Getting Comfortable with Navigating the iPad

To view the YouTube videos that are paired with each app, go to the full presentation that is available in the next post. 

This week I purposefully chose 5 apps to introduce to the participants.  What do these apps have in common? They are fun, free, and simple to navigate. After covering the basics of  iPad navigation basics like swiping, selecting by touching, pushing the home button, taking screenshots, and touching and moving an image, for example, it was time to apply these skills in the context of apps that I knew would engage their attention.  As anyone knows who has taught technology, learning needs to happen by DOING!  It isn't always intuitive for these guys, and they have many questions along the way, but they have to just dive in and gain confidence just by trying and producing results. As we transitioned from 'instruction time' to playing with these apps, I saw shoulders relax, expressions of anxiety turn into smiles, and I saw independence and initiation from those who had not been showing this. It was a proud moment looking around the room and seeing EVERYONE engaged.  There were bursts of laughter when they figured out how to make stamps in Doddle Buddy that sounded like 'burps and toots'... there were "ooohs and ahhhs" when they created cool effects on the screen with Magic Fingers Lite... I heard "STRIIIIKE! I DID IT!" when they were playing the bowling game... and I got a lot of "Sarah, HURRY, come look at what I made!!" when they were making scrapbook pages on Pic Collage. I was tickled, to say the least.

I learn something new with every session by seeing the struggles that some of them are having and I immediately go into 'problem solve' mode to think through how to make it easier. For example, many of our guys have difficulty with fine motor coordination, which is common to their diagnoses.  It is taking a few of them a lot of practice for them to learn how to touch and release on the screen with a quick motion (rather than keeping their finger on it like they are pushing down a real button), or double-click the home button (as they are not doing the two clicks fast enough), or coordinate their two fingers to pinch and release for zooming in and out.  For my therapist audience... it is clear they are having difficulty with the motor planning of these novel tasks and it is going to take a lot of repetition to get these movement patterns to become smooth and automatic. They'll get there... I know they will.