I just wanted to pass along a technology item that we've found that is REALLY COOL.
It is called a Pablo drawing tablet with a pen for the mouse.
We had gotten the KidPix art program a while back at Wal-Mart for about 25 bucks. It is well worth the money. I'll explain it a little more later.
I had looked at some different draw tablets and then found the Pablo on Ebay for $24.99. It was new in the box but just needed to have some updated drivers downloaded off the company website. Ordinarily the Pablo would be more in the $100 dollar range.
This screen on the tablet is approximately 9 X 12 and has a corded pen/mouse that can be plugged into the left or right side of the screen. (Expensive tablets, such as Wacom can be bought with a cordless mouse, which is what professional artists use).
When using this tablet and pen, it can be used to draw (such as with KidPix or other art programs), but it can also be used just like a regular mouse. I can lightly hold the pen over the screen and slide it around and the cursor moves but if I want to open and close windows, I gently push down with the pen and it acts like a mouse click.
When I am working with Evan in the Kidpix art program, then she has the tablet and pen (I support underneath her hand to help the pen stay upright, because she pronates her arm, so that she can push down when it is time to click the mouse, but boy does she understand!).
While she has this mouse version of the pen, I use the other mouse (a trackball) and switch in and out of features of the Kidpix program.
For example she may using a felt tip marker feature, the program actually makes a squeaky marker sound while she draws. I use my mouse to switch colors (it is just simpler than moving her arm holding the pen), and she can now marker with a different color. It gets really fun when I choose the background feature, she can use the click of her pen to "lay in" a background that I have selected with my mouse.
We might pick rainbow, and when she clicks her pen on the tablet, her entire marker drawing will have rainbow colored paper in the background. If we don't like it, we can hit "undo guy" and he says funny stuff. Then we could choose a different background.
I've also helped her work up some pretty abstract pieces by choosing a black background and then having her draw with the wide pencil (there are 3 pen/pencil widths in Kidpix, small, medium and large), in a chosen color, red for example. I would have her make a bunch of squiggles that intersect. Then I have her stop and I use my mouse to select "backgrounds", the rainbow looks pretty with the black, but there are lots of other nice ones too. Now I help her guide the cursor with her pen to the red squiggles and when she clicks on the red squiggles they become rainbow colored (you can't hand draw rainbow, but you can change your hand drawn squiggles to rainbow, after you have drawn them in a solid color).
You can buy white t-shirt iron on at Wal-Mart in the office section and print out the art work that they've made for their own t-shirt.
Evan's love traditional painting BUT it is a monster of a job to undertake.
This method is "NO MESS".
The Kidpix program has a "paint brush" that will allow Evan to use the pen to draw "dancing hearts" onto the screen that will have a musical run accompany it while she is dragging the pen across the tablet. There are lots more of these odd brushes with sound effects (bubbles, bugs, balloons, stars, fire, on and on)
There is a nice section of color pages of the individual states of the U.S. You can drag a state onto the screen and either go the marker/pencil/crayon/chalk features and let them handcolor the state or you can go to the background section and let them "fountain fill" with color gradients like the rainbow.
To rainbow or fountain fill only takes a single mouse click on the tablet, which might be good for a child with more motor impairment, but hand coloring with the pen and tablet would be easy for a child with better hand/arm use.
It is just a fun, fun way to access the computer at a fairly inexpensive price.
Be warned, they never want to QUIT.
I can also let her use the pen in her Intellipics activities that I have created for her. She can just click the pen onto the tablet and it basically "turns the pages" that I have created for her in Intellipics.
She has pages that I've created that are "skip counting", she sees the number, the quantity and hears me say the number (I have recorded my voice onto the page). Now she can sit and click the pen onto the tablet and sees "3 fish", then she clicks the pen gets "6 fish", then another click and she gets "9 fish" and so on. She has reading pages that she operates the same way.
(I was surprised to see the pen work this well in so many different ways, you can play Solitaire and Free Cell too!)
Pretty cool, huh?
Sincerely,
Joan