Life Skills/Activities

Life can be complicated.  It can be especially complicated for a person with learning or communication limitations.  While the best training for life tasks is the task itself, computer training can help prepare a person for the task, so that they know what to expect, and have strategies ready to deal with the complications of life.

• Software can be used to teach basic home management skills such as paying bills, or simple home maintenance.
• Some types of disability make it difficult to attend to the cues that we use when communicating with others, or learning to take turns. Applications have been developed to teach the skills of interacting with other people.
• Many of the applications that are available to help people with disabilities live their most independent life require special techniques to control.  Using these programs effectively requires training and practice.  Because of this, special software has been developed to teach basic and advanced skills in interacting with assistive devices.
• One of the hallmarks of independence in our culture is the ability to get and hold a job.  Achieving this goal requires that the person have interview skills in order to get the job, and special performance skills to actually do the job.  To provide training to a person with a disability, software for job/employment skills can be useful.
• A basic set of life skills is self-care.  Ranging from dressing, through grooming and bathing, software has been developed to teach the expected norms of personal performance.
• People who are deaf commonly communicate using some form of sign language.  The most common in the United States is American Sign Language, which is a very different form of communication from Signed English. Sign language software can be used to help deaf students expand their vocabulary, or to allow hearing people to learn basic or advanced sign language to allow them to communicate with family members, students or co-works, or friends who are deaf.
• Speech and language therapists and family members can use educational software to teach various components of using speech for communication.  This includes using speech for communication, developing verbal vocabulary, and learning to articulate words and speech sounds.

What type of life skill are you hoping to teach?