It has been suggested that my dd10 use an Ipad with dragon speak for her classes due to dysgraphia. Has anyone done this with success? Any thoughts? Thank You in Advance!

I'm not sure an iPad is a very good replacement for a laptop. The battery isn't going to last as long, the software keyboard definitely leaves something to be desired as well. You can work around these issues, but for less than half the cost you could have a netbook and spare battery.

Our dysgraphic ds12 has used a regular Mac laptop for his schoolwork since 4th grade, but is enrolled in a school which requires all students to use an iPad for 7th - 8th grade. Hes in 6th this year. We researched iPad vs laptop solutions last summer looking ahead one year, and at that point in time I would have said the voice recognition wasnt up to speed with the laptop plus word substitution software and math software that he needed werent available. I've been to a presentation by a local tech support group that works with people with disabilities later in the fall which was specifically focused on iPads and left with the impression that things were evolving quickly and perhaps my ds would be able to more fully more to an iPad in school next year.

I don't have any answers at the moment, but we'll be looking at ds specifics with the tech group later this spring - I'm purposely waiting to take that next look until closer to the time ds enters 7th grade because the technology does seem to be rapidly evolving. My guess at this point is the iPad is going to have most of what he needs except math support software.

polarbear

Ps for Amy - fwiw our school chose iPads for size, portability home to school, ease of support, and file transfer purposes and gave each child access to the school wifi network. Apparently previously the teachers spent a lot of time dealing with file transfer issue between home computer and school; with everyone on an iPad they can require same format for files turned in for everyone.

Another reason for deciding on the iPads was access to online textbooks through iBooks. The bonus with the iPads is an amazing array of educational apps that the students have discovered as well as the teachers.

Re cost, most of the families chose to purchase non "g" pads which are lower cost.

polarbear

Right now, she is using a laptop but for portability, it is heavy and she has a weight restriction, so by time she carries the laptop, she is already over her 5-8 lb limit. She has a netbook which is ighter but it does not have enough RAM to run dragon speak. She also has access to learning Ally, which has an app on the ipad...not sure if this is something that can be added to a laptop or not.

With the keyboard issues that were mentioned, has anyone used the add on kepboard? or would that take the only USB port that would be needed for her headset for dragon speak?

I think I still have lots of questions that I will need to research! I suppose if the school decides that an ipad is what they are willing to offer, then that is what we will learn to work with.

Thanks again for all of your thoughtful responses!

1) there is no USB port on an ipad. There's a headphone jack with 3 connectors - that allows microphone usage as well.

2) There are bluetooth keyboards that work great, but seriously eat up battery. If you go that route, I would make sure your DS knows how to turn bluetooth on and off, because if it's left on all the time her battery will be dead very very quickly.

Our son uses an iPad and iPod touch, and he does fine with the screen keyboard. The battery life is 10 hours on an iPad, so he doesn't need to plug it in during the school day. We were having issues transferring files from the school computer to the teacher's laptop, so my son now uses his email account to send files from his device to the teacher's laptop. And there are several universal connectors to connect the iPad 2 to VGA, DVI, and USB.

With his dysgraphia and dyslexia, I'm just sorry we waited so long. There are some great educational math games that have already helped him over some barriers he was having.

I'd get a mac air.

Yep. Macbook Air or an ultraportable Windows notebook, or even one of the new Windows ultrabooks, would fit the bill nicely.

ABQ, what math games do you like?

I find the ipad's toylike qualities might pose a distraction for in-school use. But if you set a lot of restrictions (don't let the child make purchases, download apps, etc) it could work for some things.

I find that the ipad's built-in word completion cramps my style-- I wish that could be turned off. If you're trying to teach a child to spell independently, that may be a hindrance.

DeeDee

ETA: Dragon for the Mac is also apparently nowhere NEAR as good as Dragon for the PC. Read some reviews before you make that investment.

You can turn off the predictive text and auto editing in the Settings app on your iPad or iPod Touch. Select Keyboard and then toggle on or off for Auto-Capitalization, Correction, Check Spelling. You can also add short cuts - code letters that automatically type out what you want such as omw meaning on my way.

I use the Dragon app on my iPhone a lot to send texts and email while I'm driving, and it gets a few things wrong, but for the most part, it works pretty well.

As to Macbook Air vs. iPad - my college son has a Macbook Air, and, one, it's much more expensive, and two, it doesn't have the tactile advantages that I wanted for my son with dysgraphia. So while the Macbook Air is excellent and can now share DVD or CD drives from other devices (none are built in), it's still a bit like using a Porsche to drive a block to school. That's just my opinion, though. We currently have in our house a Dell laptop, an older Dell tower computer. an iMac, a Mac Mini, three MacBooks, three iPads, four iPod Touches, three iPhones and a Mac Airport - but we also have two companies that develop on the Mac or iOS platform.

One note - if you're planning to get an iPad, the next generation will likely be available in March, and even if you don't get the latest, it will likely mean a drop in price on the iPad 2.

As to games, my son is currently struggling with memorizing times tables and dealing with the visualizations of fractions and decimals, so we're using Hungry Fish, Motion Math Zoom, and Motion Math HD.

ABQmom, thanks for mentioning the names of the math apps - we have a dd who struggles understanding math concepts, and visualization really helps her so any kind of app we can find to help out with math is so appreciated!

Re the Macbook Air - not only are they very expensive, they seem to me to be a higher risk for breaking. Our family is hard on our computer products (not on purpose! We just have a lot of kids and I'm a klutz lol!). I keep my iPad in a padded protector that it can stay in while we all use it, and even though it's been dropped accidentally several times with and without the protective cover (including a spectacular drop by *me* down our stairs... ugh...)... it still works a-ok. I've also dropped a laptop and, um, had to replace the monitor. Actually I've done that twice. Note - I'm not recommending dropping computers helter skelter, just realistically, it can happen.

I also use the Dragon app on my iPhone and it works well for simple things. My ds with dysgraphia has used it now and then too, as well as MacSpeech Dictate and Dragon for the Mac. I'm very interested in seeing how Dragon works on the iPad - the app on the iPhone is simple, doesn't translate everything perfectly, but works well enough and easy enough for my ds to be able to dictate and then edit relatively easily as long as he's not dictating while we're driving in the car with his sisters singing at the top of their lungs (background noise, also just plain annoying!). My opinion is that Dragon for the Mac is nowhere nearly as annoying as some of the reviews you'll find, but it's also somewhat cumbersome for new users and kids, and Dragon on the PC can be also.

Word prediction on the iPad - drives me nuts, and I've turned it off - but that's the word prediction that comes with the iPad. Our ds uses Co:Writer word prediction on the laptop and it's really an amazing tool for people with dysgraphia - and I'd say it's even *helped* my ds learn how to spell. I haven't seen what's available on the iPad yet, but hopefully we will be able to find something equivalent. If not, I anticipate my ds will still be using his Mac for the majority of his written work.

FWIW our school uses Keynote and Pages for classwork (Mac products similar to MSWord and PowerPoint)... I haven't used them yet so I'm not familiar with their spell-check etc.

polarbear

A technophile never "drops" a piece of hardware... he "bounce tests" it.

Thank you Dude! I will remind my dh of that next time he freaks out when I bounce test my technology!

polarbear

And exactly how does a technophile justify feeding a MacBook coffee?

Agree with the whole clumsy thing. My iPhone is in a tire tread case and the iPad in a shock absorbent case.

Dragon Speak is really working well for DD...so if Ipad or Mac Dragon Speak is not as good on those machines, then I need to look at where Dragon Speak works best. Feels like the more I learn in this arena, the less I know for sure!

My dd also had trouble with Math Facts. She really connected with Math the fun way....she loves stories and quickly committed them to memory. If she got stuck on a problem..couldn't remember the story, it took just a key word to bring it back for her. For example, if she wanted 3x7... the teacher would say "cocoon" and she immediately would respond 21.

I so appreciate all of the responses. I am not a techie but I am learning fast and furiously!

Liquid test.

I liquid-tested my printer this past Saturday. I was sitting at my desktop playing a game when my wife sent a print job to it from her laptop. I noticed the paper jamming and immediately jerked my attention from the game to the printer, failing to notice my tall drink in the intervening space.

The printer passed, though I'm sad to say her printed documents did not.

Although it's not exactly liquid and straying off-topic, fwiw, I wouldn't recommend snow-testing your iPhone I have soda-tested a laptop keyboard and if I recall, the keyboard survived. The phone, sadly, did not survive the snow test....

I use an iPad for work for 8 hours a day on battery and use the on screen keyboard all the time - I can type as fast on that now as I can on a keyboard (though took a bit of getting used to) so I would think it is a good viable option.

Can't help on the software though