Thanks AOTA

Thank you for your great attention on Thursday. The turnout was great -- I'm sorry if you did not get bubbles! I hope you were able to learn something useful! What a great conference.

The PowerPoint that is on this site is more updated than the one on AOTA's webpage. The rubric is included in this PPT.

I am going to put the comments and App recommendations and comments here -- if you have additional comments, please feel free to post those in the comment section.

Apps the audience recommended 

Dolch Words  FREE. Vocabulary/Reading.

Pocket Phonics  $2.99 First Words

Mee Genius FREE. Childrens Books 

Dexteria $4.99 Fine Motor Practice

Magic Piano FREE. A magic piano

Story Kit FREE Create an electronic storybook

Sosh $39.99 Work with adolescents to improve social skills

Letterquiz $1.99 Help kids learn their letters

Doodledots FREE Creates the dots so you don't have to! 

Goingplaces Free

Toontastic FREE. Create your own cartoon

Iwritewords Handwriting Game

Injini $29.99 Child Development (fine motor, sequencing, and more)

I couldn't find some of the apps listed on the yellow sheets. Please add additional ones in the comment section.

Websites:

Apppaboo.com (created by an audience member!) to help find relevant apps

Audience Feedback and Questions:

  Lock the apps you don’t want students to use (YouTube, movies, music)

Use earbuds and a microphone to help with Dragon in the iPad (Apple sells a headset that has the built-in microphone).

One audience member pointed out that Dragon recommends a 6^th grade level spelling and their personal experience is that Dragon is much more effective on the desktop version than the free iPad Version.

As we pointed out, this has not been our experience with everyone we have worked with and for some, but not all, Dragon has worked better on the iPad.
Does the summer camp look at home, school, or community or just a week in isolation on campus?

We use the UKAT (University of Kentucky Assistive Technology Assessment) for all of our individuals. This comprehensive assessment seeks feedback from the school, work, and family members who are involved in the individual’s life.

For some students, they are able to learn to use the technology and have enough natural supports that we don’t need to provide ongoing support. For others, the individuals need ongoing support from us – sometimes we provide training to the job coach, teacher, or family member who supports them in addition to the individual.  

Your point is excellent – we can’t just see any individuals we work with without looking at all contexts of their life. We take students from all over Ohio so we don’t have the resources to visit all of them in advance – we bring them to us to conduct the initial evaluations and do our best to give them experiences to use their technology while they are with us in environments similar to their home, school, and work environments. For example, they have classes they attend on various topics and need to use their note-taking app, or if they are going to a restaurant at night they need to use their technology.