Learn My Info

 

 

 

Next Dollar Up

Next Dollar Up is a widely utilized special education teaching strategy for those with special needs to develop independence in money management using a whole dollar amount concept.   It involves looking at an item price and rounding up to the next dollar to make the purchase.

 

Now it is available as an App on the iPad!!

-Teachers, parents, and learners will appreciate the simplicity and fun of this game in a real life scenario designed to build skill generalization.

-Simply click the play button to hear the cashier’s prompt for the dollar amount needed to purchase the item on the game card.
-Drag the correct amount of dollar bills from the money stack to the payment area.  When completed, click the check button.
-If correct, the user will be congratulated with a highlighted star along the top as a positive reinforcer. If incorrect, a large X will indicate the incorrect answer has been chosen.

-The game card will flip over momentarily as a correction procedure, allowing the user to review the correct answer.
-User will be given the opportunity to swipe the correct number of bills before moving on to the next card.
-10 correct answers wins the game.

-34 game cards in all which are rotated in a randomized order with amounts up to $5.

Next Dollar Up eliminates the need to count change and guarantees that a person will never be overcharged more than 99¢.  Various learning styles are addressed simultaneously.  Nonreaders can enjoy Next Dollar Up as well due to the illustrative game cards and voice prompts.

 

The most basic version of this classroom concept has been brought to the App.  Five dollars is the maximum purchase price of items on the game cards.  Simplicity and consistency are at the forefront of design, with the intention that the user not become lost in its functions but rather receive the maximum educational value possible.  Data collection for educators and parents is simplified with ten trials per session.

 

Next Dollar Up Short Term Objective:  Users will count $0.01 to $5.00 using one dollar bills.
Next Dollar Up Long Term Goal: User will gain the confidence to use money in the community to purchase items of up to $5.00.

 

 

Stories About Me

Stories About Me allows parents and teachers to create their own social situational stories for their children and students.  Blending photos, text, and voice recordings the user can playback on the iPad rich media stories of their own personal experiences.  Swiping advances the pages and tapping plays the audio; simple as that!

 

Want to allow your child to relive the trip to their grandparents house? How about the fishing trip with dad?  Maybe just brushing your teeth before its time to go to bed.  With Stories About Me for the iPad, the possibilities are endless, because you create them!

 

Teachers will love the usefulness of this app as a classroom aid.  Transitions can be a stressful situation for children with special needs such as autism.  With Stories About Me a student can be provided specific details on what they can expect from a situation and what should be expected of them.  With this app they will hear their own or their teacher’s recorded voice and see recognizable images on the storypages, rather than pre-developed scenes involving strangers.

 

This will improve generalization and rate of skill development.

Stories About Me is integrated with Dropbox functionality which allows sharing of stories with others who have the app.  Send your custom story to teachers at school or grandparents across the country.  Dropbox also allow you to back-up your stories to the cloud, so you never have to worry about losing them.

 

 

 

Research Based Findings

iPad Apps Aid People with Autism

Introduction

At the time of writing there are four hundred or more iPad Apps available claiming to provide either positive learning or communications outcomes for persons with Autism Spectrum Disorders (‘ASD’), or to deliver management gains for their carers. These Apps are usually classified by their promoters as Assistive Technology, but to what extent are they assistive, and do they deliver positive outcomes for users and/or their carers?  This article is a review of some of the evidence in support of positive outcomes from the use of such apps on the iPad for those persons with ASD, suggested dimensions of relevance, and an overview of one App in the context of those dimensions.

Outcomes

There is much anecdotal evidence – for example in the form of YouTube videos – which points to salient communications outcomes for some person with ASD using iPad Apps, but not all. Rose, Dunlap, Huber and Kincaid (2003) summarized the consensus of leading scholars that there was no empirical evidence to support uniform solutions to individualized student needs. Therefore, the extent to which iPad Apps can be configured to suit a particular student’s needs is important.
The spectrum of Apps is very broad and, prima facie, as students’ needs are highly individualized, evidential support is likely to be at best, patchy, and at worst, non-existent, perhaps with few general conclusions to be drawn. In fact, the opposite may be the case.

Dimensions

Areas of particular interest are the user interface (touch screen,  keypad input) in relation to dexterity issues that people with ASD may exhibit. Display simplicity, learning speed control and learning progress measurement are other aspects of focus. There are claims cited (Assistive Technology Roundup 2012) that multiple sensory inputs help students. Additionally, direct input via the touch screen is said to reduce student confusion and provide a degree of control which engages them. We define several dimensions relevant to these aspects of interaction.

Types of App

The types of App (we use the term ‘App’ generically to embrace all computer programs which can be run on the iPad, in the context of this article) range widely, but fall under two main headings: Student Operated and Carer Support. This paper focuses specifically on Student Operated Apps.
Student Operated App Categories

Personal information (a student’s profile)
Self Management (e.g. daily schedule, ticklist builder)
Basic life training (e.g. potty training)
Learning support (e.g. dictionary)
Learning (e.g. Math or History)
Communication enablement (e.g. touch to speech)
Conversation improvement (e.g. word finder)
Entertainment (e.g. music selection, favorite videos)
Games (learning directed, or simple pleasure)
Everyday Support (e.g. personal money manager).
This extensive range of Apps in itself causes problems for teachers and carers (Price 2011).

From Classroom Flash Card to iPad: Adaptation or Rethink?

Some of the iPad Apps are based on successful classroom games, which may use visual charts or flip cards. Many of these types of learning games or practical assistance tools are readily adapted for the iPad, and the adaptation may offer opportunities for improvement in the teaching process. The multi-media capabilities of the iPad may offer some additional benefits, and invite a fundamental re-think of the more successful classroom teaching tools.
Collins and Collyear (1996) assessed the inclusion so-called ‘natural cues’ within a least prompt response mechanism for teaching the Next Dollar Strategy to students with mild to moderate intellectual disabilities making purchases. They concluded that there was a benefit to 3 in 4 students in the group studied.
Early studies using technology as an approach were not encouraging. Baumgart and VanWallegham (1987) demonstrated that flash cards were more efficient than computers for teaching sight words to a generalized community. In the intervening fifteen years, desktop PCs have shrunk and become much more user-friendly, as have the human/machine interfaces. The iPad and other tablet PCs have warranted a re-assessment of the possibilities.
There are several dimensions in relation to the student/iPad interaction which are worthy of consideration. Some are speculative, and some are supported evidentially.

Dimension: Visual Device Appeal
The portable and visually appealing iPad is a very personal device, and, arguably, its appeal is almost universal across a wide intellectual range.

Dimension: Accessibility
This ‘personal and portable’ nature may well reduce resistance to use or learning in some students with ASD, but there is little formal evidence to substantiate this. However, the apparent ease of accessibility would suggest intuitively that this might be the case.

Dimension: Adoption
There is anecdotal evidence from carers and other observers which supports a hypothesis that students’ personal adoption of iPads is unusually strong, particularly where it assists them to overcome (or at least reduce) interpersonal communication difficulties (Joshi 2011).

Dimension: Auditory

The multimedia capability of the iPad enables (per Collins and Collyer, ibid.) the inclusion of natural (auditory) cues to provide benefits to students.

Dimension: Visual
Familiar and visually appealing interface icons with the possibility of personalization (YaleMedicalGroup, 2011) may encourage higher levels of interaction, but other visual feedback is also beneficial.
Healthcare professionals are clear that visual stimuli from iPads and similar devices are of assistance to children with ASD (YaleMedicalGroup, ibid.).

Dimension: Touch Input
This is, perhaps, the one feature which offers greatest insight into the interaction between a student with ASD and the iPad or tablet computer. The iPad reacts predictably to the student’s input, and that provides a high degree of control to the student. Controlling behavior styles are often observed in persons with ASD.
The iPad’s touch screen interface offers the app designer a way to simplify student-machine interaction by linking user touch to audio-visual responses. This offers potential for the realization of the natural cues which Collins and Collyear (ibid.) observed as beneficial in least prompt response learning procedures.
Larger ‘buttons’ are more amenable to those who may have problems with fine motor control.

Dimension: Student-iPad Interaction
Interaction with other human beings is characterized by unpredictability and behavior independent of (or at least, not closely coupled to) a stimulus by the student with ASD. Other persons are likely to display emotion, and may even touch – which is unpleasant to many students with ASD. The iPad does not touch – it is a one way touch stimulus, from student to machine, with predictable (after learning) and consistent results.
There is anecdotal evidence from observers that the ‘video game’ appearance of some Apps is particularly engaging for students.

Dimensions of a Typical App

The ‘Next Dollar Strategy’ is a widely used classroom teaching approach for improving the money management skills of some ASD students. It helps build confidence for simple shopping transactions. Cihak and Grim (2008) demonstrated that skills were maintained 100% 6 weeks post-intervention. Typically, dollar bills are represented by flash cards or simulated money.
This teaching strategy has been developed into an iPad App, and its features were assessed against the Dimensions proposed above, as they are relevant to the App itself. The dimensions are assessed here in the order in which they affect the student using the App, and are necessarily repeated as the game progresses.

App Assessed

‘Next Dollar Up’ (Limited Cue LLC, 2012)

Dimensions: Visual Device Appeal, Adoption and Accessibility

These dimensions are features of the iPad device itself and not the App.

Dimension: Visual

The presentation is of a series of dollar bills in a Money Area, and a Payment Area.

Dimension: Touch Input

The play button is pushed by the student to start the learning-reinforcement cycle.

Dimension: Auditory

The cashier’s prompt is spoken (thus stimulating listening and interpretation).

Dimensions: Student-iPad Interaction, Visual

The student touches and drags dollar bills from the Money Area into the Payment Area, to accumulate the whole dollar amount the cashier requested.

Dimension: Touch Input

When the money transfer has been completed, the student presses the Check button.

Dimension: Visual

Correct: If the answer is correct, a gold star – a positive reinforcer – will appear at the top of the screen.
Incorrect: A large X appears and the game card flips over momentarily to allow the student to reveal the correct answer.

Dimensions: Student-iPad Interaction, Visual

For an incorrect answer, the student may correct the cash tendered.

Game Summary
For each student session (‘game’), there are ten cycles of cash tendering (ten stars). This provides reinforcement. For educators and parents the ten trials per session are convenient for data collection. A range of learning styles is apparent in the design. The maximum amount is $5 and counting in cents is not enabled.
The designers state that “it was the intention that the user not become lost in its functions but rather receive the maximum educational value possible”.
‘Next Dollar Up’ makes use of all the dimensions that were considered.

Conclusions

It is clear that iPad Apps may be engaging for students, though evidence is mainly anecdotal at this time.
Opportunity to engage students using a variety of sensory inputs appears to be maximized in the App reviewed.
The standardized interface and inbuilt measurement opportunities are useful for highly standardized comparisons of persons with differing levels of ASD.
The conclusions of Baumgart and VanWallegham (ibid.) may not be entirely applicable for the iPad generation.
Opportunities to enhance ‘Next Dollar Up’ with timing challenges for students might provide interesting data for analysis.

References

Baumgart, D., & VanWalleghem, J. V.(1987). Teaching sight words: A comparison between computer-assisted and teacher taught methods. Education and Training in Mental Retardation, 22, 56-64.

Cihak, D. F., & Grim, J. (2008). Teaching students with autism spectrum disorder and moderate intellectual disabilities to use counting-on strategies to enhance independent purchasing skills. Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders, 2, 716-727.

Collins, B.C., Collyer, S.P. (1996). Using natural cues within prompt levels to teach the Next Dollar Strategy to students with disabilities. The Journal of Special Education, Vol. 30, 3/1996/pp. 305-318.

Joshi, P. (2011). GADGETWISE; Finding good apps for children with autism. The New York Times, (Dec. 1, 2011): Business News: pB11(L).

Limited Cue LLC. (2012) Next Dollar Up [computer software]. Available from  http://www.limitedcue.com

Price, A. (2011). Making a Difference with Smart Tablets. Teacher Librarian, (1), 31-34.

Rose, I., Dunlap, G., Huber, H., Kincaid, D. (2003). Effective educational practices for students with autism spectrum disorders. Focus on Autism and Other Developmental Disabilities, Fall 2003, 18, 3; ProQuest Education Journals pg. 150.

V.W. (2012). Assistive Technology Roundup: iPads & Autism. Technology & Learning, Feb2012, Vol. 32 Issue 7, p28-28.
Yale Medical Group (2011). iPad’s visual prompts helps children with autism.  Retrieved from http://www.yalemedicalgroup.org/iPad2011.

 

 

Research Based Findings

iPad App: Social Stories for Persons with Autism

Introduction

Positive learning or communications outcomes for persons with Autism Spectrum Disorders (‘ASD’) are claimed for many iPad Apps. There is a growing body of anecdotal evidence to support this, but at present there is little empirical evidence from formal studies, either supporting or disproving that assertion.
An iPad App is a computer program which runs on Apple iPad computers (tablet computers which has a similar physical form factor and user interface).  In the context of persons with ASD, available Apps (there are over four hundred at the time of writing) range widely, but fall under two main headings: Student Operated and Carer Support. This analysis examines a commercially available App which is a realization of the widely used Social Story intervention.

Social Stories

The ‘social story’ approach has become almost ubiquitous for addressing social-cognitive difficulties typical of persons with ASD (e.g. Hess, Morrier, Heflin, & Ivey, 2008). Hutchins (2012) summarises the approach and notes that accurate information directly relevant to the student, is critical to effective outcomes.

Potential for Outcome Gains

Some students with disabilities have difficulty acquiring the social skills typical of peer students with no disabilities (Brown, 2001; Hall, Peterson, Webster, Bolen, & Brown, 1999; Odom et al.,1999). Such children require intervention to make gains in the social area.
Addressing the social and communications deficits of person with ASD by using social story interventions has been a widely accepted approach. However,
Hanley-Hochdorfer, Bray, Kehle, and Elinoff (2010) suggest that the efficacy of social story intervention is questionable and in need of further research. Their conclusions were drawn on the basis of a method which used articles and books to deliver the social story content to the students, in line with the accepted intervention protocols. Meta Analysis by Kokina and Kern (2010) concluded that a proprietary social stories product was more effective when addressing inappropriate behaviors than when teaching social skills. Social stories also seemed to be associated with improved outcomes when used in general education settings and with target children as their own intervention agents.
Studies of interventions which used technology as an approach were not encouraging. Work by Baumgart and VanWallegham (1987) concluded that flash cards were more efficient than computers for teaching sight words to a generalized community of students with ASD. Since then, technology and human/machine interaction has changed considerably.
The possibilities of significant positive outcomes arising from a combination of the latest technology and multimedia presentation of social stories is worthy of investigation.
Dimensions

In an earlier unpublished work (Marsh, 2012), the author proposed a simple set of Dimensions for assessing iPad Apps. These Dimensions are relevant to a student’s context.

Visual Device Appeal

The portable and visually appealing iPad is a very personal device, and, arguably, its appeal is almost universal across a broad intellectual range.

Accessibility

The ‘personal and portable’ nature of an iPad may well reduce resistance to use or learning in some students with ASD. The apparent ease of accessibility would suggest intuitively that this might be the case.

Adoption

Carers and other observers report informally that adoption is high both in salience and frequency. This supports a hypothesis that students’ personal adoption of iPads is unusually strong, particularly where it assists them to overcome (or at least reduce) interpersonal communication difficulties (Joshi 2011).

Auditory

The multi channel media capability of the iPad enables the inclusion of natural (auditory) cues to provide benefits to students (following from Collins and Collyer, 1996).

Visual

Familiar and visually appealing interface icons with the possibility of personalization (YaleMedicalGroup, 2011) may encourage higher levels of interaction, but other visual feedback is also beneficial. Healthcare professionals are clear that visual stimuli from iPads and similar devices are of assistance to children with ASD (YaleMedicalGroup, ibid.).

Touch Input

This is, perhaps, the one feature which offers greatest insight into the interaction between a student with ASD and the iPad or tablet computer. The iPad reacts predictably to the student’s input, and that provides a high degree of control to the student. Controlling behavior styles are often observed in persons with ASD.

The iPad’s touch screen interface offers the app designer a way to simplify student-machine interaction by linking user touch to audio-visual responses. Again, this offers potential for the realisation of the natural cues which Collins and Collyear (ibid.) observed as beneficial in least prompt response learning procedures.

Larger touch screen ‘buttons’ are more amenable to those who may have problems with fine motor control.

Student-iPad Interaction

Interaction with other human beings is characterized by unpredictability and behaviour independent of (or at least, not closely coupled to) a stimulus by the student with ASD. Other persons are likely to display emotion, and may even touch – which is unpleasant to many students with ASD. The iPad does not touch – it is a one way touch stimulus, from student to machine, with predictable (after learning) and consistent results.

There is anecdotal evidence from observers that the ‘video game’ appearance of some Apps is particularly engaging for students.

Social Stories – an iPad Realization

The ‘Stories About Me’ App (Limited Cue 2012) was assessed against the Dimensions proposed above, as they are relevant to the App itself. The dimensions are assessed here in the order in which they affect the student using the App, and are necessarily repeated as the Real Life Story unfolds to the student.
This App requires Educator/Carer/Parent input to configure a story, which is outside the scope of this review. In general terms, it provides a framework for linking visual (still pictures, image files and video), audio (narrative, podcasts, audio recordings, music) and text into storylines. The framework includes the iPad/student user interface,

Dimensions: Visual Device Appeal and Adoption

These dimensions are features of the iPad device itself and not the App.
Dimension: Accessibility

The stories are available as and when the student wishes – on demand – they do not depend on the availability of an educator, carer or other person to read (where reading skills are an issue).

Dimension: Visual

A menu of stories is presented.
Integration of personal pictures.
Dimension: Touch Input

Choice of a story is made by the student through touch screen input.
Dimension: Auditory

Stories usually involve audio content (for example the voice of a family member) giving instructions for a task or telling the story of a visit to the beach.

Dimension: Visual

As the story unfolds, still pictures are visible to the student.

Dimensions: Student-iPad Interaction, Visual

‘Swiping’ – a touch and drag – advances the story (or takes it back to a previous page).

Dimension: Visual

Still images are relevant to the student’s individual circumstances – family, school, social.
Additional Observations and Commentary

Each story is unique to a student and requires individual preparation by an educator/carer/parent.

Stories may be configured for any number of situations/routines: for example cleaning one’s teeth.

Transitions can be stressful for students with special needs. With interventions such as this App provides, a student can be provided specific details on what they can expect from a situation and what should be expected of them.

The integration of the App with a freely available online file transfer utility (Dropbox) enables large content-rich stories to be readily transferred. This allows, for example, geographically remote family members easily to transfer stories to a student.

The App’s authors claim that the App will improve generalization and a student’s rate of skills development, though as yet this assertion has not been formally tested.

Conclusions

Higher degrees of educator input are required than would be the case with standardized stories. However, higher levels of student engagement may reduce the overall supervisory workload in a classroom. Further, higher levels of positive outcome may reduce the overall teaching workload to arrive at a given level of learning gain.
Integration of personal pictures provides student-centric content which would, prima facie, offer potential for higher levels of engagement (Hutchins, ibid.).
Accessibility is ‘on demand’, and therefore the potential to deliver content to a student is not dependent on third parties (after the story has been constructed). This offers both improved learning opportunity and potentially more efficient use of classroom resources.
Repetition of stories is ‘on demand’ and independent of third parties. This offers considerable potential learning benefits through reinforcement.
The App has the potential to satisfy the conclusions of Kokina and Kern (ibid.) in respect of improving outcomes when used in general education settings and with target children as their own intervention agents.
References

Baumgart, D., & VanWalleghem, J. V.(1987). Teaching sight words: A comparison between computer-assisted and teacher taught methods. Education and Training in Mental Retardation, 22, 56-64.

Collins, B.C., Collyer, S.P. (1996). Using natural cues within prompt levels to teach the Next Dollar Strategy to students with disabilities. The Journal of Special Education, Vol. 30, 3/1996/pp. 305-318.

Hall, C. W., Peterson, A. D., Webster, R. E., Bolen, L. M., & Brown, M. B. (1999). Perception of nonverbal social cues by regular education, ADHD, and ADHD/LD students. Psychology in the Schools, 36, 505–514.

Hanley-Hochdorfer, K., Bray, M.A., Kehle, T.J., Elinoff, M.J. (2010). Social Stories to Increase Verbal Initiation in Children with Autism and Asperger’s Disorder. School Psychology Review, 2010, Volume 39, No. 3, pp. 484–492.

Hess, K. L., Morrier, M. J., Heflin, L. J., & Ivey, M. L. (2008). Autism treatment survey: Services received by children with autism spectrum disorders in public school classrooms. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 38, 961–971.

Hutchins, T.L. (2012).  What’s the Story? The ASHA Leader,  Features, 17 January 2012,  pp. 15-17

Joshi, P. (2011). GADGETWISE; Finding good apps for children with autism. The New York Times, (Dec. 1, 2011): Business News: pB11(L).

Kokina, A., Lee, K. (2010). Social StoryTM Interventions for Students with Autism Spectrum Disorders: A Meta-Analysis. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders. Volume 40, Number 7 (2010), 812-826, DOI: 10.1007/s10803-009-0931-0

Limited Cue LLC. (2012) ‘Stories About Me’ [computer software]. Available from  http://www.limitedcue.com

Rose, I., Dunlap, G., Huber, H., Kincaid, D. (2003). Effective educational practices for students with autism spectrum disorders. Focus on Autism and Other Developmental Disabilities, Fall 2003, 18, 3; ProQuest Education Journals pg. 150.

Yale Medical Group (2011). iPad’s visual prompts helps children with autism.  Retrieved from: http://www.yalemedicalgroup.org/iPad2011.