iPad Still Works After A 100,000 Foot Fall From Space and Some Great,Rugged Cases to Kid-Proof Your Tech

This was originally shared at AppAdvice and I had to pass it on!  To test the durability of their new rugged iPad case, the Extreme Sleeve, these developers launched a working iPad (protected by the Extreme Sleeve, of course) via weather balloon into space and watched as it fell nearly 100,000 feet to the ground!  Don't worry, the iPad was ok, just check out the video at the link below :)

This iPad Still Works After A 100,000 Foot Fall From Space

I figure if this case can hold up to such an extreme challenge, it can certainly handle being chucked across a room, drooled on, and otherwise utterly abused by our kids, right?  If you haven't taken the time to find a security blanket for the brand new iPad you got your child for Christmas (this year or last :), now is the time to check out these great rugged cases for iPad 1 and iPad 2. 

Extreme Sleeve by G-Form

iAdapter by AMDI (This one is a speaker and a case!)

OtterBox Defender Series by OtterBox

RJ's Ultimate iPad Case by RJ Cooper Associates

Big Grips by KEM Ventures

Many of these cases do not have built in stands so you will have to look for positioning options to purchase in addition to the case.  Check out the links above to see what they offer for iPhone as well.  Some of the cases are bulkier than others and there are many other rugged cases that are not quite as durable as these on the market, should you need a case for a gentler child. :)

Check out Autism AppsFREE

Find Autism Apps in the App Store

There are so many Apps out there with reviews in so many places, it can be quite overwhelming taking it all in!  Some developers are writing Apps to organize the search for Apps!  Crazy, I know, but I happen to like these sorts of Apps, especially if they are free!  Autism Apps is one of those free gems that does some of that tedious legwork of finding appropriate special education Apps for you. 

Autism Apps is a “comprehensive” list of Apps considered appropriate for special education and therapeutic applications for children on the Autism Spectrum.  The list is updated periodically and you can even suggest Apps to be added to the list from within the App itself.  Autism Apps organizes the list in helpful categories (e.g., ABA, Creative Play), allows searches within the App, and even showcases new  and popular content in the “New” and “Featured” tabs. 

Each listing in Autism Apps offers the App store icon for the App, to allow for easier identification when purchasing/downloading.  Other helpful information is also included, such as the platforms the App will run on (i.e., iPhone, iPod, iPad), the full description of the App features (as presented in the App Store), screen shots from applicable platforms, and detailed reviews (from sources outside of what you see in the App Store). You can even link to demo videos (for those Apps which have them) and purchase the Apps straight from the Autism Apps interface. 

This is a simple, free resource to help gather information about Apps for special kids in an efficient way.  However, it is by no means a full list of appropriate Apps for children with ASD,  as new Apps are added daily to the App Store and some Apps that are not specifically designed for children with special needs can be used for a variety of educationally relevant functions with a bit of scaffolding and creativity. J

Do you have an App finding tool that you like to use?

Symbol World: Symbol Based News for Kids & Adults

If you like News2You, you will love SymbolWorld! "SymbolWorld is a website created by Widgit Software specifically for symbol users. It has material for all ages and includes news, personal contributions, stories and learning materials." (http://www.symbolworld.org/)

Features of this, FREE, web-based program are:

• easy navigatation, with the option to personalize the layout and colors to suit any reader's needs
• you can create user accounts, allowing you to save style settings, access the "Print Friendly PDFs" feature, rate articles and sign up for email notifications
• all links have visual highlights (i.e., a colored border to show where you are on the page) to make the site more accessible for people using switches or who use the Tab key to browse

• at the bottom of every article is a ‘Print Friendly’ button, which will create a print friendly PDF of the entire article for you to save or print directly from your browser

Speech/Voice Output is currently not available on SymbolWorld :(. But they are working on this feature for the near future! The current, non-speech version of SymbolWorld does not require Flash, which means you can view ALL of the features of the site on your iDevice. I was actually able to use the VoiceOver feature on my iPad to select the text on each news page and have it read aloud. I was also able to touch each word in the article to have the VoiceOver engine read each word aloud one at a time. This could be a great literacy building tool for early level readers! The fact that you can print each symbol-based news story to a PDF file gives you some flexibility with regard to speech output. If your child is currently using an electronic reading program like Kurzwell , the PDFs from SymbolWorld could be loaded and read through that or other PDF reader programs. I can even think of some ways to make this happen on iPad…:) Want to know more about that? :)

The Top 20 Special Needs Resource Posts of 2011 on The Friendship Circle

The Friendship Circle shared a great compilation post on their Top 20 Special Needs Resource Posts of 2011, including info on Apps, funding for iPads, and tons more techie and non-techie topics! Definitely worth checking out! 

Top 20 Special Needs Resource Posts of 2011