“This week, NPR Ed’s Eric Westervelt visited a special education classroom in New York City where iPads are being used in a novel way,” Anya Kamenetz reports for NPR. “Students with a range of severe disabilities, including developmental, mental, physical and autism spectrum disorders, are using apps alongside traditional instruments to help express themselves through music.”
“Teachers there saw improvements not only in students’ musical knowledge and performance skills but also in their motivation, communication skills and the strength of their social bonds. The changes showed up in everything from little things, like saying hello to each other, to big things, like dreaming of a future as a touring musician,” Kamenetz reports. “Eric, of course, noted in his piece that the evidence here is mostly anecdotal. But we wondered: what do researchers say about whether the iPad is contributing meaningfully to kids’ classroom experience?”
“The published studies of classroom iPad use – in special education, specifically — are eye-opening. But not because they’re ‘clear.’ Because they’re all so… tiny. The number of studies is small,” Kamenetz reports. “Their sample sizes are miniscule. And the measurable effects are pretty small too.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Not enough data, yet.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
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