9 New Apps for Autism

A monthly showcase of the latest mobile apps for educators and students. In recognition of Autism Awareness Month, this month's roundup features the newest apps for autism guest curated by the website Techinspecialed.com.

• By Techinspecialed
• 04/11/12

• Hamaguchi Apps has released First words international, an early learning app. This app has 50 first word (objects), which are shown in 10 or more ways so children can more readily generalize their meaning. This app works on 3 activities: Learn the Word, Find the Word (receptive vocabulary) and Say the Word (expressive vocabulary). There are built in reinforcers to encourage kids to continue to use the app and learn these core objects. $9.99; iPad.

• Write my name from NCsoft is an OT/Fine Motor skills app that supports children ages four through six as they learn how to write their name, trace uppercase and lowercase letters, and write more than 100 familiar sight/Dolch words. Write My Name meets some of the basic reading and writing Common Core State Standards for kindergarten such as the introduction and mastery of print and word recognition concepts. $3.99; iPad.

• Articulation Station Pro from Little Bee Speech is a full-featured Speech and Language app to help children as well as adults learn to speak and pronounce their sounds more clearly. High quality images represent target words to be practiced in activities with the assistance of a speech-language pathologist, teacher, or parent. Articulation Station Pro offers practice at the word, sentence, and story levels. A free lite version is also available. $49.99; iPad.

• Social Express is a social skills app from The Language Express, Inc, designed for children with social learning challenges. Children with autism, Asperger's Syndrome, ADHD, and other language impairments will benefit from the app. The software teaches children how to think about and manage social situations through video modeling, which helps enable them to build social-emotional skills and develop meaningful relationships. Some of the concepts presented in The Social Express are based on the work of Michelle Garcia Winner and her Social Thinking curriculum. $49.99; iPad, Mac, PC.

• Put It Away is a Life skills/self-help iPad app from leehsueh that helps teach kids how to tidy up and clean up a room. This app helps them practice the tasks virtually on the iPad before doing it in real life. A key feature of the app is customization, which enables parents and teachers to use the app to simulate a child's real living space and classroom. This app was initially developed as a final project for a Stanford University student.  Free; iPad.

• Adding Apples is a math app from Operatio with interactive 3D graphics. The new version of the app is highly intuitive and features many elements to explore, discover and learn. The natural and logical interaction will help children develop a solid understanding of basic mathematics. This app also helps to teach addition concepts using manipulatives. With assistance, students can use this open-ended app to build their own questions. $0.99; iPod Touch, iPad.  

• Rainbow Sentences is Language Arts app from Mobile Education Tools designed to help students improve their ability to construct grammatically correct sentences by using color-coded visual cues. The Who, What, Where, and Why parts of sentences are color-coded to help students recognize and understand how combinations of these parts create basic sentence structure. Students have the opportunity to record their sentences in their own voice to improve their receptive and expressive language skills. $0.99; iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad.

• Choiceworks from  Bee Visual, LLC is a Visual Scheduler app to help children complete daily routines, understand & control their feelings and improve their waiting skills. This app is designed for caregivers to provide clear and consistent support to foster a child’s independence, positive behavior, and emotional regulation at home and in the community. It can also be customized for teachers in a school setting. $14.99; iPad.

• Art Maker by Play School from Australian Broadcasting Corporation is an Art/creativity app that helps kids to freely create pictures, animated movies and story slideshows using toys and craft items. Kids can add their own audio narration, upload their own photos as backgrounds, and save photos of their art. Free; iPad.

Technology in (SPL) Education is a website specializing in collecting and sharing tools and apps for the enhancement of technology in education, with an emphasis on Special Ed. It recently launched a dedicated portal specifically for Autism Apps.