Special Education Apps.

TCI’s list of SPED-appropriate apps is always growing, but on the following pages we’ve compiled our top 10 iPad apps for special education. And although most of the apps cover a very broad age range, we’ve also added suggested grade levels for each:

1) Sosh: Filled with activities and tools designed to help children and adults who have difficulty with social skills, Sosh (pronounced like the first syllable in “social”) is divided into five sections including Relate (connect with others), Relax (reduce stress), Regulate (manage behaviors), Reason (think it through), and Recognize (understand feelings). Sosh provides many of the tools used in cognitive and behavioral therapy, and provides students with an opportunity to work independently to resolve their challenges. $39.99. Suggested grade level: middle school and up.

2) Clicker Docs: An assistive word processor that can support students with a variety of disabilities, Clicker Docs uses word-prediction technology to offer students spelling and grammatical suggestions to correct their writing. Synthesized speech allows students to review their work by listening for auditory cues. Teachers can set up word banks to provide students with advanced vocabulary. Finally, Clicker Docs integrates with Dropbox to provide secure cloud storage and document-sharing. $28.99. Suggested grade level: elementary school and up.

3) SymbolSupport: This assistive word processor automatically translates words into pictures and symbols, a task that is especially helpful for students with cognitive disabilities. Users can create new documents or copy and paste work from other apps into SymbolSupport, and the program will convert the text into symbols. The developer, Attainment Company, also markets a freeSymbolSupport Viewer app that allows users to receive, read, store, and print documents created by the full version of the program. $59.99. Suggested grade level: all ages.