Literacy Apps
Routines, Schedules, and Organization
Children and teens with autism or Aspergers benefit greatly from tools that help them keep track of their daily schedules. Parents can also find apps useful for maintaining accurate medical and school records. In this collection, you'll find tools for any child who needs help completing tasks independently at home, school, or in the community. Many of the apps in this collection are picture-based to accommodate all learners. For more quality apps, browse our full library of literacy apps.
Many of the reviews we link to are from Common Sense Education, a trusted resource for learning about apps and other edtech tools.
Birdhouse for Autism
Birdhouse for Autism helps you organize the most important information about your child. Use Birdhouse to keep a secure record of medications, supplements, therapies and therapists, as well as track your child's daily behaviors and activities so you can discover what's working and what needs to be changed. Birdhouse enables parents and caregivers caring for individuals of any age to track items like wake and sleep times, which medications and therapies the child receives each day, moods, meltdowns, poop, and more. Everything is simple, searchable and easy to find.
Choiceworks
Choiceworks provides a platform for kids who need help with executive functioning to explore topics such as schedules, waiting, and feelings using pictures, checklists, storyboards, and more. It comes loaded with one board for each topic but is infinitely customizable.
Choiceworks Calendar
Choiceworks Calendar provides a visual learning tool that helps kids better understand and organize their time. With an easy-to-use interface that provides 275 preloaded images and audio descriptions of activities that can be repeated from day to day, Choiceworks Calendar can count down days toward a special event or keep track of activities that should occur every day, like eating breakfast, brushing teeth, or going to school. It was created to help kids with a higher level of anxiety toward transition and may be especially useful for kids with executive function issues such as attention deficits or inflexible/rigid thinking.
First Then Visual Schedule
An excellent tool for creating visual and auditory apps for any child. Its simple, multisensory interface has great potential for use with kids with developmental or learning disabilities; anxiety or attention issues; language, hearing, or processing difficulties; or who may be learning English as a second language. Parents will develop schedules appropriate for their kids using text, pictures, audio clips, and videos. The schedules can be presented in five formats, each with a different way for a kid to check items completed and move on to the next. "Choice boards" let kids indicate a preference from the choices, such as a reward for tasks completed.
I Get ... My Daily Schedule, Recall My Day and Learn Calendar Concepts
An app for kids whoneed support in understanding the steps that will occur/have occurred during their day. Fifty-seven icons with real picture images are used to illustrate the events of a day. Text statements can be individualized for each picture allowing app to be used for a variety of purposes, including receptive identification and expressive labeling. Personal photos can be added. Typically developing young children understanding the steps of their day and individuals with developmental delays, such as PDD-NOS and autism will benefit from this interactive application. Parents, teachers, SLP’s and other support professionals will appreciate the user friendly design.
iCommunicate
Create pictures, flashcards, storyboards, routines, and visual schedules. Record custom audio in any language. Converts words with text to speech. Utilize as audio visual prompting tool or AAC device.
Time Timer
Time Timer is a productivity app that can help kids focus on timed tasks, as well as manage transitions or waiting. The customizable timers act as clear, colorful visuals to help kids understand concepts of time -- such as when there is a limited amount of time to complete something or they need to wait for a certain amount of time.
Todo Visual Schedule
Todo Visual Schedule is a Apple app for creating picture-based, personalized daily schedules. To begin creating a task, and to help students identify the type of task, choose from one of the 14 pre-made icons and colors, or add your own pictures (e.g., of a classroom or teacher). Provide a brief description of the task to go with the picture. Once you've got your tasks created, you can drag and drop them into a schedule for each day. Helpfulo for children with autism or struggling with executive functioning skills. Can be used with the Apple Watch.
Visual Schedule Planner
Visual Schedule Planner is a multi-screen scheduling tool that opens to the current day, divided into three areas: morning, afternoon, and evening. Students can add activities, scroll through options for the frequency of events, and link video, sound, or photos to the activity. Kids can add one of more than 1,500 pre-built icons to accompany the event that you’ve scheduled, or they can upload their own images from the device's camera roll.
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