Cross-Post: iPad revolutionizing how we do school

[Tea 4 Three]

Someone on the General Ed board asked the question,"Has the iPad revolutionized anything (or everything) about your homeschool?"

I posted this response which I had been meaning to post on this board for awhile just in case someone might find it helpful.

 

It has become indispensable for my dd (4th grade) who has a reading (and spelling) disability! Her level of independence has increased substantially and has allowed her to work on grade level. It has given me 2 hours of my day back! The best approach I have found to help her is to try to separate the necessary skills required for a task and use the iPad to simplify the task. So for example, if she is working on Vocabulary, I try to eliminate the actual reading and have her rely on her auditory skills which are very strong. If she is working on composition, we try to eliminate having to spell. We isolate spelling and work on that for a minimum of 40 min daily. We also isolate reading. She listens (and reads along) with Story of the World.

 

I don't what we would do without it at this point! Siri is her new best friend. There are other voices in each app, but she has figured out how to get Siri to read everything to her. If she needs help spelling a word, she can speak it and Siri will spell it for her. I am still looking for a dictionary app that works like a Franklin Speller. I import her WWE assignments into Speak It and it will read it to her. She does her narration by dictating it on the Notes app (to help with her spelling) and then copies it. We take a photo of anything on a page that she needs to read (for example the last assignment of every Wordly Wise lesson is a lengthy excerpt which she needs to read) and the Prizmo app will scan it and then read it aloud to her. Wordly Wise also has an audio file to introduce the vocab for each lesson online. I downloaded them all and put them in itunes. She will listen to it multiple times (and read along) in the course of each weekly lesson. Her visual memory is very compromised and she practices spelling high frequency words daily on Spelling City. One of the best purchases we have made (other than the iPad itself) is a membership to Learning Ally. She listens to books read aloud and we are working on building on her reading fluency by having her read while she listens. With the Learning Ally app, we can slow down the speech if she is working on reading fluency or speed it up past normal speech when we are working on auditory skills. Story of the World is available on Learning Ally. So far anything I have wanted is there. She had exhausted all of the options at our local library. This is a much cheaper option over purchasing audio books. We also useAudiobooks. Quizlet has also relieved some of her dependence on me. We also use GoodReader and Dropbox extensively for our pdfs. Eventually, I plan to train her to use it for notetaking and I have looked at AudioNote. I am working on organization skills with her and we put her assignments in the Reminder app. For fun she is enjoying Stack the States. Khan Academy has been great for my jr high and high school students.

[Tea 4 Three]

Someone else asked more about Siri and Learning Ally. This was my response:

 

Learning Ally is all human read books. There isn't any print, so I check out the books from the library and she reads along as it is read to her. It has helped to improve her fluency. You can slow the voice down using the app. She just recently has been able to follow along at normal speed. Sometimes there is a reader that we don't care for, but overall, we have been pleased. It is MUCH better than the computer generated reading from Bookshare, there is so much more variety over others such as Audiobooks or Librivox, and it saves SO much money over using Audible or something similar.

 

We were advised by a teacher for the visually impaired to work extensively on strengthening her auditory skills by speeding the voice up so she is able to listen and comprehend at a faster rate. I incorporate that into her history as she listens to Story of the World. It isn't read as well as Jim Weiss, but it gets the job done;) She listens and then does a narration.

 

There is a setting for Siri to have her read to you. Go to Accessibility...then turn Speak Selection to ON...You can adjust the Speaking Rate in that as well. She can go pretty fast and we have ours set pretty far off center towards the turtle. You can also have it highlight words as it is spoken. We will occasionally use this feature. We keep Speak Auto-text and VoiceOver set at OFF. After you have your settings in place, all you do is highlight what you want her to read and it will give you a pop-up menu with Speak as an option.

 

Another feature that I like is Guided Access. Sometimes if she is working on something that is particularly challenging, she will tend to procrastinate and "wander" into other apps and waste time. Then I just put it into Guided Access and force the issue.

[FairProspects]

Thank you so much for this! I have reset the iPad for Siri and ds is so excited!

[DyslexicParent]

To those with Android devices like the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0, what are the best educational apps including the Siri equivalent? I also have an iPod Touch 4th generation but it can't have Siri.