch it.  :) Joseph's speech therapist is already researching how she can integrate the iPad into Joseph's therapy and I expect it will be a great help to Joseph.

Please subscribe to Gary's blog, Apps 4 Children With Special Needs, follow him on Twitter and 'like' him on Facebook. He wants to help more kids like Joseph get access to this technology.

An Update on Joseph's iPod

This being an update, you can read the first post about Joseph and is iPod here.

Joseph has had his iPod for a little over a month now (a 2nd generation, 8gb iPod Touch that we bought used on craigslist for $75), and I think he's gotten pretty used to it (and so have we). Angry Birds came off pretty quickly because he didn't want to do anything else. For a while, every time we started an educational game on for him, he wouldn't even look at it before he hit the home button and started up a movie or an episode of Spongebob. At this point though, he's playing his games more than he's watching movies, particularly the puzzle games. I might try putting Angry Birds back on soon. I put Angry Birds back on, and he's either not noticed or doesn't care. It's in a folder with other entertaining time-wasters.

Something I discovered in the meantime is the excellent blog/website Apps 4 Children With Special Needs. Gary James writes great reviews of apps, including detailed video walk-thrus. This is wonderful, because even if an app only costs a couple of dollars, it's nice to be able to see it before you buy it so you can have a better idea if it's something your kid is going to be interested in. I've seen some apps that were excellent concepts, but poorly executed, so it pays to do your research. When our tax refund came, I bought $50 of iTunes gift cards, of which I've spent about $35, and most of the apps I've bought he likes.

Joseph prefers to use his iPod on his own. If the app requires help from an adult, at this point he is usually not interested. So good apps for Joseph = Apps that Joseph can figure out on his own.

Some of the apps that Joseph particularly likes:
Puzzle Me - Jigsaw puzzle game with various levels of difficulty available.
Wood Puzzle - Exactly what it sounds like. Has a counting element, after puzzle is completed, will say "Three Chickens" or something like that.
Speech with Milo, Verbs - A cartoon mouse teaches verbs (non-concrete language is a challenge for Joseph). They also have one for Prepositions.
Monkey Preschool Lunchbox - Monkeys play games that teach various skills such as counting, colors, etc.
Cosmic Top - A psychedelic top that spins in space and makes whirring noises.
First Words Deluxe - Drag letters that look like Scrabble tiles to spell words.
VolaFriends, Faces - Select a face from a simple black screen with 9 faces showing different emotions. The face enlarges, an animation of the expression is shown along with a voice saying what emotion it is.
Bob Books - Simple stories that teach some basic spelling interactively.
Any of several memory matching games. He loves these.

These all work on iPod. We've gotten two or three apps that are iPad only by accident, like the new Milo app.

Kindergarten.com has a huge catalog of apps designed for kids with autism. I've downloaded them all but can't seem to get Joseph interested in them. I think this is a failure on my part, rather than the fault of the apps, and I'm sure that eventually they will be helpful to him.

The Otterbox Defender case that Joseph initially ruined was replaced for free by Otterbox and has survived since then. The silicon tab that protects the dock connector muffles the sound a lot, but we just leave it open when he's using it, easy enough. It's been dropped a couple of times and isn't broken yet (knock on wood). The Otterbox Defender is also available for iPhone and iPad.

At Joseph's parent/teacher conference a couple of weeks ago (no news from the conference, it doesn't warrant it's own post), I told his teacher about the iPod and told her we would send it with him to school so they could use it as a learning tool and/or motivator. I'm not sure how much or what they're doing with it with him, but it usually comes home with the battery drained, so it's getting used one way or another.

I listened to a podcast from The Coffee Klatch on the 13th about using iPads for kids with autism. Shannon Rosa, the guest being interviewed, talked about how before she won an iPad in a school raffle, she always thought of them as being not so different from large iPhones, which is what I've thought since I first saw them. She said she had an iPhone and she let her son play with it sometimes. But she said the iPad really is more than a big iPhone and it has opened up new opportunities for her son and is easier for him to use. Not to mention, some apps that I think would benefit Joseph only work on the iPad's larger screen. The podcast rekindled my interest in getting Joseph an iPad.

I have a couple of codes for an app called Word SLapPs, but it only runs on the iPad. If you have an iPad and think your child would benefit from this app, please leave me your email address and I'll send you a code (I only have two available).

How much he is learning remains to be seen. But if nothing else, he's playing with puzzles and stimulating his mind without the baskets of pieces to get lost. It's engaging him and that's a good thing. :)

Joseph and the iPod

For months, we've wanted to get Joseph an iPad, hoping that he could use it as a communication device and also to play games that would help his development. We applied for the Hollyrod Foundation program that was providing free iPads to autistic kids, but we didn't really expect him to be selected. After Christmas and his birthday a week later, I went looking on Craigslist for a used iPod Touch. While it probably wouldn't be quite as useful to him as the iPad because of the smaller size, it will offer him many of the same benefits since it runs most of the same apps.

We bought Joseph an 8GB, 2nd generation iPod Touch. The 2nd generation Touch was the first model with a speaker, so it could be used without headphones. I would have preferred the 16GB model, but decided that if this one works well, then later we'll get him a bigger one and I can inherit his old one. :)

First, I put some Spongebob episodes and a few Pixar films on it for him. We'd been using Kristy's Nano for a while, if we needed him calm and quiet and couldn't find any other way, we would give him the iPod and let him watch Spongebob. We've had mixed success with this. It accomplishes our goal usually, but I know that it's not helping curb the bad behavior. (Fortunately, since going back to school after break, we've had much more success getting him on the school bus without the iPod, which was when we had to use this carrot the most.)

Second, I installed Angry Birds and Angry Birds Seasons (the Lite versions of both). Joseph really likes Angry Birds, and he loves Christmas, so "Christmas Birds', as he calls it, was a big hit. Unfortunately, after I showed him the educational apps I installed for him and the initial novelty wore off, all he wanted to do is watch movies and play Angry Birds. So today I decided that Angry Birds and the Bubble Wrap game needed to come off. So far, he's either not noticed or it's not bothering him. Also, I've put some music on, all with cover art so it can be found without having to read titles. Bob Marley, Hannes Wader, Chopin, Imagination Movers, Yo Gabba Gabba and a few others. I showed him a couple of times how to get to it and play it, but so far he's shown zero interest in listening to the music (which is really surprising).

I've been researching apps for a while. My priority for him is improving his receptive and expressive communication. I've been researching apps for a while now, but most of the ones that look like they'll be useful cost a couple of dollars. We're hoping we can get Kristy's parents to buy Joseph an iTunes gift card to pay for some of these. I'm particularly interested in the apps from Kindergarten.com, most of them are flash-card style apps and they say they're based on the principles of ABA.

I started looking for free apps, going through lists of apps for special needs kids in general, and autistic kids specifically. I found Lite (free) versions of several, some flash-card apps, some spelling apps, a Dr. Seuss storybook app. Most of the Lite apps are frustratingly limited, but good enough to get an idea of which ones are worth buying (because I'd hate to buy an app and then have him not be interested in playing it.) The goal is to have a collection of apps that Joseph can use by himself that will keep him occupied and teach him.

These are all either free, or have Lite versions that are free.

• The Dr. Seuss storybook app is a success, so far. It's going on the list of apps we're going to buy.
• Soundrop isn't exactly educational, but he plays it and doesn't get sucked in the way he did with Angry Birds.
• Doodlebuddy is a good, free drawing app.
• TapToTalk is a free communication app. It's $99 a year to have access to create your own vocabulary for it, which is a very good deal compared to some of the others. He fiddled with it for a few minutes, but has not shown any real interest in it. They've made it available on the iPod/iPhone/iPad, the Nintendo DS and several other devices.
• There is a series of apps called "FirstWords" that I like. They show you a picture of something (a cat for instance) and then you drag Scrabble-tile looking letters into their correct positions to spell the letters. It reads the letters out loud as you position them, and when you complete the word, it says it and the picture spins. It kept him occupied for a little while. I suspect he lost interest because it only had a few different words in the lite version. Whether or not he's learning anything from it, it's at his skill level and he can play it by himself.
• Animal Match looks good, but we've not been successful in getting him to play it by himself yet (just installed it today). It's a memory style card matching game, which he should excel at.
• iColoringBook is another new one we just installed. I'm not sure yet if it's something he's going to be interested in.
• We're hoping to find an app that will let us set up his schedule in the iPod and then it will alert and remind him. Like, he gets on the bus at 8:05, so it should make some noise at 8:00 and show him a picture of the bus. The same with dinner time, teeth-brushing time, bed-time, etc. I saw one in the app store, but there were a lot of complaints about it not working properly and this one was more than 99 cents.

I was concerned about leaving Joseph unsupervised with the iPod, so I asked around for the toughest iPod case available. I had several people tell me that the Otterbox Defender was the best. I ordered one from their website directly, $35 with shipping. I got it today and put it on his iPod. Three hours later, he had torn off the tab that covers the dock connector, and torn another part of the outer silicon case in order to remove it. I really expected a lot more. I am going to call Otterbox customer service, but I suspect my options will be return it for a refund, or have the silicon outer case replaced. Neither will really solve my problem, making Joseph's iPod Joseph-proof, as it will leave us either without a case, or with another silicon case that he can (and will eventually) tear.

He's had the iPod for a week now, and it's not been as revolutionary as I'd hoped, but he's showing interest. I will update again in a couple of weeks and we'll see how things are going then. I suspect that once we're able to buy the full versions of some of these apps that they will really be able to capture his interest.

If you have any apps, free or otherwise, to recommend for a mostly pre-verbal four year old; please leave a comment and tell me about them.

Update on Otterbox: I called customer service and they offered to send a replacement silicon outer case for free and I accepted. He's left the torn case on all week, so hopefully once we replace it he will leave the new one alone.