Ten Apple iPad Apps To Help Children With Autism

Autism is a developmental disorder affecting children from birth or the early months of life. It results in delay in, and deviance from, the normal patterns of development. These occur in three areas of behavior:

· Social relationships and interactions
· Language and communication.
· Activities and interests.

I am no stranger to the mysteries of autism and indeed studied it in-depth at The University of Birmingham – one of the world’s leading research development centers for studies into childhood autism.

There is no cure for autism. Children with autism become adults with autism and most with additional learning disabilities will require care and supervision all their lives. People at the other end of the spectrum, however, and with ordinary intellectual ability, usually become partially or fully independent as adults but require specialist help as children. Interventions are designed to assist people with autism to achieve their full potential at all stages of their lives and to support and help parents and carers to accomplish this.

I think this list of apps that I have collated here will really help many families and individuals, take a look and let me know what you think.

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More on these app:
Proloquo2go, Story_Builder, "Off we go" book series, Soundtastic, Visual Impact, Living Safely,  Tapspeak Sequence for iPad, iCommunicate for iPad, Autoverbal Talking Soundboard Pro, Is that Gluten Free?, and I Dress for Weather. 

LINKX

LINKX is a toy based on TUI technology, created to stimulate the language development of autistic children.



LINKX aims to learn autistic children the words of objects in their own environment. This helps them learn the meaning of words. This is done by means of speech-o-grams (pictograms with speech). Parents record words inside them and attach them to objects before play starts. Children can link blocks to these speech-o-gram. Each link results in lights that go on and a sound that is played. The sound moves into the block. You can link blocks and speech-o-grams over and over and this will eventually make them remember the word. You can also link blocks together. When one block owns a sound, it will move to the other block. Again doing this again and again will stimulate language learning.



Author: Helma van Rijn

Affiliation: ID-StudioLab, University of Delft (The Netherlands).

Project website: http://www.helmavanrijn.nl/Projects/linkx-for-autistic-toddlers

Body Brush

Body Brush is a real-time body-driven immersive environment, which is achieved with the development of a low-cost computer-vision-based motion analysis system using frontal infrared illumination, and an innovative graphic rendering software that maps the body motion gesture-path-energy to the audio-visual attributes. It captures 3D human motion and transforms the motion data into a rich variety of 3D visual forms visualized through a stereo projector, as well as 3D sound and music with a surround sound system.



Authors: Horace Ip, Young Hay, Alex Tang

Affiliation: AIMtech, City University of Hong Kong.

Project website: http://www.cs.cityu.edu.hk/~bodybrush/bb_intro.htm

Light touch

Light Touch™ is an interactive projector that instantly transforms any flat surface into a touch screen. It frees multimedia content from the confines of the small screen, allowing users to interact with that content just as they do on their hand held devices – using multi-touch technology.

Website and videos: http://lightblueoptics.com/

iCat

iCat is a plug & play desktop user-interface robot that is capable of mechanically rendering facial expressions. This capability makes the robot ideal for studying human-robot interaction. The robot has been made available by Philips Research (Eindhoven, the Netherlands) to stimulate research in this area further and in particular to stimulate research topics such as social robotics, human-robot collaboration, joint-attention, gaming, and ambient intelligence.



Affiliation: Philips Research

Project Website: http://www.hitech-projects.com/icat/index.php

First iPad applications children-oriented

After a couple of weeks from its official launch, dozens of Apple iPad applications and games designed for children are already available in the AppStore. In the following list I am going to link some very interesting works divided in two categories: interactive fairytales and musical applications.

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Interactive iPad Fairytales
Alice for the iPad


Thumbelina


Toy Story

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Musical applications
Magic Piano:


AirHarp

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And here a couple of links about the relevant role that iPad could have in entertainment and leaning process of children:
Why iPad is the children toy of the year
iPad will change how kids grow up
Are children destined to grow up with tablets?

Tell Table

TellTable, a system developed in the Soci-Digital Systems group, uses Microsoft Surface technology to provide an interactive storytelling experience, similar to how children would tell stories using physical toys. Children can create various digital characters and sceneries on Surface, made out of photos taken of real world objects and environments as well as finger paintings. By manipulating these characters using multi-touch gestures, children can narrate, act and record imaginative stories together, before sharing them with friends later on.
TellTable was deployed in a primary school, and received overwhelmingly positive feedback. It has seen crowds of kids create stories featuring characters as diverse as Ninja chickens and rampaging teddy bears. Teachers were also enthusiastic about the potential of TellTable as an education tool, to help children develop communication skills and to create interactive tutorials when teaching foreign languages.



Authors: Xiang Cao, Siân E. Lindley, John Helmes, Abigail Sellen

Affiliation: Microsoft Research Cambridge

Marble Tracks

An electronically enhanced construction kits for marble tracks that act as music sequencers for music education of young children. Marbles rolling along the tracks trigger sound events to produce the playback of musical notes and songs. Re-arrangeable tangible elements correspond to timing, durations and pitches of notes and thus allow electronic music sequencing by means of haptic programming.

Authors: Thomas Fischer, Wing Lau

Affiliation: Hong Kong Polytechnic University, School of Design

Video Link: http://modin.yuri.at/tangibles/data/FischerLau_MarbleTracks.mp4

TANGIBLE MUSIC (Link)

This is a very interesting and exhaustive collection of Tangible Music Interfaces provided by Martin Kaltenbrunner, one of the developers of the Reactable.

http://modin.yuri.at/tangibles/

You can find the link to this page also in the right sidebar.

Sound Mites

The work consists of a set of small tangible nodes that alter their behavior according to the nearby nodes, in an asynchronous fashion. Nodes have magnets on the bottom and are deployed on a flat metallic surface. Each node is equipped with a small speaker that generates a musical tone according to the state of its immediate neighbors and a simple set of rules. Nodes also provide visual feedback on their current state by means of colored lighting. Finally, the nodes sense touch through a thin metal rim and can toggle their state to reflect the interventions of viewers.

SoundMites from David Bouchard on Vimeo.

Authors: David Bouchard

Affiliation: MIT MediaLab

Project Page: http://www.deadpixel.ca/projects/soundmites/

Age Invaders

Age Invaders is a novel interactive intergeneration social-physical game which allows the elderly to play harmoniously together with children in the physical space while parents can participate in the game play in real time remotely in the virtual world through the internet. Age Invaders brings the game play to a physical platform, and requires and encourages physical body movements rather than constraining the user in front of a computer for many hours.



Authors: Eng Tat Khoo et al.

Affiliation: Mixed Reality Laboratory, Dept. of Electrical & Computer Engineering National University of Singapore

Project page: http://www.mixedreality.nus.edu.sg/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=27&Itemid=61

Magic Story Cube

Magic Story Cube is an augmented reality interface that enhances the storytelling experience with 3D graphics, 3D sound, music and speech, but also encourages the use of touch in the exploration of the story contents.


Authors: Zhiying Zhou, Adrian David Cheok, JiunHorng Pan, Yu Li

Affiliation: Mixed Reality Laboratory, Dept. of Electrical & Computer Engineering National University of Singapore

Website: http://www.mixedreality.nus.edu.sg/

Video Link: http://www.mixedreality.nus.edu.sg/media/all%20videos/magic.cubes/magicstorycube%28large%29.mpg

SMALLab

SMALLab is an extensible platform for semi-immersive, mixed-reality learning. By semi-immersive, we mean that the mediated space of SMALLab is physically open on all sides to the larger environment. Participants can freely enter and exit the space without the need for wearing specialized display or sensing devices such as head-mounted displays (HMD) or motion capture markers. Participants seated or standing around SMALLab can see and hear the dynamic media, and they can directly communicate with their peers that are interacting in the space.

SMALLab @ Arizona State University - 2009 from aisling kelliher on Vimeo.

Project Website: http://ame2.asu.edu/projects/emlearning/index.php

Children's Cheering Carpet @ TPO, Prato (Italy)

Large (and sometimes) interactive video-projected surfaces become the stage set for dance and theater performances that involve children as audience and as performers.




Official website: http://www.tpo.it/

Matchmaker

Matchmaker is a cooperative two-player tabletop video game for couples. In Matchmaker, players must work together to match the adorable, round-headed people Peeps. But it’s not as simple as it sounds! If the players work too slowly, Peeps will begin to become depressed and lovelorn. When a lovelorn Peep begins crying, it cannot be matched up; if enough Peeps become lovelorn, the players are sure to lose the game! The only way for players to cure a lovelorn Peep is by restoring their faith in the power of love; by physically holding hands with their partner and then touching a lovelorn Peep, players can show the Peeps the true Power of Love.

Authors: Cody Watts, Ehud Sharlin

Affiliation: Interactions Labs, University of Calgary

Project page and Video: http://utouch.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/pmwiki.php?n=Projects.MatchMaker

Drawdio: A Pencil that Lets You Draw Music

Imagine you could draw musical instruments on normal paper with any pencil (cheap circuit thumb-tacked on) and then play them with your finger. The Drawdio circuit-craft lets you MacGuyver your everyday objects into musical instruments: paintbrushes, macaroni, trees, grandpa, even the kitchen sink...



Authors: Jay Silver and Mitchel Resnick

Affiliation: MIT MediaLab – Lifelong Kindergarten

Project page: http://web.media.mit.edu/~silver/drawdio/

Siftables

Siftables are sets of cookie-sized computers with motion sensing, neighbor detection, graphical display, and wireless communication. Siftables act in concert to form a single interface: users physically manipulate them—piling, grouping, sorting—to interact with digital information and media. Siftables provide a new platform on which to implement tangible games.



Authors: David Merrill and Jeevan Kalanithi

Affiliation: Sifteo (company) – Formerly at MIT MediaLab

Project page: http://sifteo.com/

The Skoog

Skoog is an exciting new musical instrument for children of all ages and abilities. Expressive, tactile and intuitive, The Skoog is a universally accessible platform for creating and exploring musical sound. Skoog uses state-of-the-art software to deliver the quality and expressive character of real musical instruments. Flexible and simple to use, it offers not only the opportunity for learning, creativity and expressive musicianship, but also a fun and engaging audio resource.

Offical page: http://www.skoogmusic.com/

Lightspace Play

Lightspace Play includes an interactive floor surface comprised of 16”x16” programmable LED lit and pressure sensitive tiles constructed to fit a 10 foot square space. Each tile consists of sixteen 4” x 4” pixels that can display any color, pattern or image. The surface is able to detect location, movement and density of players to give a realistic gaming experience. Reactions to player movements are displayed on the surface and are accompanied by sound effects.



Affiliation: Exergame Fitness USA

Project page: http://www.exergamefitness.com/lightspaceplay.htm

Freqtric Drums

Freqtric Drums is a device that turns audiences surrounding a performer into drums so that the performer, as a drummer, can communicate with audience members as if they were a set of drums.



Authors: Tetusaki Baba, Taketoshi Ushiama, Kiyoshi Tomimatsu

Affiliation: Graduate Schood of Design, Kyushu University Fukuoka, Japan

Project Page: http://bell.sd.tmu.ac.jp/~baba/project/FreqtricProject/

Vicon Face

Proximity Toolkit is a toolkit that simplifies the exploration of interaction techniques based on proximity and orientations of people, tools, and large digital surfaces. ViconFace is a playful demonstration application built atop of this toolkit. A cartoon face on a large display tracks a person moving around it, where it visually and verbally responds to that person's proximity, orientation and wand use.



Authors: Rob Diaz-Marino and Saul Greenberg

Affiliation: Interactions Labs, University of Calgary

Project page: http://grouplab.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/Publications/2010-ProximityToolkit.CHI

Mü

MÜ is an installation with a tabletop tangible multi-touch interface. The table contains a square screen, with which one can interact either with fingers or with specific tangible objects. The application reacts with animated images and sounds.

mü project demo from mü project on Vimeo.

Authors: Beatrice Lartigue at al.

Affiliation: Various, see website

Project page: http://www.mu-project.com/

Soundgarten

The Soundgarten is a tangible interface that enables children to create their own sound environment by manipulating physical toy objects. They can use predefined sound samples, record sound samples of their environment and modify and arrange the different elements in sound scenarios, choose volume pitch and apply sound effects.




Authors: Michael Wolff

Affiliation: University of Applied Sciences, Cologne and Exploratory Media Lab at Fraunhofer Institute for Media Communication, 
St-Augustin, Germany

Project page: http://www.soundgarten.com/

Tangible Building Blocks

Designed specifically for young children to learn about robotics and programming, this interface leverages children's familiarity with blocks to explore programming concepts such as loops, parameters, and input/output. These programming concepts are applied to Lego RCX to couple programming with robotics. Programming is made tangible, visible, and fun.



Authors: Marina Bers and colleagues

Affiliation: DevTech Research Group @ Tufts University, Medford, MA, USA

Project page: http://ase.tufts.edu/DevTech/

Tobopo

What is it like to sculpt with motion? Topobo is the world's first construction toy with kinetic memory, the ability to record and playback physical motion. Snap together Passive (static) and Active (motorized) pieces into a creation, and with a press of a button and a flick of your wrist, you can teach your creation how to dance or walk. The same way you can learn how buildings stand by stacking up blocks, you can discover how animals walk by playing with Topobo.

Authors: Hayes Raffle, Amanda Parkes

Affiliation: MIT MediaLab – Tangible Interfaces Group

Project page: http://www.topobo.com/index.html

Video link or page: http://www.topobo.com/topoboVideo-medium.html

Jabberstamp

Jabberstamp is the the first tool that allows children to synthesize their drawings and voices. To use Jabberstamp, children create drawings, collages or paintings on normal paper. They press a special rubber stamp onto the page to record sounds into their drawings. When children touch the marks of the stamp with a small trumpet, they can hear the sounds playback, retelling the stories they have created.


Authors: Hayes Raffle, Cati Vaucelle and Ruibing Wang

Affiliation: MIT MediaLab – Tangible Interfaces Group

Project page: http://www.rafelandia.com/jabberstamp/index.html

Video link: http://www.rafelandia.com/jabberstamp/video.html

Moving Pictures

Moving Pictures is a novel approach to collecting, editing and performing visual and sound clips in real time. The cumbersome process of capturing and editing becomes fluid in the improvisation of a story, and accessible as a way to create a final movie.

Authors: Cati Vaucelle, Diana Africano, Iroshi Ishii

Affiliation: MIT MediaLab - Tangible Interfaces Group

Project Page: http://web.media.mit.edu/~cati/portfolio/MovingPictures.html

Video link: http://web.media.mit.edu/~cati/movingpicmedia/new/MPSIGGRAPH05_HIGHRES.mov

Picture This!

Picture This! is a modular distributed camera system that brings a child into exploring visual and narrative perspectives of character props, expanding the discovery of her environment.


Authors: Cati Vaucelle
Affiliation: MIT MediaLab
Project Page: http://web.media.mit.edu/~cati/portfolio/PictureThisHome.html
Video Link: http://web.media.mit.edu/~cati/portfolio/PictureThis_Media.html