When you enter Emily Buczek’s Toronto classroom, it’s like Times Square: Everywhere you look, there’s a new visual distraction.
A picture of each student is tacked onto a large, colourful map above his or her country of origin (Emily’s mug hovers over Poland).
There’s a shelf of well-loved toys – a slumped-over clown, a plush frog – and rows of picture books, among them Emily’s favourite: a cardboard volume of Winnie-the-Pooh stories.
All these diversions are there to keep up with students’ fleeting attention spans: Emily and her peers at Beverley School all have developmental and/or physical disabilities.
Autistic student Emily Buzcek, 13, has already mastered the iPod Touch, which helps her learn and communicate. The iPad's larger screen will be a big improvment, parents say.— Tim Fraser / For The Globe and Mail
Emily, a profoundly autistic 13-year-old with an overgrown pixie cut and fingernails that have been cut or chewed to the quick, doesn’t fit the stereotype of an early adopter of the iPad.
But parents and educators of children with developmental disabilities – particularly autism spectrum disorders (ASD) – have celebrated its release. While the device was created mostly for media consumption, it has plenty of surprising uses for children with such disabilities.
Emily doesn’t have an iPad in her hands yet, but the learning curve won’t be very steep when it’s released in Canada at the end of the month – she’s already mastered the iPod Touch at school and at home.
It’s been a godsend, her mother Christina says. With an autistic child, even the simplest tasks can be emotionally and physically draining.
She recalls many days when Emily, who is mostly non-verbal, indicated she wanted to go shopping – but wouldn’t say where.
“I’d be driving her toward one store and pulling in and she’d be really upset because it wasn’t the one she wanted,” she says. “It’s wasting a lot of time, it’s a lot of frustration.”
But then she downloaded the iConverse app on Emily’s iPod Touch. One of many assisted communication programs available for people with disabilities, it allowed Ms. Buczek to load photos of her daughter’s favourite stores, set to audio recordings of their names. Now all Emily has to do is run the app and click on the button that corresponds with her choice.
While Apple has not yet revealed Canadian prices for the iPad (it starts at $500 in the U.S.), Ms. Buczek says a price tag of even several hundred dollars would be significantly cheaper (not to mention more portable) than some of the assisted communication devices currently on the market, which can cost more than $10,000.
Emily, like many kids with ASD, struggles with her fine motor skills, and a larger screen would help her navigate the apps with greater precision, Ms. Buczek says.
At Emily’s school, six teachers are using the iPod Touch with their developmentally-disabled students, as part of a University of Toronto study led by faculty of information professor Rhonda McEwen. Professor McEwen wants to see how it can help them communicate.
So far, their greatest use is easing anxiety among students, says Emily’s teacher, Ian Stuart.
The iPod Touch that he uses with his class has been outfitted with speakers.
“Touch the bee,” says a tinny female voice in one app. Displayed on the screen is a chocolate bunny, a bee and a shopping cart. Emily’s hooked index finger hovers over all three options before it presses down on the bee.
Mr. Stuart frequently uses apps like this to help Emily focus before she moves on to a new activity in class, since transitions can be very difficult for kids with ASD.
There’s a stack of deep blue one-inch binders in his classroom that are collecting dust. Before, whenever he’d head out with his students, he’d have to bring them along.
