Filip Novotny Apple often likes to point out that their products have a wide range of uses. For example, a recent advertisement for the iPad instead of technical details shows the customers themselves, who use their device in really different ways. Apple users were interested in how the situation looks outside of the advertising world, and that is why we are bringing you a series of interviews regarding the use of the iPad in Czech reality.
We were the first to address Mgr. Gabriela Solna, a clinical speech therapist from the Vítkovická hospital in Ostrava, who decided to work with tablets in the neurology department. She obtained these as part of a grant from the Ministry of Health, and two iPads are now being used in the hospital.
Doctor, what kind of patients do you take care of in your work?
As a speech therapist, I mainly care for patients after cerebrovascular accidents, but also as part of outpatient therapy for adult and pediatric patients.
What patients do you use iPads with?
Almost everyone who is able to cooperate in some way. Of course not for severe cases in ICUs and the like, but apart from that it is for patients in beds and in the ambulance. Especially then in the rehabilitation phase for those who are already able to sit for at least a while and work with the iPad in some way.
What apps do you use?
Various tests and therapeutic materials can be used on the iPad. There are also applications where you can create your own materials. I then use them both for diagnosis and for targeted therapy. In the outpatient clinic for children, it is very broad, there you can use all possible applications for individual components of speech, such as vocabulary development, sentence formation, articulation, but also learning colors, orientation in space, graphomotor skills, visual and auditory perception training, logical thinking and others. You can use a lot of things there.
Are these applications commonly available or specialized for the purposes of speech therapy?
Most of these applications are very simple and can be freely downloaded. They are cheap or completely free. I probably use the app most often Bitsboard, in which it is possible to create materials individually for individual patients and, in addition, to share them further.
This app is unique and amazing in this. Individual image files can be downloaded by my colleagues or patients' families, their teachers, etc. So they don't have to deal with those image sets at home again - they don't have to repeat it, they have it all ready and in Czech. This can be widely used in both pediatric and adult patients. We can create pictures on the theme of an apartment, animals, syllables, words, sounds, sounds, anything. They then download it at home for free and can train themselves what they need.
So the response to tablets is mostly good? Do you encounter resistance to modern technologies among patients or even among colleagues?
With a foot? Not even that. I have had patients over 80 and they mostly like it. It's funny how they mix up new words for them when they say, for example, “Yo, you've got the tableau.” But even patients who have cognitive impairments, meaning dementia patients, work very intuitively with iPads.
Where did the idea to use iPads in treatment come from?
I first heard about the use of a tablet in speech therapy from a colleague from Poděbrady. They created a project there called iSEN (we are already preparing an interview with its creators - editor's note), which is the community around the special school there, where they started using it specifically for disabled children and children with cerebral palsy, autism, etc. The colleague then invited other clinical speech therapists and started organizing training courses. I started working with the tablet in the department when I got it myself. The rest has already developed itself.
How big is your project and how was its financing?
On average, there are five to eight patients with speech or cognitive disorders in the inpatient wards. I go through most of them every morning and work on them on the iPad for 10-15 minutes. So there was no need for a large quantity of those tablets. I got the iPad as part of a grant from the Ministry of Health.
And do you know from your experience whether the state already expects that hospitals would like to use this kind of equipment?
I think so, because my colleagues at the university hospital in Ostrava applied to the management and now they also work with two tablets. A colleague at the municipal hospital in Ostrava already has an iPad as well. The spa in Klimkovice already uses tablets, as does the spa in Darkov. As far as hospitals are concerned, North Moravia is already quite covered by iPads.
Should tablets and other modern gadgets be extended to other sectors of healthcare or even to education?
Just today, the teacher of a boy who comes to us for speech therapy called me. He has slight mental retardation and communication is the biggest difficulty for him. He is in fifth grade and still has trouble reading even short words. At the same time, there are great applications on the iPad for so-called global reading, which is matching simple words to pictures. And the teacher called me that she really liked it and wanted to know my opinion, whether this approach would be suitable for other children as well. I think that change will come very quickly to special schools.
And outside your field?
I myself have five-year-old twins and I think this is the music of the future. Children will not bring textbooks to school, but will go with a tablet. With it, they will learn simple operations for counting, Czech, but also natural history. I can imagine that when children learn about zebras, they will open the teacher's preparation book in iBooks, see a picture of a zebra, learn various information about it, watch a short film, read interesting facts about it, and as a result, it will give them a lot more than just an article with an illustration in a book. The iPad affects more senses, which is why its use in learning is so good - children will learn through play and more easily.
Regardless of the fact that freshmen sometimes drag twelve kilos on their backs. That's why I think it will turn out that way over time. That would be terrific.
The key will therefore be whether there is a will on the part of the state. Otherwise, financing would probably be quite difficult.
The aforementioned teacher asked me how much the tablets cost. I answered that ten thousand with clenched teeth. She was surprisingly quite positive and said it wasn't as much as she thought. Special schools are doing very well in this regard, they can get funding and receive grants. It will be worse with regular bases.
In addition, this teacher liked it a lot, because she could already imagine how she would use the tablets in teaching. It depends a lot on the teacher if he will be able to work with the iPad and prepare materials for children in general from a technical point of view.
Do you think there is a big difference between the iPad and other tablets?
That's what people ask all the time, whether a cheaper Android tablet will be enough. I answer them: “You can try. But even if you do your best, the good educational apps simply aren't there or there's a much smaller selection." That's why I recommend them to buy a used iPad, which is no problem these days. In short, when it comes to my fields of study—education and clinical speech therapy—the iPad is light years ahead of other tablets.
If you want to learn more about tablet therapy, check out the website www.i-logo.cz. There you will find examples of applications used in speech therapy, as well as more information directly from Mgr. Salty.
Great article :)
I consider articles of this type to be the greatest informational contribution of this website. Thanks for them. :)
Thumbs up, more articles like this in other fields as well
iTeach…the site for teachers
- advice on how to use the iPad in teaching
Then on Facebook :-)
As I read, the article is not so much about the iPad, but about applications that have found use in the healthcare sector! To write that the iPad is light years ahead of the competition is a really laughable correction :-) !
I don't know a professional field of activity where android could be involved... design, photo, hospitals, helping people in such facilities, etc. Everyone in these fields works with Apple due to optimization, speed, availability of the application and mainly.. and especially the RELIABILITY that android and wm does not dispose.