Children with autism have a tough time adapting what they’ve learned in one physical environment (e.g., the therapist’s office or school) to others, including the home. Creating consistency in the child’s environment is the best way to reinforce learning. One important way is to find out what the child’s therapists are doing and continue their strategies and tactics at home. It is vital to transfer learning from one environment to another, through consistency and practise. This helps your child feel more secure, because it creates a consistent and predictable environment. We have heard some nice stories about therapists using Avaz innovatively to promote consistency. One way is to share backups of Avaz content on Dropbox (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hl1HnTavZhE&feature=player_embedded). A child using the Avaz app on different iPads at home and school can use the same vocabulary by syncing both iPads to the same Dropbox account. This not only synchronizes the content, but also saves content from being deleted or lost accidentally. Another innovative way that a therapist suggested for using Avaz to share progress notes with the child’s parents is to create a folder on the root screen called “Messages to the parent”. The therapist can then create a new message for each time they want to send notes to the parents and record a voice message. That’s a neat way of using Avaz’s recording feature (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqtfPsPKcOs&feature=player_embedded ), not for the child, but for communicating between parents and therapists! If you’ve used Avaz app, then do share the ways that you’ve used its features in the comments below. We’d love to hear!

December 4th, 2013

Posted In: Blog