Tuesday, 17 April 2012

Social Skills and Autism Webinar

Social Skills and Autism
During my second class, I had the opportunity to watch a Webinar on social skills and Autism.  It was presented by Barbara Welsford and Lindsey Welsford.
As discussed in the webinar, social skills development (cooperation, relating, conversations) are usually acquired naturally by children through play and daily interactions.  Children who are on the spectrum have difficulty learning these social development skills such as perspective taking, showing interests, and creating shared experiences.
Applications for the ipad were demonstrated which addressed one or more of four social skills areas:
1.      Conversations
2.      Creating Shared experiences
3.      Emotional Awareness and Regulation
4.      Social Cognitive skills
It was recommended that teachers should structure the use of ipad apps.  This can be done by scheduling ipad use into students’ schedules as either general ipad use or specific application use.  They also recommended that teachers set limits to the amount of time students use the ipad and to use an alarm to signal the end of that time.  It was further recommended that a preferred activity be scheduled right after ipad use to make the transition easier for students.
Listed below, in the four social skills areas, are the apps that were demonstrated in the webinar and their approximate cost.
1.      Conversations
Language
Social Adventures 24.99
Conversation Builder 7.99 or 24.99 (Conversation stimulator)
Practising Pragmatics Fun Deck 5.99 - Social skills questions and verbal answers on:
Phone skills
Problem Solving
Politeness
Feelings
Making requests
Staying on Topic
WH Questions at school and WH Questions at Home 5.99
Perspective taking
Webber Photo Cards What are they thinking 3.99
WH Fun Deck If…Then… 5.99
Idiom in Use- Advanced Idiom Dictionary – Free
In Action
Sosh Voice Meter .99  (focuses on high functioning children with Asperger’s)
Strip Designer 2.99
Talking Tom Cat for iPad- Free
Sock Puppets- Free
What If?-  Free
2.      Creating Shared experiences
Instruction
·         Turn Taker 4.99
Collaborative writing
·         Toontaskic 1.99
·         Story Builder 5.99
·         Rory’s Story Cubes 1.99
Games
·         Fantastic Four .99
·         Checkers- Free
·         Bugs to Buttons 2.99 (highly recommended)
Collaborative Creating
·         Whiteboard Lite – Free  (collaborative Drawing)
·         Crazy Photo Booth – Free

3.      Emotional Awareness and Regulation
Instruction
·         Faces iMake -  Right Brain Creativity 2.99
·         Emotionx - .99
·         Sosh 39.99 (full app) Relate, relax, Reason, Regulate and Recognise (focuses on high functioning children with Asperger’s)
EBooks
·         Thomas & Friends: Calling All Engines 1.99
·         Monster at the End of this book 3.99
In Action
·         Anger .99
·         Autism 5 Point Scale - Free
·         Sosh- The Shredder - .99
4.      Social Cognitive skills
·         Louder than Words 9.99 (non-verbal cues- business related)
·         Hidden Curriculum for Kids 1.99

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