March 28, 2024

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Berg student receives iPad from Autism Speaks

When Emery Erpelding received an iPad at Berg Elementary School on Dec. 19, he didn’t exact have a jubilant reaction. In fact, after he noticed a song coming from the iPad, he stopped paying attention to the device for the next several minutes.

However, there were plenty of smiles on the faces of the family members of the 6-year-old autistic student. Emery’s parents and two of his grandparents were present at Berg when he opened the iPad, but he was more preoccupied with several bouncing-ball types of toys that happened to be in classroom of Berg special education teacher Jenny Springer.

Such are the regular challenges of working with an autistic student, and Springer and Emery’s family are grateful to be among the approximately 1,100 recipients of iPads this year. Emery’s mother, Charlena Rice, said she had already downloaded a few autism-related applications to the tablet computer before wrapping it up as a Christmas present.

“Emery is almost always on the go,” Springer said. “He’s full of energy.”

Emery’s father, Kyle Erpelding, was there when his iPad was presented, along with Charlena’s parents, Brenda Nelson and Ed Keith.

They watched as Charlena tried to use various sounds and images on the iPad to engage her son. Even though Emery didn’t show much interest during his first few minutes with the iPad, everyone present seemed confident he will benefit greatly from the device. Springer wrote an essay that helped Emery be chosen from about 18,000 applications.

“There are so many apps on here that can be helpful,” Springer said. “In some cases, you can try out the free version of an app, and if it seems to be beneficial, you can download a much more detailed version at cost.”

Springer describes Emery as largely non-verbal, though he has used a few basic words such as “mom” and “coffee.”

One of the apps, VerbalizeIt, works as a voice-to-text translator. Another, GoTalk Now, is an extremely visual, icon-based program that allows students to build sentences that are voiced by the tablet.

Some apps allow parents to record custom audio; Springer had her daughter, Lily, record words, phrases and sentences in her voice in one app. A fellow child’s voice seems more familiar and comfortable to some autistic students, Springer said.

To demonstrate, Lily, who was also at the presentation, pressed a button that played a recording of her saying “I want to talk about dogs.”

There are picture cards and other classroom aids that non-verbal students can use to communicate, but frustration quickly engulfs them if they can’t find the right card to express a thought or emotion. The iPad apps usually aren’t as limited, Springer said. In her essay, Springer made a case for an iPad as a device that has programs that can be updated and where information and photos can be changed.

Not only did Emery have picture books at home and school that were different from each other, but those books couldn’t be instantly updated, whereas an app usually allows for photos are icons to to be added. Springer told Autism Speaks in her essay that an iPad could help Emery to “move beyond simple requests, to a variety of communicative functions.”

The essay that helped earn one of the 1,100 iPads was neither completely sympathetic and an emotional plea, nor did it paint Emery as a student who communicates well enough to not need the device.

“I can see that he is an extremely capable and bright child,” Springer wrote in her essay. “He simply needs a way to find his voice.”