Can you type it

I made the decision this past year to teach Emily to type. Not as a replacement for handwriting, which is still extremely difficult for her, but as another tool to help her communicate and navigate the world independently.

Emily is able to use a computer. She can play educational games using a mouse and can type if given a model. She uses her iPad to access YouTube and apps that help her with just about every skill she has difficulty with. As with many kids on the spectrum Emily learns by repetition and from watching others. While YouTube is often inappropriate for young kids Emily has a long list of things she likes to watch. Mostly tv shows or movie clips. Since she is unable to spell I am constantly typing what she wants to watch every 15-20 minutes some days. I have decided to use her love of YouTube as a teaching tool. Starting a few days ago I am no longer typing for her. If she wants to watch something then she has to help sound it out and type it herself. Fortunately YouTube has word prediction. While she can't spell she can identify many words. I am also using YouTube as a teaching guide for many life skills that we are just starting to work on, such as gardening. I can take her in the garden and have her type in one of the plants we have, to access videos on that particular vegetable and learn facts about it. I intend on doing this daily throughout the summer to expose her to a variety of new skills. We were also fortunate enough to get an alphasmart keyboard from school to use this summer to type. I will use this to help her compose sentences and stories about what she is learning on her iPad through her experiences. I am hoping that her love of watching videos will motivate her to learn to type as well as learn many new things that will be relevant for the rest of her life.

Thanks for reading~
Jessica