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This Video Game Is Helping Kids with Special Needs

Marc Zimmerman created Social Express to help his autistic twin boys understand the world around them. Now the game is helping kids all over the world.

by Jessica Toomer

Software helps special needs children

Musician Marc Zimmerman had been disappointed with how schools handled his twin autistic boys for some time. As a result of autism, his third-grade sons needed extra help developing social and emotional skills. Zimmerman tells Guideposts.org:

“[Teachers] would send home a worksheet and [ask you to] plug your son’s name into this story [as if that would help the kids better relate to the story]. I was like, ‘there is no way that this is going to sink in.’”

In 2009, Zimmerman had an idea.

As he was dropping his sons off at school, a song idea popped into his head.  Its lyrics were all about his third-graders and how they could (and couldn’t) relate to their peers. He dubbed the song “Brighten Learning.”

Inspired by the song idea, with the help of his wife, Tina, and a host of academic researchers, a speech pathologist and a behavioral therapist, Zimmerman created an interactive software program called Social Express, geared specifically towards children and young adults who, like his sons, needed more than just a piece of paper to help them relate to the real world.

Social Express takes users through different sets of experiences, called “webisodes” in the program, that help them learn how to think and manage many kinds of social situations.

Each webisode is designed to take the user on a journey, letting the child (and their parent) decide which action to take. In one episode, a girl wants to sharpen her pencil and is told no by her teacher; the child and parent get to choose, what should the girl do next? How would the interaction with the adult make her feel? Each choice holds positive or negative consequences for the user, which explain how certain actions are interpreted in a social setting.

The program also works on a scale, meaning children build upon the skills they learn. If, for instance, a child completed the webisode featuring the girl and her pencil – titled “No Means No” – they would graduate to a new webisode. In many ways, Social Express is just like any other video game children play, except instead of beating the bad guys or winning the race, the way for users to get to the next level is to understand how and why social interactions impact others.

Zimmerman admits getting his brainchild off the ground was no easy task. The family contributed their life savings and persuaded angel investors to put a stake in the program. They were able to recruit some of the best animators in Hollywood – think Pixar-level – to donate their talents.

Still, convincing parents and educators that his game could actually help their children and students more easily learn social queues was difficult.

“A lot of people were like ‘how is a computer program really going to change a kid? I want my kid interacting with others; the last thing I want them to do is be spending more time on their computer,’” Zimmerman explains.

It was his own experience, sitting down with his sons to play the first episode of the program that convinced the businessman he had a project worth fighting for.

“We were sitting on the couch,” Zimmerman recalls. “Our legs were touching, our arms were touching, they were engaged and they were conversing with me,” he says, a rare experience for them, because of his children’s autism. “I had a feeling like ‘okay this is bigger than just them.’”

The Social Express is now in more than 100 schools in Encinitas Southern California school district and Zimmerman hopes to soon reach more than 15,000 schools across the country.

The father, who struggled with his children’s autism diagnosis in the beginning, says he and his wife have been able to have a fuller perspective on the disorder, thanks to this program.

You have to shift your whole focus of what your expectations [for your kids] were and now what your reality is,” Zimmerman says of parenting children with autism. “We prayed. We tried to be spiritual and know that there is a bigger plan and maybe now we know. Through this experience with our kids we’ve been able to bring a program to the world and leave a legacy.”

He wants that legacy to help parents desperately searching for ways to connect with their own children.

“My hope for the Social Express is that I can provide parents a tool to be able to feel like they are contributing to their son or daughter’s well being. That they can actually do something outside the therapist; that they feel empowered.”

He also hopes his family’s personal journey can change the way we view autism and children who suffer with social and behavioral disorders.

“It’s not a death sentence,” Zimmerman says of getting an autism diagnosis. “From my perspective it has taught me to understand that people have strengths that are unseen. To harness those strengths, [just] love people, whoever they are, whatever their problems may be, for who they are.”

https://www.guideposts.org/positive-living/this-video-game-is-helping-kids-with-special-needs/page/0/1

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Parents of Twins with Autism Open Up About the App They Created to Help Kids Develop Social Skills: It’s ‘Incredible’ to See Its Impact

By Tiare Dunlap @tiaredunlap

04/29/2016 AT 01:50 PM EDT
Shari Grande and her husband call the day their two-year-old son Elijah was diagnosed with autism “the day of nevers.”

“His physician told us he’ll never talk, he’ll never interact, it was just one ‘never’ after the next,” Grande, 49, tells PEOPLE.

Eleven years after his diagnosis, Elijah has gone on to accomplish much of what was deemed impossible. The Sunnyvale, California, teen even attends a mainstream public high school.

Grande, a clinical social worker, credits her son’s success to a number of interventions, including the learning app The Social Express.

Keep up with your favorite celebs in the pages of PEOPLE Magazine by subscribing now.

Created by parents Marc and Tina Zimmerman, whose identical twins Jason and Jared have autism, The Social Express is an interactive software that helps kids with autism learn how to read emotions, empathize and react in social situations.

Parents of Twins with Autism Open Up About the App They Created to Help Kids Develop Social Skills: It’s ‘Incredible’ to See Its Impact| Twins, Autism, Medical Conditions, Real People Stories

The San Diego, California, couple invented the app as a way of giving their sons the tools they needed to ease the social isolation they experienced every day.

“It was very difficult because all of our nieces and nephews are highly social and have always had a lot of friends and play dates,” Marc tells PEOPLE. “Our kids never had many play dates and if put into a social situation, they would just go sit alone in a corner.”

However, after seeing how their sons responded to technology and cartoons, the Zimmermans enlisted experts to write a software program that could model social situations with engaging animation. The parents took turns sitting with their sons as they watched the animations, and helped them talk through their decision-making process when asked how a character on the screen should react.

“They would sit down to use the program and engage with us,” Marc recalls. “That was the tough part – getting them to engage. Once they were engaged we saw them speaking more to each other and acting more comfortable in social situations.”

Parents of Twins with Autism Open Up About the App They Created to Help Kids Develop Social Skills: It’s ‘Incredible’ to See Its Impact| Twins, Autism, Medical Conditions, Real People Stories

Now 14, Jason and Jared are best friends attending a mainstream middle school, earning straight As and playing in a band. “They’re different kids than they were when they were diagnosed,” Marc reflects.

The twins’ case is not unusual. Since its launch in 2011, use of The Social Express as a teaching tool for kids with social differences has been adopted in 70 countries and in hundreds of schools around the U.S.

“We get emails from around the world from parents telling us about how it has helped their kids,” Marc says. “It’s just incredible to see how something we created to help our own kids has had such a bigger impact than we would have ever imagined.”

Parents of Twins with Autism Open Up About the App They Created to Help Kids Develop Social Skills: It’s ‘Incredible’ to See Its Impact| Twins, Autism, Medical Conditions, Real People Stories

That impact is not lost on moms like Grande, who says the program helped her son to open up and fit in.

“He’s just a nice, open and bubbly kid and he has become my greatest teacher,” she says.

http://www.people.com/article/social-express-california-couple-creates-app-social-skills-twins-with-autism

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Learning Social-Emotional Skills in the 21st Century

By Heather Lowe on Thu, 21 Apr 2016

It was the winter of 1997, and as my grandmother hung up the phone, tears gradually began to stream down her face. Another one of her friends, a close one, had died. I wrapped my arms around her waist and hugged her as she cried. It was the first time in my life that I can remember not just feeling sad for someone, but feeling sad with that person. It was a powerful memory of empathy for me.

Psychologists refer to empathy as a social-emotional skill, a term for the cognitive skills that guide our social and emotional behaviors. Social-emotional learning has recently become a popular topic in education reform, among both education researchers and educators interested in its pedagogical applications. A large body of research has shown that socio-emotional skills support learning, by enabling students to do everything from sit still during a lesson to understand the feelings of their peers. Other studies go beyond outcomes in the classroom and show that self-control at 3 years old predicts health, wealth, and crime from adolescence through early adulthood. One of the most popular social-emotional topics is grit, which psychologist Angela Duckworth has argued is more predictive of success than IQ or personality traits. So how will the social-emotional learning domain transform as educators continue to teach this moving target of skills? Digital technology seems to have some insights.

With the rise of personalized learning and digital education tools for math, history, science and other core content areas, there has also been the development of social-emotional digital games. My initial query revealed approximately two dozen social-emotional apps available for download on the App Store. Some apps focus on emotional intelligence; while others focus cognitive brain breaks or empathy. Most of the apps focused on identifying emotions target younger children, while the games geared at understanding the perspectives and experiences of different people could be used by teenagers or adults. However, the presence of these games on mobile platforms makes them accessible to a much wider group of people.

Over the past two years, low-income families’ access to smartphones has increased from 27% to 51%, closing the “app gap” slightly faster than the disparity between high and low-income home internet access. Mobile platforms appear to have more potential to level the playing field of access to digital educational tools. Simultaneously, the time children ages 8 and under spend on mobile devices has tripled since 2011. But according to researchers at the University of California, the more time children spend in front of the screen could be inhibiting their ability to read social cues. So, if you are like me, it can be difficult to fathom learning empathy or other social-emotional skills from technology instead of human interaction, like I did with my grandmother.

While some may be skeptical of social-emotional apps, there are certain scenarios in which they can be quite powerful. Speech-language pathologists often use these games to help children on the autism spectrum learn nonverbal cues to benefit social interactions. One program, The Social Express, is a series of interactive webisodes and apps that can be used by the learner independently, or with a teacher in a group. The Social Express allows learners to engage in a variety of social situations and adds a level of comfort that would be inaccessible without the game’s removal from reality. The app places a user in different social scenarios, often focusing on social skills that those with autism may struggle with, such as eye contact. Even though the app can improve a child’s behavior in social settings, parents and educators should employ the app as a supplemental, not primary, solution.
The Social Express challenges players to take the perspectives of others.

Not only are apps being used to teach social-emotional skills, but so are beloved children’s television characters. A few years ago, WGBH and Tufts University transformed the children’s television show Arthur into an interactive, digital comic book. Teachers paired 1st and 4th graders together to complete lessons that focused on prosocial behavior, positive decision-making, and character development. The computer game focused on these facets of social-emotional learning in an effort to proactively prevent bullying. In addition to the engagement of a game, it was effective because Arthur prompted children to have discussions with their peers about the dilemmas in the story. Thus, the verbal reflection with peers and a teacher about situations in Arthur improved social-emotional literacy. Results from a study evaluating the game’s efficacy revealed that children demonstrated increased awareness, understanding, and vocabulary about bullying.

However, there are cases where social-emotional games and programs can be used to manage students in ways that may not be beneficial to child development. The game Zoo U recreates common social scenarios at school, and children pick which dialogue option for their character to express in a tough social situation. The program provides educators with an assessment of a student’s competency in different social-emotional areas: emotion management and identification, impulse control, empathy, cooperation, communication, social initiation, and problem solving. The assessment provides concrete examples for teachers to target and improve specific weaknesses that the assessment identified. But assessments often become a student’s label for a teacher, especially when a teacher lacks the time and resources to spend quality time with a student. A seminal study by Robert Rosenthal at Harvard found that giving a teacher a label of a student’s intellectual capacity affects how that teacher instructs them; teachers gave students with a label of intellectual growth more positive feedback, overtly and subtlety, throughout the learning process. Providing an assessment about a student’s level of empathy, for example, could provide a teacher with a label that could be misinterpreted as a character flaw.

While social-emotional apps may present a way for those with autism to learn social cues in a safe environment, the apps could also encourage a quick-fix solution to a behavioral problem in cases when medical professionals should be consulted. Though social-emotional apps can proactively address bullying and promote awareness on how to address it, other games may provide a social-emotional assessment of a child that runs the risk of misinterpretation. So, should social-emotional apps solve children’s behavioral problems or should we be finding more holistic solutions? The current body of research suggests that methods to improve social-emotional outcomes must be comprehensive and use technology as a tool, not a solution.

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For kids with autism, this tech matters- CNET

For these kids, games and cute robots are more than just fun. On World Autism Awareness Day, we look at some of the ways technology is improving the lives of those with the condition.

CNET

Tech Culture
April 2, 20165:00 AM PDT

Amanda Kooser mugshot
by Amanda Kooser
@akooser
Leslie Katz mugshot
by Leslie Katz
@lesatnews

In The Social Express, a cast of animated characters help kids with autism learn helpful social skills.
The Social Express.

Both Katie and her teacher look like they’d be right at home in a Pixar film, and at first their conversation seems like it would fit in one too.

The ponytailed and pink-clad Katie really wants to sharpen her pencil, but her teacher won’t let her until the other kids in the class finish taking a test. Katie asks again, but the teacher offers the same frustrating answer.

“Katie seems upset that her teacher said ‘no.’ How should Katie respond? Let’s help Katie make the best choice,” a narrator says. “Remember, sometimes parents and teachers say ‘no’ when you ask them for something. It’s important that we stay calm and respond appropriately.”

The conversation, highlighted in software called The Social Express, aims to help kids diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, or ASD, resolve conflicts and understand that no means no.
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It’s an important lesson packaged in kid-friendly animation. And it’s just one of several programs and robots that help kids with autism communicate, interact socially and control repetitive behaviors. All these can be a struggle for those affected by the broad and complicated range of brain development issues that fall under the ASD umbrella.

The Social Express was created by Marc and Tina Zimmerman, who have identical twin boys, both diagnosed with autism. The twins reacted positively to the use of a laptop during home therapy sessions, and that inspired the Zimmermans to create software that teaches social cues through animated, interactive lessons. It works on computers, iPads and with interactive white boards in school settings, and it lets parents, educators and kids work through lessons on topics like making eye contact, taking turns, listening to others, showing respect and controlling emotions.

ASD today affects 74 million people, or 1 percent of the world’s population, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Many on the spectrum struggle to talk to other people and understand others’ thoughts and emotions, as well as their own. This makes it hard for many kids to form lasting relationships with those around them.
Enlarge Image

ASK Nao helps children with autism at Topcliffe primary school in the United Kingdom.
Ed Alcock

ASK Nao, a cute humanoid robot with a welcoming face, is another tech tool that can help. The bot, from Aldebaran Robotics, has a very specific purpose: to move, dance and interact with children with autism. The bot comes with special programs, like Guess Emotions, which involves NAO acting out an emotions and asking the child to identify it.

“Most children on the autism spectrum have a natural attraction towards technology, and Nao’s humanoid shape creates a perfect link between technology and humanity,” said Olivier Joubert, autism business unit manager at Aldebaran.

ASK Nao isn’t the only robot built to teach social skills to kids with autism. Back in 2010, a low-cost, child-size bot named Kaspar worked with kids who needed help learning proper social reactions.

Robots and apps are patient. They don’t judge. Even personal voice assistants like Siri can play a role, as the unlikely friendship between Apple’s artificial intelligence system and one child with autism shows.

Games can play a role too.

For kids with autism in a classroom in Australia, Minecraft is an effective teaching tool for communicating English, science, geography and art lessons. The multiplayer mode in this game, where you can build whole 3D worlds, encourages social interaction between students, improving conflict resolution and communications skills for kids with autism. Those skills can then translate to life outside the classroom. It can be challenging for people with autism to read body language and facial expressions.

April 2 is World Autism Awareness Day, with the entire month designated in the US as National Autism Awareness Month for promoting awareness of not only the condition itself, but also of the many creative tools for dealing with it. The campaign has designated blue as its signature color, and the hashtag #LIUB, for Light It Blue, is picking up traction on social media.

Autism organizations often use a puzzle piece as a symbol. It can represent the complexity of the disorder, but it can also be seen as a visual representation of how people with autism are key parts of a bigger picture, important pieces in the lives of their families and friends. Technology is finding its place in that jigsaw.

 

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Social-Emotional Learning Would Benefit From Tech Innovations, Report Says

New report identifies key areas for growth
By Benjamin Herold
Article Tools

Educational technology can help students develop important social and emotional skills and character traits, but the market for such tools is currently underdeveloped, concludes a new report from the World Economic Forum and the Boston Consulting Group.

The report, titled “New Vision for Education: Fostering Social and Emotional Learning Through Technology,” identifies two main areas for growth: Products that target core academic subjects, which the groups contend can do a better job of incorporating features that support development of everything from communication skills to cultural awareness, and newer technologies, such as wearable devices and virtual reality systems, which the groups believe warrant additional investment.

Ed-tech industry leaders agreed that social-emotional learning represents a potential “growth market,” fueled in part by recent attention from the federal government.

The National Education Technology Plan places a heavy emphasis on developing “non-cognitive competencies”—such as the ability to interact well with peers, resolve disputes, and persist through challenging problems—through digital games and other classroom technologies.
Emerging Marketplace

Following are examples of education technology products and services related to social-emotional learning:

• Breathe, Think, Do With Sesame: An app in which young children can interact with familiar Sesame Street characters (through animated video clips, by tapping on the creatures to “help them breathe,” and by selecting coping strategies and watching the outcomes) to deal with stressful situations.

• RippleEffects: A “whole-spectrum learning” system that includes multimedia content and assessment tools. The purpose is to introduce students to real-life scenarios related to difficult social and emotional situations, then provide training and support to help them learn how to navigate such situations in their own lives.

• Scholar: A web-based “social learning platform” that is meant to promote student writing by providing lots of opportunities for peer-to-peer interaction and collaboration, a constant stream of informal feedback, and multimedia-creation tools to encourage student engagement and creativity.

• Social Express: A series of online, animated, interactive lessons in which students can practice navigating real-life social interactions, with the goal of developing such skills as conflict resolution and group participation.

• ZooU: A digital game intended to assess elementary students’ social-emotional skills by having them participate in a variety of simulated social situations and interactive virtual activities.

“Our expectation of what schools are trying to accomplish is expanding,” said Joseph South, the director of the Office of Educational Technology at the U.S. Department of Education.

“Technology can be a tool for changing students from consumers to creators of information, and that role puts them in a position where they can start to develop nonacademic skills they will need to succeed in college, careers, and life.”
Defining the Concept

The general principle behind social-emotional learning is that students will benefit from developing the ability to understand and regulate their own emotions, form strong and supportive relationships, solve problems, and set and achieve goals. Some research has shown that students perform better academically and have improved life outcomes when they receive explicit instruction around these areas.

But defining exactly what social-emotional learning means can be tricky.

Many K-12 educators and policymakers follow the model outlined by the nonprofit Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning, which includes five “core competencies:” self-management, self-awareness, responsible decision making, relationship skills, and social awareness.

For many in the field, though, the notion of social-emotional learning overlaps with such ideas as “noncognitive skills” and character development.

And the World Economic Forum and the Boston Consulting Group put their own twist on the subject, describing social-emotional learning as covering a set of 10 “competencies and character traits.” The groups believe that the approach is most effective when introduced via direct instruction in the preschool years, and when embedded through schools’ core curricula in the elementary and secondary years. Technology can help, the groups write, because it “can personalize learning, engage the disengaged, complement what happens in the classroom, extend education outside the classroom, and provide access to learning to students.”

Some efforts have been made to bring the various notions together, and many districts are trying to incorporate some version of the concepts into their curricula and school-improvement strategies.
Shortage of Products

Confusion still abounds, though: The World Economic Forum and the Boston Consulting Group surveyed 2,000 parents and educators in five countries (China, Kenya, South Korea, the United Kingdom, and the United States) and found that social-emotional learning is widely recognized, but poorly understood.

“Parents and educators across the world primarily see [social-emotional learning] as a means of achieving better classroom discipline today, not as a way to ensure better academic and economic outcomes over the long term,” the groups’ report reads.

That lack of understanding is one reason why technology tools related to social-emotional learning have been slow to take off, the groups contend.

Another challenge is that K-12 school systems don’t generally have dedicated revenue streams that can be tapped to purchase social-emotional learning products, said Karen Billings, the vice president of the education technology network for the Software & Information Industry Association, a Washington trade group.

“It’s a chicken-and-egg problem,” Billings said. “If a lot of companies were coming to schools and saying we’ve got these tools to help you, you might see [more demand.] But if companies aren’t directly hearing about that demand, they probably aren’t developing those tools.”

And a third barrier is a shortage of venture capital. According to the World Economic Forum and the Boston Consulting Group, just 5 percent of investment funds made available to the ed-tech sector between 2011 and 2015 went to companies that include social-emotional learning elements in their products.

The area that is most immediately ripe for growth, the groups believe, is in adding new SEL- focused features into existing tools. Their report includes a list of 55 such features, including strategies for structuring student interactions, approaches for encouraging students to adopt different perspectives, and strategies that help students develop “grit.”

Futuristic technologies such as wearable devices that track students’ emotional states and physiological reactions to stress, for example, or virtual reality systems that can simulate physical environments and “foster greater self-awareness and spur creativity,” are also important for “expanding the realm of the possible,” the report says.

In both cases, Billings said, there’s an opportunity for ed-tech companies.

“It will be a relatively small market for a while,” Billings said. “But the companies acting more quickly are probably going to be the ones who are going to get the market share.”

For some parents and educators, though, the notion that children will learn about emotions and social skills from technology is counterintuitive, if not anathema. Concerns about screen time, data privacy, and a focus on technology instead of smaller class sizes and more human interaction are common.
Skepticism About Digital Tools

South, of the U.S. Education Department, said that perspective is understandable, particularly in response to the “there’s an app for that” approach to addressing social-emotional learning.

“There is no doubt in my mind if you put a kid in the corner with a screen, it’s probably going to diminish their social-emotional IQ,” he said. “But ed tech can also be a way for students to access peers, experiences, experts, and audiences they couldn’t otherwise access. When technology is a means of connecting students to larger communities, it increases the potential for interactions that will develop the skills we’re looking for.”

Of particular interest, South said, are virtual environments (including simulations and digital role-playing games) that allow students to experiment, fail, and try again in a low-stakes environment.

Also encouraging, he said, are platforms and tools that allow students to communicate, write collaboratively, and work together on projects.

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The World Economic Forum-Boston Consulting Group report suggests that policymakers, investors, researchers, educators, and parents all play a role in promoting social-emotional learning.

“Policymakers, in particular, must stand at the forefront of setting the agenda for policy change, prioritizing efforts that foster SEL and related assessments and measurements in education, as well as providing funding and other resources for the research and adoption of SEL and related ed tech,” the groups write.

Their report is the second in a series on ways to address the “21st century skills gap” through technology.

Coverage of social and emotional learning is supported in part by a grant from the NoVo Foundation, at www.novofoundation.org. Education Week retains sole editorial control over the content of this coverage.

Vol. 35, Issue 25, Page 9

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These Parents of Autistic Twins Are Helping Kids All Over the World with Social Skills

When Marc Zimmerman’s twins were given an autism diagnosis, he decided to create something to make their lives better.

By Jamie Pacton

Zimmerman family Courtesy Marc Zimmerman

Marc Zimmerman has been a rockstar, composer, real estate broker, and software startup entrepreneur. But his latest project—founding and running the company responsible for the incredible social situation simulator The Social Express—is the one closest to his heart and home.Marc and his wife Tina are the parents of 14-year-old autistic twins Jared and Jason. When the boys were younger, Zimmerman wanted to create something that would help them navigate tricky social situations, reinforce what the boys were learning in therapy, and be something they could watch and learn from together. With this seed of an idea, Marc invested his life savings, made concrete plans, and now, with the help of Tina and many others, The Social Express is a reality.

So, what exactly does The Social Express do? According to its website, it, “provides an opportunity for the user to become more socially competent and have successful social interactions.” Or, put in simpler terms: It helps kids practice a variety of social situations in a low-stakes setting. Through colorful, expertly-animated videos and thoughtful storylines, kids can learn more about self-management, group participation, conversations, attentive listening, conflict management, relationships, non-verbal communication, and more. Kids watch the videos, then make choices that move them further along in the storyline. There are webisodes, e-books, music, and a “clubhouse” for social networking. It’s available for the computer or as an app, and Zimmerman notes that his sons and many other autistic kids really appreciate using technology as a vehicle for practicing social rules and conventions.

Social Express Social Express

Although I was skeptical about how much my children—a neurotypical 5-year-old and a non-verbal autistic 7-year-old—would take to the videos, I’m happy to report they were both enthralled by them. Together, we watched several in which kids tried to figure out which social choice was the most productive—and all of us appreciated the interactive aspect of The Social Express. We were also able to have a bit of conversation about the scenarios and why one way of acting was more positive than another in that social situation. I appreciated the conversation starters and the fact that this was low stakes, since social interactions in the real world cause both my children a lot of anxiety.

And my kids aren’t alone in appreciating The Social Express. Zimmerman reports that it is being used in homes and classrooms in more than 70 countries around the world, and it’s won quite a few awards, including being a part of the U.S. Department of Education’s National Education Technology Plan. Some schools are even using it with entire populations of students—not just autistic ones or those with special needs—and they’re seeing tremendous positive gains in social engagement. In fact, based on this success across student populations, Zimmerman is working on an anti-bullying program, similar to The Social Express, that will help kids figure out how to stop bullying in a variety of situations. He’s also planning on rolling out simulation programs to help with life skills and job training for older kids who are transitioning out of school.

The Social Express is a great program, and I love that it was inspired by the Zimmermans’ desire to help thier sons move more easily through the world. I’m hoping that with time, patience, and through practicing in many social situations both simualted and in the real world, my kids can see similar benefits to the Zimmerman twins, who are now artists, play in a band together, attend school, are good friends, and who are beginning to think about what the future might hold.

You can buy The Social Express here, and use this discount code at checkout to take 30% off the annual subscription: COOLTOOL. The code expires April 30, 2016.

Jamie Pacton lives in the Pacific Northwest where she drinks loads of coffee, dreams of sailing, and enjoys each day with her husband and two sons. Find her at www.jamiepacton.com and Twitter @jamiepacton.

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Social-Emotional Apps for Special Ed

index
November 2, 2015

Photo credit: Jayne Clare

Social and emotional learning (SEL) is the cornerstone of emotional intelligence, as these abilities do not come naturally for some special education students. Children in special ed settings need to have their confidence, courage, and emotional awareness nurtured in order to successfully play, work, cooperate, and be productive in their studies. We have all heard that technology can be a great playing-field leveler in a classroom with diverse learners. It can also assist in providing social and emotional skills. Let’s face it — the digital lifestyle is here to stay, so using digital technology to enhance SEL makes perfect sense.

However, I have yet to encounter research that focuses on the effectiveness of using apps designed solely to enhance the social and emotional health of children. Researchers and educators have only begun to closely investigate the impact of these technologies on SEL. For special ed teachers, that research can’t come soon enough.

Young children acquire and utilize their initial social skills mostly in the context of play and shared activities. Through play, they form their first interpersonal interactions and develop important social skills related to empathy, cooperation, conflict resolution, and self-control, which will be used throughout life to maintain healthy relationships with others.

9 Skill-Building Apps

Several apps can be used in the classroom or at home to assist in reinforcing social and emotional learning while also helping kids cope with the pressures that we all face. These apps can help teachers and parents in addressing students with special needs, and many are also available in a web format.

    1. Breathe, Think, Do (Sesame Street) teaches children to keep calm and carry on by introducing three possible strategies for working through problems. It touches on familiar emotional challenges such as problem solving, self-control, planning, and time on task. Intended for very young children, this simple app gives players different scenarios in which the Blue Monster character needs to regulate his or her emotions using the breathe-think-do technique.
    1. Touch and Learn — Emotions (Innovative Mobile Apps) is chock full of wonderful photographs representing four different feelings per page. The child is prompted to match the verbal cue with the appropriate photo. This app focuses on helping kids read body language and understand emotions by looking at pictures and figuring out which person is expressing a given emotion.
    1. Avokiddo Emotions provides opportunities for younger children to explore a wide range of feelings through several silly characters and a plethora of props. This app incorporates activities to help children understand the subtle cause and effect of facial expressions. The main idea is exposing young children to a variety of feelings and helping them grasp emotional connections with those feelings.
    1. Emotionary (Funny Feelings) is designed to give a wide age range of kids the tools and skills to express themselves well in our world of emoticons. The app has become a popular resource for the special needs population. This collection of emotions and funny feelings now allows users to draw their own emotionary “selfie” to match how they are feeling.
    1. GoNoodle is a wonderful web-based way to get younger kids out of their seats and moving. These short physical activities provide brain breaks that can help keep them focused throughout a long day. Studies have shown that physical activity increases blood flow, which increases concentration and attentiveness. This enhances students’ ability to acquire and recall information. These activities make them cross the mid-line of the body, engaging both sides of the brain. GoNoodle provides teachers with fun, interactive ways to get kids moving and feeling good about themselves.
    1. IF. . . The Emotional IQ Game (If You Can) promotes teamwork and collaboration, accentuating how to be in touch with our own feelings and the feelings of those around us. With this app, kids (recommended ages 9-11) learn to listen, make friends, and deal with bullying in an adventure story/game format. IF’s motto: “Play Learn Grow: Succeed at school with friends in life!” This pretty much says it all.
    1. The Middle School Confidential series is a powerhouse of SEL lessons by tween/teen expert Annie Fox. The book/app series for ages 8-14 is a graphic novel sequence focused on making stepping-stones out of stumbling blocks on the road to becoming a teenager. Readers follow the adventures of a group of seventh-grade friends trying to navigate the ever-changing drama of their friendships, families, and school. Excellent resource!
    1. Stop, Breathe & Think (Tools for Peace) promotes mindfulness, meditation, and compassion for middle and high school students and adults. Research has shown that people can develop kindness and compassion by focusing on them through mindfulness and meditation practices. You can cultivate your frame of mind in a very short timespan with simple meditation.
  1. I would be remiss if I didn’t include the The Social Express in this collection of apps. Its quality content keeps students engaged and on the path to mastering healthy social and emotional skills. Research-based webisodes give kids the exposure necessary to develop meaningful relationships and become more socially competent in all realms of life. This program covers the gamut from preschool through high school with a robust SEL curriculum.

The Puzzle of Tech Use

Most students with or without disabilities can and do benefit from SEL-focused technology in the classroom. Incorporating these tech tools should increase student incentive to learn through individualized lessons, especially when tailored to a student’s specific needs. When done well, tech not only reinforces key SEL skills that children need to learn, but it can also drive student enthusiasm and promote self-assurance.

This topic may seem like an oxymoron since we want children to learn how to focus during “real time” and how to live with less tech. A wonderful TED Talk addressing this conundrum is Sherry Turkle’s “Connected, but alone?”

Do you know of any digital SEL resources for special education students? Please tell us about them in the comments below.

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Review of The Social Express – Best Social Skills apps for Teenagers

 

 

 

Review of The Social Express – Best Social Skills apps for Teenagers

By Helen Wagner

Overall Impression

This is the most comprehensive social skills app which I have found, to date. I highly recommend it to SLP’s, parents and teachers of socially deficient students. It’s lessons must not be rushed through.

Overall Rating: 5

Appy Ratings (Appy’s):
•Educational Value: 5
•Entertains/Engages User: 5
•Customization/Settings: 5
•Value for the money: 4
•Ease of Navigation: 5
•Quality of Graphics: 5
•Overall Rating: 5

Category:
• Social Skills

Goals:
•Comprehension
•Emotions
•Problem Solving Skills
•Wh Questions
•Social Skills Development

Age Group:
•Lower Grades (Age 6-8)
•Upper Grades (Age 9-10)

Overview

The Social Express is a unique movie-like set of interactive training/practice lessons in using Hidden Social Keys or rules, in order to enable users to become more socially competent and to fit in with a group. It is intended for elementary to middle school aged learners who do not understand unspoken social rules. The Hidden Social Keys are: Keep your body facing a group; Look at who is talking; Use your eyes, ears and brain to figure things out; Talk about what the group is talking about, Monitor and adjust your behavior when you’re with a group; Look at what others are looking at; Try to figure out what to do based on how others are feeling; and talk about things that others like to talk about. There are two levels of instruction to choose from, depending on the severity of the social delay. The app is designed to be completed with a teacher and a learner working together to explore a variety of social situations. The user makes choices about what should be done in given social situations. The teacher and learner discuss the different scenarios presented and problem solve together to determine the appropriate course of action in various social situations. A pause button allows discussion and questioning during each activity. 12 coping strategies are also taught. The program comes with an online user guide, printables (achievement awards, feelings cards, coping strategies, hidden social keys cards, and character profiles). Emma, Zack and their dog are the featured, animated characters who are faced with social scenarios in a realistic environment/world. The characters use a hand-held “Digital Problem Solving” device to make appropriate behavioral decisions. A matching app called DPS
(Digital Problem Solving) can be purchased separately to go along with the use of Social Express. The Social Express provides for specific practice of social skills.

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Social Skills Learning Software Aims to Reach Children with Autism

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]This article about our social skills learning software was published in the Greater Wilmington Business Journal

Unhappy with the quality of software games available for children with autism, a team that includes a Leland resident set out to make its own.

The software developed by The Social Express uses animation to help children on the spectrum learn to interact with others in a more typical manner.

Identifying feelings in others, being part of a group and figuring out the hidden rules of social interaction are some of the social skills the software teaches, said Jon Cornick, president and COO of The Social Express.

“One of the big deficits of kids that are on the spectrum is identifying non-verbal social skills. All of the areas are targeted with our program,” said Cornick, who is based in Leland. “We are combining the best practices to create our lesson plans.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention defines autism spectrum disorders as a “group of developmental disabilities that can cause significant social, communication and behavioral challenges,” and according to a CDC study last year, an estimated 1 in 88 children in the United States has been identified with an autism spectrum disorder.

While scientists do not have a clear understanding of what causes the disorders, parents have found that software can help children learn valuable social skills, Cornick said.

Cornick said that he came to the company after a career of producing movies, joining the founders Marc and Tina Zimmerman when the software launched in 2011.

“One of my dearest friends is Marc Zimmerman, who had this idea to create The Social Express. He needed animators and engineers. I was in between films in 2011, and I came on at the launch,” Cornick said.

The Zimmermans have autistic twin boys and found that they responded well to software used by after-school therapists.

“The children were mainstreamed in their local public school, and the behavioral issues were in check, but their social and emotional skills were a real deficit,” Cornick said.

Marc Zimmerman, a software entrepreneur and professional musician, sought to design a better alternative to the software available for children with autism.

Today, the software is used by more than 200 school districts, Cornick said, and is available on Macintosh, PC and iOS (iPhone and iPad).

The 2.0 version of the software is due out soon and will shift to a web-based, subscription version with new features. Cornick said the web-based model would allow for more frequent updates and more lessons and would include a special protected social network for children who use the program, called the Club House.

“One of the real problems is that most of these kids have few or no friends,” Cornick said. “We have created the Club House to have a way for kids to connect.”

Websites used by children under 13 are required to follow special guidelines outlined in the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), and the software requires parents to approve their children’s access.

“Because the parent’s email is attached to the child, we have a parent portal, and they can see every conversation their child is having. Children have the option to flag inappropriate conversations, and both parents are notified,” Cornick said.

The Social Express has offices in Leland (with Cornick) and California (with the Zimmermans) and employs between 12 and 17 people depending on workload.

“We have 16 lessons with 30 interactive scenes, and we are animating 10 more now,” Cornick said.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

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Teachers with Apps Includes Our Social Learning Software in 12 Best Special Needs Apps of 2012

We’re so excited that our social learning program is included in the Teachers with Apps Reviews The Social Expresslist of 12 Best Special Needs Apps of 2012! The post is by the Teachers with Apps team on their website.

We love being included with some of our favorite programs for special needs children. We’ve used learning programs by Conversation Builder and think that they build great programs to help children with language skills.

Here’s what Teachers with Apps had to say: The Social Express “Uses engaging scenarios to teach users, with high functioning Aspergers or other similar conditions, how to think about and manage social situations so that they are better prepared to develop meaningful social relationships and succeed in life.”

You can click here to read the full review.

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