| My
son, Avi, is a nine year old with an autism spectrum
disorder. All kids on the spectrum manifest their
disability differently. Avi has always spoken,
yet he has great difficulties with certain aspects
of language. He has both receptive and expressive
delays, he has short term memory difficulties,
and he has trouble with words that change meaning,
including pronouns. He also has severe fine motor
skill delays (he’s not writing) and is
ADHD. He is reading now, but more on a late first
grade level. Yet he has an extremely creative
mind and lots of questions. For those of us who
would like to see him succeed in the world to
the best of his abilities, the challenge has
been how to access the core curriculum.
In
the summer between Avi’s first and second
grade I was given a copy of Pix Writer to explore
and see if Avi liked it. That summer Avi quickly
learned to write simple sentences about himself
and his family. He was hooked. It enabled him
to write words and phrases at a normal speed.
During the next school year I took information from
his social studies and science worksheets and made
little Pix Writer setups for him.
For Avi’s needs I usually "turned off"
the pictures that illustrated prepositions and words
that he already knew the meaning of. For him, a
lot of those illustrations were more confusing than
illuminating and distracted him from paying attention
to the vocabulary word he needed to learn. I was
able to download pictures from the internet and
other sources to incorporate images that were unclear
or not included in the software. He really enjoyed
making sentences about things like Indians and Economics
which were totally new to him. I downloaded the
setups to a CD and sent them into school and his
teacher often used the images for reinforcement
(and sometimes testing) of the concepts. This method
was an incredible success. The whole world seemed
to open up to Avi. He became more inquisitive and
much more interested in the world beyond himself.
He enjoyed the setups so much that he still asks
(over a year later) when he can "do Indians
on the computer."
This
year Avi’s reading has improved to the
point where he is able to read much of the core
curriculum from text and discuss it with me.
However, we have continued to use Pix Writer at
home to study new vocabulary. I have downloaded
illustrations and used ones in the original software
to make picture study guides that prompt his memory.
His thoughts are now too long and complex to be
accommodated by the limitations of Pix Writer
so we have resorted to oral recitation. However,
when Avi had to do his two Toastmasters' speeches
he used Pix Writer to make his
prompts on his poster and oversized index cards.
In this manner Pix Writer continues
to work well for Avi.
Both
Avi's teacher and I have introduced Type
to Learn software to give him a writing
outlet in the future. He cooperated with the software
but unfortunately the typing process is now too
slow for him to use as a practical outlet.
Avi
and I have also used BuildAbility.
It plays a completely different role. It is more
like a movie and therefore is better suited to
concepts like the water cycle that are harder to
grasp in static form. Using the software I made
a "movie" explaining the concept and
then he made his own (usually shorter) version
retelling it. BuildAbility
has also been great to retell and create fiction
stories. In this respect it has fired Avi's creativity
even though his drawings are illegible (to me) because
he can narrate along with his pictures. It helps
with sequencing practice and is fun for him.
When
we originally inquired about technology to assist
Avi, I had hoped that it would be something he could
use in the general education classroom to study
along with his peers. Even though it has not yet
been implemented that way, it has definitely been
a boon to our homework learning and for that I am
greatly appreciative.
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