Early Childhood Special Education and Assistive Technology Blog

By: Kelly Hopkins , EC-SEAT Project Massachusetts Institute on Technology (MIT) researcher Deb Roy wanted to understand how his infant son learned language — so he wired up his house with video cameras to catch every moment (with exceptions) of his son's life, then parsed 90,000 hours of home video to watch "gaaaa" slowly turn into "water." Astonishing, data-rich research with deep implications for how we learn. After listening to MIT researcher Deb Roy on Ted Talk, I was encouraged and felt more confident about my knowledge and understand of language development in infants and toddlers. I used the information from this in my work with families and children.   Listen to this inspiring research by Deb Roy and get excited about the future of child development research. https://www.ted.com/talks/deb_roy_the_birth_of_a_word For more information on Speech and Language development before the age of 3 the National Institute of Deafness and Communi

By: Kelly Hopkins , EC-SEAT Scholar Whether you're working with a child and would like them to focus on one app, or you only want your student to be able to use a section of the screen you can use Apple's Guided Access feature to lock your screen on one specific app. Built as an Accessibility feature, Guided Access limits users to one specific app, preventing them from switching to another program or returning to the Home screen. This can be extremely useful in a number of settings, including education. Whether it's a writing app, drawing app, music app, math app, a story, video, or reading app; Guided Access helps make sure that all attention remains on that app. It also prevents you from accidentally exiting to the Home screen or another app when you don't mean to. Guided Access can even be used to create a "guest mode," allowing you to hand your device to someone so that they can use Safari, iBooks, Video, or a game without having to worry that they'll