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To date, feedback from participating schools has been overwhelmingly positive. For instance the touch screen interface of the iPad is proving to be a great success for students with special needs.

One area where iPads are showing particular promise — both in terms of cost and usefulness — is in special education.In January, the Elkhorn district began testing iPads equipped with a $200 application that can produce speech. For some students with difficulty speaking, the iPads can replace a more traditional assistive device that costs about $8,000, resulting in significant savings for the district, said Lee Frye, the district's director of student services.The devices also blend in more easily in social settings, in school or ordering at a fast food restaurant. “Other kids think they're cool,” he said, “so there's a social benefit.”

The trend has not been limited to wealthy suburban districts. New York City, Chicago and many other urban districts also are buying large numbers of iPads.The iPads generally cost districts between $500 and $600, depending on what accessories and service plans are purchased.By comparison, Brookfield High in Connecticut estimates it spends at least that much yearly on every student's textbooks, not including graphing calculators, dictionaries and other accessories they can get on the iPads.

They include interactive programs to demonstrate problem-solving in math, scratchpad features for note-taking and bookmarking, the ability to immediately send quizzes and homework to teachers, and the chance to view videos or tutorials on everything from important historical events to learning foreign languages.They're especially popular in special education services, for children with autism spectrum disorders and learning disabilities, and for those who learn best when something is explained with visual images, not just through talking.Some advocates also say the interactive nature of learning on an iPad comes naturally to many of today's students, who've grown up with electronic devices as part of their everyday world.

by producing videos that demonstrate how products designed to educate children and build their life skills really work from a user perspective.

The details of this chart are less important than the process of creating it. After playing with the iPad, reading/watching how others use it in the classroom, and trying it out with your own students, get together with a few other educators and fill out your own chart. Here's a blank chart we give out as a part of a Think-Pair-Share. You might want to divide it into sections and consider the affordances and constraints by user (teacher/student/special needs student/administrator), use (reading/word processing/movie making/note taking/etc.), subject, or taxonomy (Bloom/SAMR/etc.). Hopefully you'll revise the chart as you use the tool in a wider variety of ways. This can definitely be combined with ideas of balancing technology, content and pedagogy. (Check out this podcast on TPaCK and SAMR.)

have a theory, though. I think Apple will introduce a Classroom iPad for $199 before the year is out. Pure speculation? Absolutely. However, considering how serious Apple is about improving the state of education, this makes real sense. I imagine it will be a 1024×768, 9.7-inch screen (while the iPad 3 gets the Retina Display and maybe changes size or shape), with a plastic back and rugged shell that only the school can remove. There will be a single, rear-facing camera, and the tablet will be locked down with access to the iBooks 2 app and pre-loaded textbooks. Safari will come pre-loaded, but it’ll run through Apple’s special proxy education server (yes, I’m making that up, too).There will be no App Store or iTunes account associated with it and schools will manage all of them centrally.

The founding members of this wiki consist of "old" therapists, with over 200 years of experience working with special populations and technology. We hope that people will use this site to make informed decisions before downloading. Our purpose in creating this wiki is to foster collaboration around how applications can be used in unique ways to support learning in home, school, and therapy settings. If you have used iPad/iPod applications with special populations, please consider joining and contributing to this wiki by adding information to the charts on the various pages (see navigation pane on the left). You can also contribute without joining by adding entries on the discussion tabs for each page.