It might be interesting to see how the students react to a cartoon face that talks to them. Many autistic children have trouble making eye contact and are uncomfortable interacting with others, but love computer games. I wonder if they would feel less threatened talking to a cartoon face. I wonder if it could be used to teach simple interactions, such as saying “Hello” back, or answering typical phrases such as “How are you?”. I even wonder if the student might be rewarded for staring at the face or eyes of the character, and if that would translate to easier interpersonal interactions in real life. I am not sure. I would need to test something similar on students to know how they respond first.
Of the many areas that need built upon are communication skills, interpersonal effectiveness, emotional regulation, distress tolerance, and being “mindful” of the environment, people and surroundings.
These all come from “dialectical behavior therapy.” However most of this therapy is geared toward adults and complicated. Some exercises involve learning long complex acronyms. I wonder if these same skills could be taught in a much slower more simplified manner.
I would like to see perhaps different scenes where students could identify things in a picture, perhaps through a touch screen. If they could follow directions such as “touch the stop sign”. “Which door is the men’s room?” Using the same touch screen game with differing backgrounds, a student could also be taught to read sight words. If the word “door” is printed at the bottom of the screen, and the scene is a room, perhaps the student could take his or her finger and touch the ‘door’. This would be a good way to expand both vocabulary, sign recognition, and sight words using touch screen technology. If it could be used in a unit held in the lap, it would be even cooler.
I would like to see a much better augmented communication device created using the Ipad that a student could carry.
By the way, I don’t know if you are aware of this but there is a LOT of grant money available in this area that you could benefit from.
http://www.autismspeaks.org/science/research/initiatives/ita_initiative.php
http://www.grants.gov/search/search.do?mode=VIEW&oppId=51890
I could help you locate grant programs that would fund research and development perhaps.