[ APPLICATION REVIEW ]

2 Sorting Apps Work Well With Autism

BY NATURAL LEARNING CONCEPTS AND DIFFERENT ROADS TO LEARNING

Both of these applications are free and can be located by typing in Autism and clicking to search in the iTunes store and then looking for the titles as listed above.
Reviewer Angelia Wood, OTR/L, is a therapist with Davie County Schools in Mocksville, NC.

NOTES:

NATURAL LEARNING CONCEPTS Autism:

Sort and Categorize application is great for therapists, educators and family to work with children who have autism on naming pictures, sorting and placing real pictures of items in categories. Natural Learning Concepts is a company started by Jene Aviram in 2002. Her son was diagnosed with PDD-NOS/Asperger/s and she has another child with special needs. She began the company by developing things she could not nd that she wanted for her children to use. Now her children help by working as a product tester and proofreader in the family business which sells specialty products for children with autism and other developmental delays. In this NLConcepts application, there are 16 different categories. The app works on ne motor skills as well as sorting. The child has to touch with a ngertip one of the four categories given at the top when the card appears at the bottom to indicate which category the item should go in. It gives a motivating sound if the child gets it correct and a beep if they are incorrect. This application is free. Clean Up: Category Sorting, is by Different Roads to Learning. It also involves sorting and categorizing. Different Roads to Learning is also a company developed by the mother of a child with autism. Julie Azuma adopted a child from Seoul, Korea and the child was not developing on target with milestones. At the age of 6

the child was diagnosed with autism. Her child's diagnosis sparked Julie to look for items to work with children with autism, specifically ABA products. In 1995 her store offered 30 Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) products. Today, it has many great products for children who have autism. In The Clean Up app, an item is presented at the top and 3 category locations are given at the bottom. The child must drag the object given by touching and dragging to place the object in the one of the three categories. This app addresses ne and visual motor skills at the same time as the cognitive skill of sorting and categorizing. The app gives a star and praise if the object is placed in the correct location and a try again prompt if not correct. Rating of Function for Occupational Therapists Ease of Use Relevance to OT Frequency of projected use Potential for upgrade with improvements Usefulness for therapeutic intervention with ne motor skills Usefulness for therapeutic intervention with visual motor skills Usefulness for therapeutic intervention with handwriting/reading Usefulness as OT evaluation tool Relevance for use with progress monitoring Number of Stars out of 5