ipad for communication

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We are getting my 6 year old daughter Maddy (classic autism) an iPad 2 for Christmas to help her with her communication, plus she is a little electronic wizard and makes cartoons on her Nintendo DSI and no one taught her how. She does speak but she does not communicate well. We also have the added problem of the fact that we moved to France last year. She has picked up words and has no accent due to her perfect pitch but just like English (she does know far more words in English than in French) she has problems communicating and having back and forth conversations. She has trouble focusing on words and has always done so much better with PECS and it is how we got her to learn to speak words but still when there is not way to speak to her, when she is seriously finished with words that make sense or she has just lapsed into singing, the pictures work.
We are worried about the school that she is in, even though she has a full time aide her aide does not really understand Maddy and is at a loss to what to do when she gets frustrated or upset. We do have a meeting on Thursday with my kids therapy center and we are not happy with them as they promised to go in right away and get Maddy set up with a picture schedule and we are upset a bit with her aide for not going to the educational seminars that the center has offered her....she says she is too busy. We even offered to pay for her to go to a week long training session in the TEACCH method over the summer but again she refused. They basically have no aides who are autism trained for the public schools.

Last year my son Luc who is 9 and has Asperger's and also has learning disabilities (dyslexia and dysgraphia) had a lot of issues in the school Maddy is in now (last year she went to the little school, they start at age 3 and end after kindergarten, she did great there it was small and far more quiet and her teacher just "got" her). Luc was bullied and his aide was very unfriendly and unwilling to work with him and instead of encouraging him and also to avoid his meltdowns she did most of his work for him. At least my daughters aide, who she also had last year, is very happy and really likes Maddy and tries to help. I know she has a baby and I also know that some of the issues with getting her training may be difficult due to that and to the fact that the school wont give her the time to go to these seminars as she has to be "on the clock". Anyway when they said they wanted to send Luc to the specialized school with kids who have various forms of autism, ADHD and learning disabilities I wanted Maddy to go too. They talked me out of it because they told me that they would have to put Maddy in the autism class because of her high intelligence, but, she would be with kids are mainly non verbal and have more issues than Maddy such as hitting and biting which could cause her to adopt these behavior as she does tend to imitate. Also there are no girls which is a huge issue for her. The only boy she will go near is her brother.

So we are going to work with the aide and Maddy's teacher to try to understand her and to help her. I am buying her aide some Temple Grandin book's like Emergence and Thinking in Pictures to help her to understand how Maddy's mind works because she thinks a lot like Temple does. Her aide even told me that because Maddy is so intelligent, that shows in her school work, its hard for them to view her as Autistic....also because she does not speak much French they do not see as much of the communication problems she has they only see that she does not speak French well. She does have other "behaviors" she is very excited and sometimes stressed during recess so she runs and flaps and her aide also sees that she does not play with the other kids in a typical way. One little girl from last year has latched onto Maddy (she takes care of her) and when she is not there Maddy is a bit lost even with her aide, especially at recess.

Her teacher, even though Maddy seems to like him, is not as easy going as her former teacher. He expects her to be quiet all the time and they are not giving her any extra breaks or sensory play or rewards for being quiet, ect. They have a problem with her finishing her work before everyone else and then singing because she is bored. I have send countless sensory toys to school but they have rules that kids are not allowed toys in class. We will be talking to the therapy center about this because all of these strict rules are causing Maddy a lot of stress and she is having some serious meltdowns at school which she rarely ever did before.

Yesterday her teacher was passing out books and Maddy wanted to help but he kept telling her no and that she had to go back to her seat so she got very upset and when her aide tried to help it only escalated into a meltdown.
We are hoping that with the Ipad 2 and the Proloquo2Go app she will be able to express how she feels and maybe even speak more to the other kids. Also we are also hoping to improve her French vocabulary. My husband was wary at first because he was afraid that she will stop speaking and let the iPad speak for her and I reminded him that this is our daughter he is talking about. Even before she could talk she had her own language so she is not going to stop speaking completely and if this helps her than its worth it because mainly all she talks about is, ear rings and for the past four days she talks about the Christmas tree being white "the Christmas tree is white!".....and this morning she said "The Christmas tree is still white" (we got an artificial one this year) so maybe with the iPad she can tell us more because she is not really talking to us she is just talking and sometimes answering questions. I think this will make a huge improvement.

Does anyone else have an iPad 2 and how is it working for you? I was thinking I could even take it into the hospital when I have to go to help me to talk to my nurses and doctor, that is if I can wrench it away from Maddy

Also just wanted to add that Luc is doing awesome in his new school. He spends half the day there and half the day at therapy. He is READING whoo hooo and even writing a bit. Its so exciting so now we just need to get things ironed out with Maddy.

I don't know much about the iPad 2--we are more of a PC, video, and DVD family. However, I found this cool website this morning about using technology in the classroom:

http://www.emergingedtech.com/

It has lots of cool links, some of them about iPad use and programs. Video modeling and other special needs teaching techniques using technology are discussed.

Anyway, I have included it on the "autism links" page on my free website, www.freevideosforautistickids.com.

Of note, between www.freevideosforautistickids.com and the connected youtube channels, there are thousands of links to resources, which are somewhat organized and which will be better organized at some point down the road.

I own an iPad1 and it actually drives me nuts, but it's still cool. And that is just me ... my needs are not your daughter's needs (I type a lot, I'm touch type trained, and they are awful to type on. Plus I hate the auto-correct, and there is a lot on the internet that is not compatible with the operating system).

However.

I'm hearing of widespread and positive us of the use of the iPad's as a communication tool. As costly as they are, it is apparently MUCH cheaper than the assistive technology used previously, and just having that price accessibility is changing things for the better for many, many people.

I say go for it. But her tool should be her tool, and I wouldn't expect to get much use from it yourself. Just my experience of how these things go in the family.

I use an iPod Touch (like a little iPad) and have a grant application in for a first gen iPad. I use Assistive Chat.

We love our ipad for use with the apps. I don't type well on it, so it deosn't replace my computer, but it is really great in some areas.

For communication - excellent. there was a good 60 minutes piece on ipad apps for autistics, I would go dig around the 60 minutes website to see what they receomend. For us, we used the ipad all over Hong Kong when we recently travelled. I used some really great translation apps. One was for taxi service. I could select my destimation in english and it would display the place name in mandarin. It is really easy for kids to use and enjoy. My son LOVES all of is apps and games.

DW, yeah I highly doubt Im going to get to use it !