I have created this video to tell you about two apps that i believe can be super helpful for children with ASD. Below I have attached a paper giving you more details about the two application. I have also attached the websites that will tell you more about the apps
Pamela Sawa
For my final project, I chose to explore two digital applications that have been developed to help families of children who have ASD. I decided to choose this topic for my final project because I have a family member who has ASD. Growing up with a brother who has ASD, I often wished that we had access to any sort of resource that could help us to better help him. Currently, with the progress of technology, there are now so many resources available. However, it is still a challenge to utilize these options because it can be very difficult to find accurate information. For this project, I will be creating a video where I discuss two different applications. The first App I will walk through is titled “Choiceworks”. The second App is called, “Birdhouse”. After I finish creating the video, I will upload it to be displayed on my website. Since my theme for this term has been autism, I have an array of work that all discuss topics that are relevant to autism. My plan is to link all the work that I have completed throughout the semester and include them on my website. Not only am I going to create my website with links to relevant autism research and discussions, but I plan to also include as much accurate information as possible to make it easier for families to learn and get assistance.
The first application I will be discussing is “Choiceworks”. This application was created for the use of children ages three and up. What I really enjoy about this application is that it is visually appealing. This is an extremely important feature to have when developing an application for children. You want to make sure that they become interested in the application you are presenting to them. This App was designed to help parents and teachers teach children with autism how to follow schedules, transition between tasks, follow multi-step directions, and to help keep a routine. This application is great if your kids need help in the areas of time management, self awareness, and planning. When teaching planning to children with autism, this application can help you create different types of visual schedules that have tasks and a routine to follow. The application will have pictures that the child can follow step by step to achieve the goal that they have set. Not only will this help you tech your child how to plan a schedule and follow a routine, but it will also make them feel good about achieving their goal. Often times children with autism have melt downs or negative behaviors because they cannot communicate how they are feeling. Sometimes, they cannot express their needs or wants. One way this application teaches self awareness is the application has lots of pictures that the child can use to help them identify how they are feeling. Parents can use this application to show the child how to go back and refer to the pictures to express how they are feeling. When the child can navigate the application on their own, they can achieve the ability to express themselves, which will result in less problematic behaviors from that child. On this application, your child can also work on time management. As part of the tools offered with this program, you can add timers and create a schedule with periods in them. By doing this, your child will know when to move on to the next task and they will be able to know when to switch off between tasks. This application has four different boards; schedule board, feelings board, feelings scale and writing board. This application also has a lot of great features, including the image library where you can add your own images to create and personalize your own profile. Another great feature offered is the ability to attach videos to the application. You can also share your boards, print your boards, and create pdf files. This application is available to be downloaded on an iPhone or iPad. The cost for this application is $9.99 for a one time download on your device. The one downfall for this application is that it is only available for apple products. If a child does not have access to an apple product, then they will not be able to use this application.
The second application I will be talking about is called “Birdhouse”. “Birdhouse” is another great application for children with ASD. When researching this application, I found the structure of it to be geared more towards the parents, caretakers, and educators acting as the users. This application is great for helping you identify why certain behaviors are occurring. This application helps parents keep track of important developmental information about their child. It requires you to enter in your child’s gender, height, weight, diagnosis and much more information pertaining to your child. Once you have entered this information, the caregiver of that child can enter different information that the program will help develop into a timeline. This timeline has all different categories such as sleep, moods, food, therapy, meltdowns, and much more. The caregiver can enter all that information into the App, and it will then identify and highlight patterns that the algorithms notices that the caregivers may not see. This is a great application that can help parents, educators and other kids of caretakers identify things that could be triggering a child’s behavior. Other great features this application offers is the ability to keep a journal of your child’s behavior, track new diets, share health information with everyone who cares for that child, and organize medication and supplements. There are so many different options and features that can be utilized with this application. One positive thing about this application is that it can be used on androids and apple products, unlike “Choiceworks”. This being available for more than one brand makes it more accessible to people. This application is not just used for children with ASD. It can also be used for people who have other types of disabilities such as ADD/ADHD, SPD, RHETT Syndrome, cystic fibrosis, cerebral palsy, down syndrome, and many other types of disabilities. This application is easy to navigate once downloaded. When you open the application, you are first instructed to input all the child’s information. Once that is completed, it will bring you to the timeline. When you are accessing the timeline feature, you can see all the past dates and upcoming dates. The caregiver can click the tab of the date they want to enter information in. On the bottom of the screen there are four categories: Daybook, folders, you, and support. Daybook is where you can enter information according to each day. Folders has sections for therapists, medication, supplements, and doctors. In this section you can also add other types of folders you you wish to have. The section “you” is a place where you can set reminders, add people to access the information, and add in your own personal information. The support section gives you tips on how to use the application to its fullest capacity and allows you to find information on tech support if needed. In this section you can also create a support group as you learn new things that are going on in your community. You can also have more than one child’s information listed on the account. Initially, this application is free but if you would like access to all the features there is a fee of $8.99 a month or $63.00 annually if you want to become a premium member. If you want even more features you can become a power member. This membership is a little more expensive as it costs $28.99 a month or $203.00 annually. This application does offer a two week free trial period. This allows you to have access to the application without a commitment to see if it is the best fit for you and your family. This application can be a little costly but if it does make a difference in your child’s life and is essential to your child’s health, sometimes you may be able to get insurance to pay for it. This application also offers group rates and discounts if a school wanted to purchase this application for multiple students.
When researching different applications for this project, I came across many different ways Apps can be used to assist those with disabilities. I was looking for something specifically that could help both children and parents. I came across an article that highlighted six applications that have been extremely beneficial to children who have ASD. I found that “Choiceworks”and “Birdhouse” both contained distinct features that I was looking for. I wanted the application to be easily navigated, colorful and fun. When I say fun, I mean I would like it to be appealing to the children. After looking into these applications, I did learn that I prefer “Choiceworks” over “Birdhouse” even though they don’t cater to the same needs. I found that “Choiceworks” is much easier to use, more appealing to the eye and it has an overall better rating from their users. “Choiceworks” is also much more affordable compared to “Birdhouse”. “Birdhouse” is still very user friendly, however, at times it was really difficult to navigate. “Birdhouse” had a couple of reviews that were negative about the application. One thing that stuck out to me was the fact that users are having trouble reaching out to tech support when they run into an issue, because the success of any digital application depends partly on the ability for users to get assistance when things aren’t functioning properly.
I would most certainly use both applications in my classroom. I believe the “Choiceworks” application would be extremely beneficial for my students. All my students use visuals to communicate. This application is extremely user friendly and easy to teach how to use. I truly believe it will be easily picked up by my students. They love technology so this will be very appealing to them. This application is not too costly either. This application can be utilized in the classroom and at home. This is one big positive because that means we can count on the implementation of these techniques at home. Students can now have the means to use what they learn in school at home. The teachers can hold a meeting for the parents to come in and learn how to navigate the application and how they can implement it at home. This can also be used as an opportunity to introduce the other application “Birdhouse” to the parent. I would allow the parents to decided whether or not they would like to use that application because this is a costly application and to be honest I can see the department of education not wanting to pay for this application because the students themselves will not be using the application. That application is more so for the use of the parents, teachers and other caretakers.
My goal for this assignment was to find a way to help the communication between children with ASD and parents, educators and other people in their lives. I am very happy with the information I learned while doing this project. I will be connecting all the things I have created throughout this term to my website. I will be uploading my video on these two applications on the website as well. My hope is to create a domain that I can continue to work on after this course is over. I would like my website to be a source of positive information to parents of children with ASD, children who have ASD and want to learn more about themselves, and for all other people involved in that child's life. I would like to post updated information and create a safe place where families can turn to. Below you will find the link to my website and the link to my video.
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