The following study looks to examine the effect of an iPad application on the English Language Arts (ELA) skills of listening comprehension for students with significant disabilities. The procedure was evaluated using a multiple probe across participants single case design. Outcomes were measured for improved ELA skills after intervention and were also measured for student engagement. Building upon the research of recent studies that have sought to develop and adapt grade-level literature for students with moderate and severe disabilities, this study seeks to find the effectiveness of an adapted text version of To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee for high school students diagnosed with intellectual disability and/or autism. The implementation of this adapted text included evidenced-based supports such as time delay, the system of least prompts and picture supports taught in conjunction with the use of the iPad application. The need for future research and implications for practice will be discussed.

Early reading literacy is foundational to all other academic learning. It is imperative that elementary students with and without disabilities be provided with evidence-based reading instruction. Elementary students with developmental disabilities (DD) and complex communication needs (CCN) benefit from evidence-based reading instruction that incorporates individualized, explicit instruction and appropriate assistive technology. Research to identify evidence-based practices for students with DD and CCN is necessary to assist teachers to close the gap in overall achievement for this group of learners. The purpose of this study was to determine the efficacy of the early reading program Go Talk Phonics (Ahlgrim-Delzell, Browder, &Wood, 2014) that incorporated evidence-based systematic instruction delivered through assistive technology to teach reading to elementary students ( n = 2 ) with DD and CCN. The two participants in this single-case designed study did not make adequate progress toward the objectives of Lesson One of the intervention in order to continue on to Lessons Two and Three. Although the participants in this study were less successful in the objectives of the lesson than participants in the Ahlgrim-Delzell et al., (2014) study, there were differences in the participants, assistive technology, and design of the experiment. Important considerations were revealed when selecting academic interventions for students with CCN and DD. Assessment of broader aspects of the students' skills and literacy experience, as well as differential reinforcement procedures specific to instructional demands may be necessary to see gains from instruction.

The purpose of the study was to evaluate the effectiveness of teaching a picture communication system to students with moderate to severe disabilities using the PECS Phase III application. A multiple probe across participants design was used to conduct the study and evaluate the effectiveness of the training on the PECS Phase III application. The results of the study demonstrated that teaching a picture communication system on an augmentative and alternative communication device is effective in the school setting with young adults with moderate and severe disabilities.

While professional development on the use of technology in the classroom aids educators to implement new teaching strategies, little is known about teachers' concerns with professional development specifically for adopting mobile technologies like iPads in their classrooms. The purpose of this study was to discover teachers' attitudes and perceptions toward teacher training for integration of the iPad into their classroom instruction. Using a case study approach and the concerns-based adoption model as a framework, this study examined teachers' concerns about their training for using the iPads in the classroom. Participants were 7 teachers from a small, suburban, Catholic K-8 school who rated their lowest and highest concerns about using iPads in the classroom. Data sources included the Stages of Concern Questionnaire, Levels of Use observation rubric, and one-on-one interviews. Data analysis included open and axial coding for identification of themes and patterns. Results indicated teachers had little concern with gaining extra training on classroom time and organization and with conflicts between their interests and teaching responsibilities when integrating iPads. Results also indicated they had high levels of concern regarding developing working relationships with fellow faculty members to maximize the benefits of iPad training, as well as about receiving additional iPad training. Finally, results indicated teachers' concerns with acquiring more iPads for students, as well as acquiring greater network connectivity within the school. These results will aid administrators and designers with making positive changes to professional development that both improve and increase teachers' successful integration of mobile technology in their classrooms.

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The tablet is a new IT-tool which have started to get introduced into school, but research is still missing and especially in the pre-school environment. The purpose with this study is to investigate teachers uptake, how they use the tablet in everyday pedagogy work as well as the organizational conditions that that facilitate and hinders. Through my observations and interviews in a Swedish K-5 school I have found that the teachers find tablets more appealing to use in comparison to computers. These findings are partly supported by Davis et al.’s (1989) TAM-theory who considers there to be three types of aspects that affect the way individuals adapt to technology. Firstly the teachers’ motivation increased when they saw the usefulness in the tablet in both educational and administrative possibilities. Secondly, the tablet is perceived as an ease of use-artifact which in it self gives the teachers incentive for usage. Thirdly, the infrastructure problem that exists around computers creates an escape to the more appealing tablets.

ABSTRACT Finding ways to improve nutritional and physical activity components with today's adolescents is a significant problem. The obesity epidemic is over 10 years old and little research has been done on successful interventions that motivate today's students using the latest technology. A total of 140 middle school students and four physical education teachers participated in a 4-week study using a newly created application (AFIT app) for supplemental teaching in and out of the classroom. Combining a theoretical framework of Self-Determination and motivating strategies implored in today's mobile technology, significance was found using the PACE (2001) instrument in fruits and vegetable and physical activity psychosocial behaviors. The pretest to posttest for fruits and vegetables revealed a decrease in confidence for behaviors that support meeting recommended daily requirements in eating fruits and vegetables. The pretest to posttest for physical activity highlighted an increase in supporting behaviors for meeting the daily physical activity requirements, and an increase in friend support for meeting those daily physical activity requirements. Intrinsic and extrinsic motivators were incorporated in the app design and the tenets of autonomy, competence, and relatedness were used as adolescent motivators. At the end of the 4-week study, benefits and obstacles were also noted for both teachers and students with recommendations to increase teachers' in-services with regard to the latest technology and troubleshooting procedures. A home survey highlighted the need for more adult education in the household and stressed the importance of family support in both fruits and vegetables and physical activity behaviors.

Despite the rising prevalence of mobile media in young children’s lives, little research exists that examines the effects of mobile media use on early childhood cognitive development. This study will explore how mobile media use, specifically iPad use, in early childhood affects development of visual spatial attention span. Researchers will recruit 160 participants, ages 3 to 6, and categorize them into three groups: TV viewers only, interactive iPad users, and passive iPad users. Children will complete a computer task to measure the length of their visual spatial attention span. Parents will report on the average daily amount of media use, their child’s top three most viewed or used programs and apps, and the pervasiveness of media use, as well as complete a demographics survey. Research assistants will rate the level of exogenous stimuli children are exposed to in their top three programs and apps. Researchers predict that iPad use will be associated with shorter visual spatial attention spans in comparison to TV viewing, due to longer amounts of use, higher levels of exogenous stimuli, and higher levels of pervasiveness. In addition, researchers hypothesize that interactive iPad use will correlate with the shortest visual spatial attention spans due to highest levels of exogenous stimuli and longest amounts of use. The results will help parents and educators to more effectively monitor young children’s mobile media usage.

The aim of this thesis is the analysis of applications, suitable for teaching mathematics using mobile devices such as iPad and tablets using Android or Windows. Selected applications are classified according to thematic chapters plan with respect to the phase creation concepts of process. It was also realized instructional hours with the selected app for the Android platform.

Many everyday systems and products seem to be designed with little regard to usability. This leads to the frustration, wasted time and errors. So the usability of the product is important for its survival in the market. In many previous studies the usability evaluation of the iPhone and iPad carried out individually and very little work has been done on the comparative usability evaluation. However, there was not any study conducted on the comparative usability evaluation and measuring the performance of the iPhone versus iPad in a controlled environment. In this research work, the authors performed the comparative usability evaluation and measured the performances of the iPhone and iPad on the selected applications by considering the young users as well as the elderly users. Another objective of this study is to identify the usability issues in performances of the iPhone and iPad. A survey and experiment techniques were used to achieve the dened objectives. The survey questionnaire consisted of 42 statements that presented the different usability aspects. The objectives of the survey study were to validate the identified issues from the literature study, identify new issues and measure the signicant difference in user opinions for the iPhone and iPad. However, the experiment studies helped to measure the performance significances between the devices against the three user groups (novice user, experienced user, elderly user) and among the groups over the devices. Further, objective was to measure the satisfaction level of the participated users against the iPhone and iPad. The experiment was performed in a controlled environment. Total six tasks (two tasks per application) were dened and each participant performed the same task on both devices. Generally the authors found that the participants performed better on the iPad with lower error rates as compare to the iPhone. / The aim of this study was to evaluate and measure the comparative usability performances of the iPhone an iPad. The preliminary focus of the study was to nd the usability issues regarding both the devices. Several dierent methods have been used in the study when investigating the answers of predened research questions. The study in this thesis was a literature review, a survey study and an empirical usability testing experiment. In the literature review, the authors studied the dierent usability issues such as inconsistency in applications, applications crashes and accidental errors.The detail list of the issues also presented in Table 2. However, the survey responses validated such issues and highlighted some additional issues such as low battery time, Blue-tooth connectivity problems, wireless connectivity problem, week signal strength and missing help. Two participants commented on the missing of a swyping feature. According to them if the iPhone and iPad had such feature then their typing performance should be improved. A survey study was conducted to evaluate and measure the significance in the four main parts of the devices i.e. system, touch screen, keypad and applications. Each part contained the multiple related statements that explored the different usability aspects. The detail and results of each statement are given in Table 4. After the statistical analysis, the authors did not nd a signicant dierence between the statements regarding the iPhone and iPad apart from in four statements. In the two statements (i.e. nding a new application in the Apple store and replacing the contents location on the interface) the users agreed that the iPad performance was better than the iPhone. However, in the other two statements (i.e. use of system in the sun light and zooming gestures) they preferred the iPhone rather than the iPad. Its means 90.47% users addressed the same issues in the iPhone and iPad. There is no dierence in their preferences regarding the iPhone and iPad. 4.76% users preferred the iPhone and 4.46% users preferred the iPad in above mentioned conditions. The empirical usability testing experiment focused on studying the usability performances of the iPhone and iPad considering three target groups. The performances comparisons were conducted by comparing the dierent participants groups and both devices. In total 60 users participated in the empirical usability performance testing study. The selection of the participants was based on their earlier experience with mobile phones usage. The detail of the participant are given in Figure 13. The comparisons results of the participant groups are shown in Table 7, the devices in Table 8 and the errors on both devices in Table 9 provided the signicance in the performances. The novice users versus experienced users comparison results across the iPhone (all six tasks) and the iPad (rst ve tasks) presented that the experienced users performed faster than the novice users with lower error rate. The results of the novice users versus elderly user comparison presented that the novice user using the iPhone ( first four tasks) and using the iPad (facebook login, location close view, new note and Evernote logout) performed faster than the elderly users with lower error rate. Similarly the results in the last comparison of the experienced users versus elderly users shown that the experienced users performed all the six tasks faster than the elderly users with lower error rate. Based on such nding the authors can conclude that the experienced users performances were better than the other two groups on both devices. The authors can also conclude that if someone is using the iPhone he/she could easily use the iPad. In the devices comparison results, the performances of the iPad across the novice users (in tasks facebook login, send a message, location close view, new note Evernote logout), the experienced users (in tasks facebook login, send a message, location close view and new note) and the elderly users (st ve tasks) were better than the iPhone with lower error rate. Base on such ndings of the empirical usability testing, the authors conclude that in the controlled environment the performance of the iPad was better than the iPhone. Three participant groups performed each task faster on the iPad than the iPhone apart from in one task. The task named location identication the iPhone and iPad performed the same across the novice user and experienced user but across the elderly user, the iPad performed better than the iPhone. Table 10 presents the results of the satisfaction level of the participants in a control environment for both devices. The satisfaction level acquired through the post test questionnaire during the experiment. The results of the novice users and the experienced users presented that their satisfaction levels were higher for the iPad than the iPhone. The experienced users results shown that their satisfaction levels were same for the iPhone as well as for the iPad. However, with the keypads performances they looked more satisfied on the iPad than the iPhone. / Near Chungi number 1 Chitterpari Mirpur Azad Kashmir Pakistan.