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Autism Software: Engaging New Way to Learn Social Skills, in Autism Digest

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Our autism software is featured in the July/August issue of the Autism Digest print magazine! Being highlighted by this wonderful publication is a terrific honor for us! Autism Digest is focused on providing the latest in help for autism.

They titled the article about our social learning software: “Engaging New Way to Learn Social Skills”

According to its website, Autism –Asperger’s Digest provides helpful information for teachers, families and therapists who support children and people diagnosed on the autism spectrum.

From the Autism Digest article:

The Social Express has wrapped best practices for learning social skills into an exciting platform.

The Social Express is educational software designed to teach users how to think about and manage social situations, helping them to develop meaningful social relationships and succeed in life.

The interactive content teaches social skills as it follows characters through social interactions around town. The Social Express is based on best practices for helping children and young adults with ASD to learn social skills—and has wrapped them into an exciting platform.

The lessons build on each another to teach skills that include perspective-taking, understanding that others have feelings, and coping before an impending meltdown. It is designed to start discussions on social situations giving opportunities for parents to interact with their children frequently throughout the program.

We’re also excited because they told us in an email, that they “really enjoyed reviewing The Social Express”.

About Autism Digest

The company that publishes Autism Digest was established in 1996. Its founder talks about what an inspiration his son, Alex, had on him and the reason he started the company. Nearly everyone who works at the company, Future Horizons, has a friend or family member impacted by autism, according to the website.

This quote sums up their mission, from the Autism Digest website:

It is our strong belief that every child and adult with autism can improve and contribute to the lives of those who love them and, in many ways, contribute to society.

You can learn more about Autism – Asperger’s Digest at its website here: http://autismdigest.com/

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Interview: Autism Software Recommended by Social Skills Director (Part-2)

Recently, we sat down with Elif Cagin an educator who uses our autism software learning program with her students. Elif highly recommends The Social Express to other educators.

This is the second half of our interview with Elif Cagin.

Click here to read the first part of the interview.

TSE. Would you recommend this autism software program to other educators? What would you say to them about the program?

Elif: I would recommend The Social Express program to other educators and encourage them to use the concepts in the program to help guide their lesson planning.

It is a very useful tool and students highly prefer this mode of instruction to others- aside from research and evidence based social skills and behavioral concepts that should be the foundation of a social skills program, appealing animation, interactive components of a program and clear socially valid dialogue is very important when considering a program for social skills instruction.

TSE. What are the benefits of The Social Express for you and for your students?

Elif: Using Technology is a very important part of our program. Research supports its use in social skills instruction and practice for those with ASDs (Autism Spectrum Disorders). The Social Express supports, consistency in the classroom for the students, language used school-wide, classroom pacing and lesson planning.

TSE. Tell us more about your school and the students you serve.

Elif: New Vista School located in Laguna Hills, California, is a grade 6-12+ progressive educational center that provides a safe, structured educational environment serving the needs of students with Asperger Syndrome, high-functioning Autism, and language learning disabilities who may benefit from social and transitional skills development. We maximize personal achievement and foster independence through academics, social skills, self-advocacy, and community involvement.

Designed for students in grades six through 12-plus, our school promotes academic achievement and fosters independence through academics, social skills, self-advocacy, and community involvement. Our two academic programs flow from middle through high school and while integrating the social skills so necessary for effective living.

Our transition program provides guidance for high school students and above, assisting with career searches, job training, college exploration, and work experience under the guidance of a transition specialist.

Students are shown new avenues to challenge their minds and prepare them for their adult lives while being supported and guided by professionals, parents, and educators who seek only the best for each student.   Website: http://newvistaschool.org/

TSE: Thanks so much, Elif for sharing your experiences with our autism software learning program.

Join our free newsletter! Get insider updates from The Social Express, click here to join us!

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Interview: Autism Software Recommended by Social Skills Director

Autism-Software-Interview-Elif-Cagin

Elif Cagin, Social Skills Director at New Vista School

We are always excited when parents, therapists and educators send us stories about positive experiences using our autism software social skills program.

Recently, we sat down with Elif Cagin an educator who uses our autism software learning program with her students. Elif highly recommends The Social Express to other educators.

She is the Social Skills Department Chair at the New Vista School for adolescents with autism here in Southern California.

We asked her to share with us how she uses The Social Express with her students. Here is part one of our interview with Elif Cagin. We’ll post the second part tomorrow.

 The Social Express: Tell us about yourself, your role at the school and the types of students you work with.

Elif Cagin: I received my Applied Behavior Analysis Post-Masters Certificate from Pennsylvania State University and plans to sit for BCBA exam in Spring 2012. Also, I received a Master’s Degree in Special Education, Mild/Moderate Education Specialist Instruction credential, CLAD Certification, and EL Authorization from Chapman University.

Additionally, I’m a trained and certified therapist – UCLA Program for the Enrichment of Relational Skills (PEERS). I attended University of California, Riverside and received her Bachelor Degree in Liberal Studies. Currently, I am  the Social Skills Department Chair at New Vista School, a school for adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorders.

I enjoy being active in my community serving as the Chair for Autism Speaks Orange County Chapter 2012-2013. I previously volunteered as School and Community Outreach Co-Chair for Autism Speaks Orange County Chapter 2010-2011.  My professional interests are in the remediation and support of developmental delays and the treatment of social and behavioral deficits in children, adolescents and young adults.

I have over 8 years of experience in the assessment, treatment, and education of children, adolescents, and young adults with a variety of developmental disabilities and behavior disorders in school, home, community, and clinic settings. I’ve presented with other professionals in the field on a variety of topics regarding social skills development- curriculum and instruction, effective autism behavioral teaching strategies, and special education strategies.

My work and on-going education has focused on helping my students and families achieve happier, more fulfilling lives and relationships.  I have passion for working with students with special needs began at a very young age. I have a younger adult sibling who is on the Autism spectrum and my family is my source of inspiration and encouragement.

TSE: How do you use The Social Express autism software program with your students?

Elif: In our classroom we use The Social Express program 3-4 days a week to enrich social skills concept development and encourage application and generalization. We play the program on an iPad and project the program on the classroom whiteboard.

We begin the lesson with direct instruction of the concept that will be the focus of the day and play the program. We pause the program for discussion and participation.

If needed, we scaffold questions for students so that we can target individual behavior and social goals. This program is appropriate for varying ability levels because you can enrich or modify your own instruction and use the modeling in program as a strong support for any social skill concept that is being taught.

TSE: What kinds of progress are you seeing if any, from using the program with your students?

Elif: Student attention and engagement in social skills concept development across the class period has increased noticeably. I have observed specific students that could only attend to a lesson for no more than 10 minutes with frequent prompting for participation now when using “The Social Express” attend for 15-20 minutes and participate independently.

Students request The Social Express.  I find this is a highly preferred mode of instruction support. I have observed students outside of class discussing concepts and using critical thinking skills when faced with or observe peers that are in similar situations as the characters in the program.

Academic teachers such as reading, math, science, and social studies have also observed application and discussion of behaviors and social skills that have been taught using The Social Express.

Stop by tomorrow for part two of our interview.

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Autism Software: 5 Winners of iPad GIVEAWAY

Autism-Software-The-Social-ExpressWe have the five winners of our autism software GIVEAWAY! Thanks to all who participated in our contest to giveaway our education for autism learning app!

 

Autism Software Winners Emails Sent

Congratulations to our 5 winners! We sent each of them emails early today, telling the codes so they can download the iPad version of The Social Express.

We also emailed to each of the winners a copy of The Social Express Printables.

Here are the first names and last name initials (where provided) of the five winners:

Tracey

Jenni

Suzie B.

Erosha

Jennifer F.

Please follow the download instructions in the email you received from us today. Please download your iPad version of The Social Express by June 22, 2012.

Using Education for Autism Apps: Suggestions

We recommend that our winners follow these steps when using their new education for autism app.

1. Before using our autism software interactive app with your child, read The Social Express Guide. It explains how to use The Social Express learning program, vocabulary terms and gives you “Teaching Tips”.

2. Get familiar with the Printables. These paper sheets help you to carryover the skills covered with your child during the interactive lessons.

3. Always work through the program with your child. Don’t let him or her use the program by themselves. This way, you can stop the app whenever you want to discuss a skill or decision made by the characters with your child.

4. Go through one lesson at a time. This allows you to reinforce learning when your child is going through his or her day. Your child may want to go through many lessons in one sitting. Don’t let them.

Good luck! Let us know how your child likes The Social Express, autism software.

Join our free newsletter! Get insider updates from The Social Express, click here to join us!

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Autism Software: The Social Express iPad GIVEAWAY!

We’re launching our own Rafflecopter GIVEAWAY! You can be one of 5 winners of The Social Express autism software for iPad! Hurry, the GIVEAWAY ends on June 17, 2012. Tell your friends and family!
a Rafflecopter giveaway

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Autism Help for Parents: Win Our Social Learning Software

Autism-Software-Smart-Apps-for-KidsOur friends at the popular website, SmartAppsForKids.com are launching The Social Express GIVEAWAY.

You can find out how to win a copy of The Social Express by clicking to the Smart Apps For Kids site here.

SmartAppsForKids.com calls our autism software:

“The Social Express, the app everybody wants…”

We love hearing that! We developed The Social Express to fill the need for autism help for parents. The Social Express is popular with teachers and therapists too. But we’re really glad that it’s the autism software app of choice for many parents who want to help their children to improve social learning.

If you know of anyone looking for autism help for parents, tell them  about The Social Express. Parents can help their kids with autism improve social skills using our autism software on just about any device you like. The Social Express is available for PC, Mac, or iPad.

How Autism Software Helps Your Child

The Social Express is engaging, educational autism software for children and young adults with social learning challenges. The software is designed to teach users how to think about and manage social situations. This way it helps them to develop meaningful social relationships with other children and succeed in life.

Using video modeling, The Social Express helps your child with autism, Asperger’s, or ADHD to work on skills that he or she needs to make friends. Skills like self-regulating, recognizing other people’s facial expressions, and how to keep the right distance from others in a conversation.

Join our free newsletter! Get insider updates from The Social Express, click here to join us!

Visit the Smart Apps For Kids website to learn more about The Social Express GIVEAWAY. Click here to check out their website.

 

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SIIA Announces Top Innovators in Education Technology

Education-for-autism-software-SIIA-recognition

We were excited this week that our autism software for social learning received two education technology (ed tech) awards. The Software & Information Industry Association’s (SIIA) Innovation Incubator Program recognized The Social Express with a first place honor as as being the Most Likely to Succeed. We also received second place for Most Innovative technology.

Below is the official SIIA news release:

For Immediate Release:
SIIA Communications Contact: Laura Greenback, 410.533.1943, lgreenback@siia.net
PR Contact: Charlene Blohm, C. Blohm & Associates, 608.216.7300, charlene@cblohm.com

SIIA Announces Top Innovators in Education Technology
Three technology solutions receive honors in SIIA’s Innovation Incubator Program

WASHINGTON, D.C. (May 9, 2012) The Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA), the principal trade association for the software and digital content industries, this week recognized three ed tech solutions with five awards for their originality, innovation, and industry promise.

During SIIA’s bi-annual Innovation Incubator program held in connection with this week’s SIIA Ed Tech Industry Summit, Language Express and Filament Games were voted by 350 conference attendees as being the Most Likely to Succeed (first place and runner-up, respectively). Filament Games and Language Express were also voted as the Most Innovative (first place and runner-up, respectively.)

The Innovation Incubator Program supports innovation in the education technology industry by raising the profile of promising new technologies while connecting these innovators with captains of industry for mentorship, expert advice, investment opportunities, and partnerships to support growth.

Overall, 73 applicants were assessed for the Innovation Incubator program on a broad range of criteria, including the education focus, end-user impact, market need for the innovation, representation of K-12/postsecondary market levels, and the level of originality and innovation. Ten finalists and two alternates were selected for the program and their participation was subsidized by program lead and co-sponsors Blackboard Partnerships and Texthelp Systems.

“It has been an incredible experience to see more than 100 presentations from the ten innovation incubator program cycles we have now hosted,” said Karen Billings, Vice President for the Education Division at SIIA. “The number of applicants increases every cycle. We are thrilled to support so many original and exciting products and, just as importantly, to provide SIIA members with early access to these technologies.”

In addition to the recognitions announced above, Blackboard Partnerships™ continued its tradition of identifying the Innovation Incubator most aligned with their own initiatives, providing Smart Science Education Inc. with a complimentary year-long membership as a Blackboard Building Blocks™ partner in the Blackboard Partnerships program. Among the many benefits, partners have access to the thousands of clients using the Blackboard Learn™ platform. Program membership also includes a developer copy of the Blackboard Learn software, a product listing on the Blackboard Extensions online directory, personalized guidance and mentorship on the partnership, and participation at members‐only events.

“We’re honored to have teamed up with SIIA for the sixth consecutive year to sponsor the Innovation Incubator Program at the Ed Tech Industry Summit,” said Ted Hopper, Vice President, Business Development at Blackboard. “Each participant showcased original developments aimed to enhance personalized learning, but we think the online labs developed by Smart Science Education Inc. best align with our continued efforts to enrich our content repository for K-12 and Higher Education. We’re excited to welcome Smart Science Education Inc. into the Blackboard Partnerships program.”

About SIIA
The Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) is the principal trade association for the software and digital content industry. SIIA provides global services in government relations, business development, corporate education, and intellectual property protection to more than 500 leading software and information companies. The SIIA Education Division serves and represents more than 180 member companies that provide software, digital content and other technologies that address educational needs. The Division shapes and supports the industry by providing leadership, advocacy, business development opportunities and critical market information. For more information, visit www.siia.net/education. To learn more about the Innovation Incubator Program and the Ed Tech Industry Summit, visit http://www.siia.net/etis.

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Autism Software Wins First Place at SIIA Ed Tech Summit

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Our autism software, The Social Express won first prize today at The Ed Tech Summit!

The Ed Tech Summit is an an educational tech event!

If you’re on Twitter, here is the Summit hashtag, #ETIS12

Our autism software was named: Most Likely To Succeed Educational Technology Product or Service

It was so exciting yesterday at the SIIA Summit in San Francisco! The photo above is me pitching yesterday during the Summit’s Innovation Incubator after we made it to the finals.

Double bonus. We also won Second Prize – Most Innovative Ed Tech Product or Service – Runner Up. We are so honored and enjoyed meeting all of the other companies and speakers at the event.

Social Learning Software Submitted

A few months ago, we entered our social learning software, The Social Express, in the Innovation Incubator. The SIIA stands for the Software Information Industry Association.

The SIIIA Education Division supports innovation in the ed tech industry (education technology) through the Innovation Incubator Program. The Incubator Program is an initiative that raises awareness of the most innovative ed tech products and services. We entered in our social learning software using our company name, Brighten Learning.

Autism Software to Help Your Child Make Friends

The whole reason my wife Tina and I started our company was to help both our twins with autism and the larger autism community. We know firsthand how many challenges there are for families with children diagnosed on the autism spectrum. Especially when it comes to helping your child with autism make and keep friendships with other children.

It was seven years ago when our boys were first diagnosed on the spectrum. I was wondering what to do to help them. They weren’t very social. And I am, on the other hand, very social. That made it very difficult for me, especially.

I really wanted to help them improve their social skills. Things like making and keeping eye contact and knowing the right distance to stand from others.

It was important to help them to develop and work on other basic social skills. Like, recognizing other kids’ facial expressions. That would be key for my boys to make friends. Especially when they left special education and joined the mainstream classroom.

I looked long and hard to find a social learning software program that would help them. But I couldn’t find any kind of autism software to help them with social skills.

Then I had an “aha!” moment one day when the therapist was at our house working with the children. She took out a laptop. They were interested at first. But the autism software  on the laptop was old, outdated and it didn’t hold their attention for very long.

That’s when the idea for The Social Express began. I wanted to make social learning software for children and young adults that was really fun. Animated. Interactive. My main goal was to develop social learning software that would hold their attention.

It took us about three years from the time we came up with the concept for our autism education software. But now it’s finally out in the world.

Winning the Innovation Incubator awards is a wonderful honor.

But helping your kids with autism to improve their social skills so they can make friends. That’s why we get up every day and work to bring The Social Express to the global autism community.

Thanks to everyone for your support and well wishes!

– Marc[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

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Mom Using Our Autism Software Likes the ‘Teachable Moments’

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]I was fortunate enough to be invited for a local television interview about our autism software. Kimberly King, the CBS8 reporter, also interviewed a mom using The Social Express with her son who has autism.

Caroline Tingum and I were interviewed on our local CBS8 television station a couple of weeks ago.

Caroline said how much she liked the “teachable moments” that she finds when working through our autism software with her son. She also likes how visually engaging the animation of The Social Express is.

Caroline believes that the, ‘wonderful animation’, as she describes it makes it easier for her son to be engaged with learning the social lessons of the autism software.

Thanks so much to Caroline Tingum for sharing her thoughts about using The Social Express. A big thanks also to Kimberly King of CBS8 television for interviewing us!

Here is the video of our interview. Let us know what you think. How do you find ‘teachable moments‘ when working with your kids with autism?

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Our New Autism Software App For Kids Gets A Thumbs Up!

Autism-Software-social-learning-softwareOur friends at SmartAppsForkids.com called us, …

Developers of everyone’s favorite social stories app!

Gee, thanks! Developing autism software to improve kids lives by helping them with social skills is our passion.

SmartAppsForkids.com reviewed our newest app, The Digital Problem Solver.

The Digital Problem Solver (DPS) was originally part of our autism software, The Social Express. DPS is a social learning software tool that you can use with your kids from your iPhone.

DPS Autism Software Helps Your Kids Cope

DPS helps your kids with autism, Asperger’s or ADHD when they’re having trouble self-regulating. Just like the characters in The Social Express, your child can select from an emotion he or she is having trouble with.

Then–just like the Social Express Characters–your child picks a coping strategy to try. And you can customize DPS. Just add in your own pictures of emotions. Add in your own name for the emotion. It can be a photo that means something to your child, like their favorite movie character, or another family member.

Then a funny thing happened on the way to the app store…

Lots of parents, educators and kids bought and used our autism software. (We were hugely grateful, by the way).  And they asked us to make The Digital Problem Solver into its own app.  Who knew?!

So, we did! Digital Problem Solver is now a completely separate autism software app available for the iPhone, iPad, itouch and Android. Find more info by clicking here.

You can read the review by SmartAppsforKids.com by clicking here.

Thanks Smart Apps for Kids!

 

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