"Meaghan Roper, a junior at Burlington High School, shares a similar story with the iPad. When Meaghan was six years old, she was diagnosed with a visual impairment. In the eighth grade, she started to notice a decline in her vision. She sought out surgery to repair or delay her vision decline, and while successful, the procedure did not hold for very long.
A Transformative Experience
Meaghan recalls her first moments with the iPad and how she and her liaison discovered the variety of new opportunities that this one device presented. One of the first things she used was the ability to invert the colors of the screen. The iPad gives users the opportunity to read predominantly black text on a lighter screen, or to invert the colors and overlay white text on a black screen. This one feature, Meaghan recalls, was "transformative" in her learning of what the iPad could offer her educational experience.
Apps for Every Need
In Meaghan's day-to-day operation of the iPad, she uses several applications to manage her content. It doesn't take her too many apps to get through her school day. She's thankful that, along with transitioning to the iPad, Burlington also married the Google Apps for Education suite with this device. She finds ease in accessing Google Docs from multiple devices and knowing that her work will always be safe, secure and not dependent on a machine's functionality."
Read more about how Meaghan uses apps to support her learning!
Through the use of assistive technology special needs students are able to learn to use ICT effectively and appropriately to access, create and communicate information and ideas, solve problems and work collaboratively, and in their lives beyond school in the 21st century.
The blog following blog by Andrew Marcinek, Instructional Technology Specialist, writes about how iPads are being used as assistive devices. He describes the iPad as a opening for many, showing the potential of the iPad as an assistive technology and how it can change learning for students with impairments. Andrew writes about meaghan and how she used the iPad and applications throughout her schooling. Its worth a read.