Apps that are for Learners with Special Needs.

The omicron variant of the coronavirus in 2021 creates a unique task for learners with special needs.—Some essential apps that will guarantee a smooth learning experience are listed in this article.

Education faces a significant challenge due to changes that have resulted in the new ways of life since the outbreak of the covid-19; especially, remote learning has become the new norm for K-12 education. Delivering lectures or lessons in the four walls of a classroom from this current upwards would possibly be an arduous task compared to how easy it was some years past. Therefore, educators who work with students with special needs should look into ways of reinventing their teaching methods as a matter of urgency. The educators should do this in collaboration with their students.

One of the most critical challenges for both parents and teachers is keeping the learners on track with their customized learning programs to achieve set goals and objectives.

Achieving success with learning for special needs persons should now be seen as a collaborative effort between teachers and the guardians or parents. The teachers must guide those with special needs since most of the learning will now take place at home. Some Apps make learning from home easy for the learners with special needs, and their caregivers, who will be heavily relied on to assist the learners effectively, can use the Apps.

A quick walk-through and survey of some educational services that attend to students with special needs reveal that the following Applications are extremely useful in achieving a successful learning experience for people with special needs. Before delving into the apps, remember that customization is significant to address the learner’s deficiencies or areas of need. So, the guardians, caregivers, and parents themselves need to study the apps to grasp their functionality and make necessary tweaks and modifications where necessary. There are videos online on how to use most if not all, the Apps.

Video scheduler from the name, it’s a visual schedule App that helps persons with special needs create checklists of steps and processes needed to achieve set goals and completion of the task(s). Each step of the job has a video or picture clip enumerating the activity. The App has excellent reviews from users and testers. It is customizable and fit for creating schedules and checklists for almost any degree of complexity. The video scheduler App comes with many recommendations for Autism spectrum disorder students and other persons with special needs; having difficulties with task and time management.

Edoki Academy: This service for special-needs people offers a sequence of math apps based on the Montessori curriculum. Additionally, the maths app boosts motor skill development.

Math Drills is an ability-based math drills app that learners will quickly get adapted to, as it allows them to compete against each other. This competition helps the learners to build their speed and accuracy. Basic math operations like division, multiplication, subtraction, and addition are the App’s built-in features. Additionally, there are other features in the App that learners and teachers can create customized profiles, which will make for easy score tracking and test history records retrieval.

My PlayHome is a free download App that offers youngsters a virtual family of up to 15 built-in characters to discover, play, and converse; the App is great for students with speech-related issues. As the student uses the App, it becomes a place for social and emotional development and gives room for self-improvement in verbalization and language skills.

SoundingBoard is a free-to-download mobile/cellular augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) app designed for youngsters who cannot talk (or who have limitations in speech processing); to help them talk. The App comes packed with built-in integrated, preloaded boards that match symbols with recorded audio files. A learner picks out and presses symbols on the board to set off a verbal message.

Epic is an e-library that is an excellent App famed for supporting struggling or reluctant readers. It provides access to 20,000 standard young learners’ books and academic visual contents, a combination of fiction and non-fiction books issued by famous publishers. The e-library offers free access to schools and colleges from time to time.

LetterSchool promotes early literacy and numeracy competencies by guiding learners to touch, tap, and trace colorful animations. They learn spelling, letter sounds, letter formation, names, and primary competencies as they do this.

Tales2Go, an audiobook service that helps students who have difficulty reading and, at the same time, improves their listening abilities. This App has a built-in integrated collection of books for all ages, with built- narrators who beautifully bring the built-in stories from each genre to life.

Phonics Genius is designed for learners to recognize, identify, read and talk phrases via letter sounds. The App has more than 6,000 phrases integrated into it and engaging fun games geared towards sharpening the learners’ skills.

SentenceBuilder is an App designed to help users with their communication and conversation skills depending on the social setting. Conversation with other people or co-learners might be a challenge for most persons with special needs. This App helps to build the learners’ conversational confidence. This App also covers sarcasm and suggests ways kids should respond to bullying.

Word Wizard has a built-in talking alphabet that learners can test with phonemic consciousness and word building. The verbal comments projected have a relaxed and calm tone to the hearing. Learners can easily create their own words and self-correction when there are mistakes made. The App also helps learners with spelling, phonological cognizance, and letter recognition and is integrated with about 184 integrated word lists, for example, a thousand most frequently used sight words. It also has built-in features that teachers use to track learners’ activities history and work progress. Physical learning in a physical school has become a considerable challenge in these pandemic times. However, it’s even more problematic for learners with special needs, who already face hurdles in their learning. Nonetheless, they will adapt to the current learning situations as more Apps become developed for them regarding a smooth learning experience. Change itself can be very disruptive for many young learners, and they will require time to adjust to their new learning techniques and routines.