A $25,000 grant buys
iPads for Scarborough’s Morrison Center
 |
| Mindy Bisson, an 18-year-old senior at the Morrison Center in Scarborough, works with her ed. tech., Christina Troiano, on an iPad recently donated to the school by the Robbie Foundation, using a $25,000 grant from the Davis Family Foundation. |
SCARBOROUGH — When Paul Agnew began teaching students
with developmental disabilities at the Morrison Center in Scarborough three
years ago, about a year before the first iPads hit the commercial market, he
noticed that the first instinct of his charges when using a computer was to try
and touch icons and other items on the screen.
“It was like, ‘I want this, I’m going
to reach out and grab it,’” he said. “That’s a very natural thing to do. But
instead, I had to try and teach them how to use a mouse, which, as you can
understand, with having to both manipulate it and track it on screen, can be a
pretty difficult thing to do. It’s not always very easy, because most of these
students have problems with fine motor skills, among other issues.”
So, from the moment the iPad came out,
Agnew knew he wanted them for his students.
Last week, that became possible, thanks
to a local charity, The Robbie Foundation, which donated 24 iPads to the
center, which provides services to children and adults with disabilities. The
devices are preloaded with special learning apps, along with accessories and
teacher training in the most effective uses for iPads in a classroom with the
developmentally disabled.
The gift was made possible by a $25,000
grant it obtained from another Maine nonprofit, the Davis Family Foundation.
“I’m just totally jazzed that we are
able to provide this service,” said Robbie Foundation founder Lynn Gierie. “It
opens a whole new world for children with disabilities. Essentially, it brings
the world to the child who is unable to explore it on their own.
“We are hopeful that this pilot with be
just the first of many programs like this in the state of Maine,” said Gierie.
The Robbie Foundation was created in
May 2010, by Gierie and her husband Robert Gierie Jr. in honor of their son,
who experienced damage to the basal ganglia part of his brain – which
controls all motor skills – during birth, resulting in severe cerebral palsy.
He cannot walk or speak, but the Gieries learned firsthand just how useful a
touchscreen tablet computer could be.
“His own iPad is used as his
communication device at school and at home,” said Lynn Gierie. “It is
essentially his voice. It’s an extremely powerful tool for learning.”
Perhaps more importantly, the iPad
serves as a socialization platform, online and off. Robbie uses it to Skype
with former instructors now living in Arizona and, his mother notes, it also
serves as a conversation starter when he’s out in the community, such as when
another curious child can’t resist approaching Robbie to ask him questions
about his iPad.
“Oh, he’s right on top of the social
media, in every way,” said Gierie, with a laugh.
The mission of the Robbie Foundation is
to broaden the experiences of children with disabilities from birth to age 20
in ways that pull them into the social fabric of their communities. It does so
primarily by supplying the adaptive equipment parents cannot get through their
insurance providers. For example, this past July it gave a $2,500 special
tricycle to disabled siblings Coleman and Annie Nee of Scarborough, allowing
them to carouse their neighborhood for the first time in ways most children
take for granted.
The iPad donation is the foundation’s
biggest gift to date, and one that is especially meaningful to the Gierie
family. Robbie is now fully integrated into Scarborough’s public school system
as an eight-grader at the middle school, but he got there, in part, thanks to
attending the Morrison Center’s preschool program.
“As a parent of a child with special
needs, I always made it a personal quest of mine to somehow think about how we
could give back to the Morrison Center for all that they did for Robbie’s early
intervention,” said Gierie.
The center’s executive director, Mark
Ryder, says the iPads are something of a godsend.
“I can’t thank the Robbie Foundation
enough,” he said. “This gives us the ability to bridge gaps, whether a child
responds better to audio or video stimulus, to engage the whole class. It will
let kids access the curriculum in really fun and exciting ways and contribute
to their learning in ways they hadn't been able to before.
“Most of our 16 students in K-12 have
multiple handicaps,” said Ryder. “All have significant communication deficits.
Some are nonverbal even. This assists the students in making choices, which is
really a big concept here.”
Morrison’s IT support coordinator,
Justin Brown, says the iPads have a “guided access,” a system that allows
teachers to “lock-out” certain buttons and features. That helps the child from
activating the wrong button in an app, but also from inadvertently downloading
Angry Birds.
“Also, we can customize each machine to
the vocabulary of each student,” said Brown, “That’s especially helpful because
a lot of communication devices that do essentially what the iPad does can cost
up to $5,000. The iPad is less expensive but also more versatile.”
In addition to regular instruction, the
iPads also are expected to help non-verbal students communicate with teachers
in ways they could not before.
Previously, a child who had to go to
the bathroom might have had no recourse other than to act out, said Agnew. Now,
just touching an onscreen icon gets the point across.
“This helps the students to feel
successful and empowered, which is a important,” said Agnew.
The machines also are expected to help
Morrison Center staffers.
“One of the biggest things for us is
just the efficiency and speed with which we can create the materials we use,”
said Agnew.
Now, instead of taking time to create
visuals on a computer, printing them, backing them on a hard surface and
laminating them, teachers can simply download what they need.
“Before, it might take a couple of days
– because we have limited time when we’re not with our students – from when we
realized we needed a certain symbol for a student to work with to when we
actually had it,” said Agnew. “Now, if I need a symbol, I can have it onscreen
ready for the student to work with in a matter of seconds.”
The Robbie Foundation donation also
includes “Big Grips” – large rubber cases that protect the machines from harm
in case they are dropped, while also providing large handles to help better
manipulate the tablets.
“You can’t expect no loss,” said Brown.
“We’re not going to treat them like glass slippers. We definitely want to get
them into the kids’ hands.
“We’re using them as a tool to open up
abilities for our kids, to let more kids to more things” said Brown. “This
isn’t just, ‘Hey, let’s get some iPads because that’d be cool.'”
“We would have got these anyway, but it
would have been done slowly over time, one here and one there,” said Agnew. “We
are so excited and thankful to the Robbie Foundation for getting them all in
our hands at one time.”
A CLOSER LOOK
To learn more about the Robbie Foundation, or to donate to its cause, go to www.robbiefoundation.com.
For more on the Morrison Center, go to www.morrison-maine.org.
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