I just read Pemberley's post and have a few thoughts for you Pemb
One thing that I think might be useful in an iPad for a 2nd grader is the size of the keyboard when she's learning to type. DS uses a bluetooth keyboard for most of his iPad work, and it's smaller than a regular sized laptop keyboard (or at least it looks smaller!).. so it might be easier for a young child with small hands.
We were also told when ds started to learn to type (summer after 2nd grade) that it was best to let him come up with his own set of fingering rather than trying to master traditional touch typing. A lot of kids use just their thumb and first finger to type with. Our ds didn't go for that - the software shows the traditional fingering and ds is kind of a stickler for following directions so he learned traditional typing. Once ds learned to type our dds wanted to learn too, so we had all of them go through the BBS Mat Typing course online, and it was a great intro for them. We also have UltraKey for further practice, but I've heard good things about Mavis Beacon too. The great thing about BBS is that it's highly kid-oriented with noise and graphics etc
I also think it's free but don't remember for sure.
One thing I'd watch for if she has fine motor issues (my ds12 also has fine motor challenges) - typing may not be the hugely successful answer to all your dd's dysgraphic challenges. Although my ds types faster than he writes, he still types very slowly relative to other children and simply learning to type didn't enable him to be productive enough at written expression to be successful at school. Voice-to-text is the AT that he's most successful at re writing. Before he had access to voice-to-text on his iPad I still did a lot of scribing for him on longer writing assignments.
polarbear
