Tag Archive for: help with autism

LOS ANGELES UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT TO IMPLEMENT SOCIAL AND EMOTIONAL LEARNING PROGRAM FROM THE SOCIAL EXPRESS®

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LOS ANGELES UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT TO IMPLEMENT SOCIAL AND EMOTIONAL LEARNING PROGRAM FROM THE SOCIAL EXPRESS®

LAUSD educators to use the award-winning interactive program to help students with social learning challenges

Encinitas, Calif. – Sept. 9, 2013 – The Social Express, a web-based program for students struggling with Autism Spectrum Disorders, ADHD, and other social learning challenges, has been selected by the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) to support social and emotional learning in classrooms across the district.  With more than 650,000 K-12 students in nearly 1,000 facilities district-wide, LAUSD is the second largest school district in the nation.

Incorporating cognitive behavioral research and evidence-based social learning practices, the lessons in The Social Express use “Hollywood quality” animation to model the social skills integral to relationship building as well as career and life success.   The animated webisodes target 14 different skills and multi-tiered user levels, and are supported by quizzes, worksheets, and offline activities.  In addition, students have access to a private social network, The Clubhouse, which serves as an extension of the lessons where students can practice their skills and make friends in a safe environment.

“The Social Express offers a comprehensive curriculum and guide containing the very foundations of social and emotional skills that we are required to teach,” said Amy Nguyen, special education specialist for LAUSD.  “It is easy for teachers to use, and fun for the students.”

Through a robust student management system called “Central Station,” The Social Express allows teachers and professionals to manage individual student and group use of the program, track usage and progress, run reports, and even export data for IEP reporting compliance.  Activities in The Social Express adhere to the California State Board of Education Content Standards and the Common Core State Standards.

“Research shows quite clearly that children with social learning challenges have a much harder time succeeding at school and in the workplace.  Despite this, the unfortunate reality is that far too few schools provide support in this area,” said Marc Zimmerman, founder and CEO of The Social Express.   “We applaud LAUSD officials for acknowledging the need to provide social skills instruction to its challenged learners and helping them develop the skills necessary for life-long success.”

About The Social Express

Launched in 2011, The Social Express is an interactive program that supports social and emotional learning for students struggling with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD), ADHD, and other social learning challenges.  Available to schools, professionals, and parents, the award-winning online program teaches users how to think about and manage social situations, helping them to develop meaningful social relationships and succeed in life.

For more information visit http://www.TheSocialExpress.com

Media contact:

Leslie Eicher, APR

314-965-1776

Leslie@EicherCommunications.com

 

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Our first review all the way from Spain! Thank you Francesc Sistach from iautism.info

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]If someone had asked me a list of the most important apps for people with special needs appeared in 2011, The Social Express would certainly have been part of it.

The Social Express raises the bar of educational apps for social skills available for the iPad. Where other apps use videos of social scenes or sequences of images of social situations that the user has to sort –both very valid and useful options, of course–, people from Brighten Learning, Inc. surprise us. The Social Express includes animations (similar to video modeling) but allowing the student to practice in a interactive way various social skills. It employs rich graphics and audio and offers a high degree of quality in every aspect of the app.

Everything has a price, and the price of The Social Express is not exactly low, but for me it is clear that the elaborate animations and several other advanced features of the app are not cheap to develop. The Social Express is also available for PC and Mac, having the same cost ($89.99) in the three platforms.

In short, The Social Express offers 16 lessons with a total of 30 scenes based on animations and selections of possible endings. Globally, it allows you to work on aspects like paying attention to what our partner is watching and saying, looking into the eyes of our party when he speaks, turning your body to focus the rest of the group, watching the emotions of others, managing anger situations with various coping strategies or talking about what others are interested in. The lessons show both positive and negative results for a given situation.

With explanations for the students mostly oral and in some cases in written language, The Social Express is targeted at children and youth with autism, Asperger, ADHD or other learning difficulties in social aspects that do have a good knowledge of language (English).

First, the user and the guide
The Social Express is itself a bus. The app starts with the driver explaining what it’s all about and introducing the three main characters: Zack, Emma and their dog Sunny. The three will take the bus to the city, where they will experience many social situations.

The first thing to do once you have seen the initial presentation is to create a user profile, which in itself is a combination of a first name and a last name.

Later, from one of the main menu options, you can add other users, and edit, delete or select them.

Also in the main menu, you have access to the The Social Express Guide. One of its sections outlines how the application should be used in the sense that it is intended as a support for sessions in which the student is accompanied by an adult who can help, ask questions or propose alternatives to the ends of each scene proposed by the app. The website of the company, which again has a great graphic quality and content, includes more information on the app, its educational approach, …

The longest portion of the guide shows a tab for each of the 16 lessons that The Social Express includes. In each tab is a summary of the lesson, its objective, the key hidden social and a proposal for additional activities. These activities include dialogues on the subject, looking at books or videos to look for similar situations, working with the printable material including application, etc.

Finally, there is a credits section of the app, which shows the team of more than 25 people involved in the project.

Lessons
And then comes the most important part of the app. The Social Express has 16 lessons on topics grouped in two skill levels. The first time, it shows some short messages that explain how to interact with the lessons menu, which is really easy to use. After that, an icon with a question mark allows you to repeat those explanations as many times as you want.

Starting at level 1 and the first lesson, you will see an animation of the three main characters. They want to go to the city and are aware that they have to take care of their social modes.

So they take the bus. And you see a screen that displays the title of the first lesson and the hidden social key. You can also see a message with tips for the teacher / adult (that can be disabled if you want).

And the lesson starts. Zack asks Emma what is she thinking about, and Emma tells him to try to guess, while she looks at the bell. The graphics are nice, with characters well designed, especially the expressions on their faces, which clearly show the emotions of the characters. The images are visually rich, but with relatively soft colors hat give a feeling of cleanliness and simplicity.

If the user points to the fire truck, for example, the background voice that narrates the scene will explain that it was not a correct answer. Emma is really thinking on the bell, and she and Zack will show a sad expression and gesture. By selecting the bell, the voice will explain that you are right and give some additional social explanations. The bell will ring at the time a dotted line is drawn from Emma to the bell.

The lesson does not end there. The main characters follow visiting the town. Two friends will appear in up to four other scenes where a character looks at a specific point in the scene and the student should touch that point, while the background voice remembers the student that they always has to look at their partner to guess what they think.

And so, the student has to continue with the other lessons. The second lesson is about facing other people when they are talking to us. It shows a scene where Emma is distracted and stops looking to the others, causing their displeasure until Emma makes the decision (of two possible that are presented graphically) to rejoin the group.

This lesson is short. The third, which features characters in situations that provoke different emotions, has again multiple scenes.

I will not explain all the lessons one by one, but comment some additional aspects. The fourth lesson shows a situation where Zack gets mad. The solution here consists on using a virtual iPhone, which has an app called DPS or Digital Problem Solver. This app does not really exist, so do not look for it in iTunes (I’ve done it myself, believe me), but it is expected to appear in a month at a price of about $5. DPS has two possible coping strategies when you are mad: to use kind words, and to take five deep breathes to calm down. For each emotion, DPS has a small repertoire of coping strategies. Since DPS is used in several lessons, it is logical that some students want to have it in real life, so I expect to see DPS soon in iTunes.

Other lessons show a situation to immediately overlay it with a sequence of two small images and two possible endings for that short sequence. The student has to touch which of those images is the right end.

Always on the screen you will see two buttons: a pause button to stop the lesson and another to access a menu that allows you to turn on or off the hints for the teacher, to start the lesson again or to go back to the main menu of The Social Express.

Levels
At the end of the eight lessons of Level 1, the bus driver makes a short summary of what has you learned and makes you to do a test review. In that test the student will see bits of previous scenes and will have to choose which one of each pair shows the right social behavior.

As the student gives right answers, the key that appears below becomes gold. When finish the test, the student gets a certificate for completing it that they can print later.

Once you finish the level, it is unlocked, so you can select from the menu which lesson you want to practice. You can also repeat all the level or start the lessons from the Level 2.

Level 2 and printing

The eight lessons of level 1 allow you to practice the considered most basic social scenes. At level 2, it some knowledge of social rules is assumed and the student has to work on how to apply them in more real-life situations.

The second group of lessons is also a bit different in its operation. In the first lesson, Zack plays drums and the student must imitate the movements he does. The rest lessons show similar but more difficult social situations. So, for example, when using the DPS, the student now has to find the emotion and not just select a coping strategy. Another lesson is devoted about the interpretation of idioms.

The Printables option of the main menu of The Social Express is another nice feature of this app. By using the AirPrint system that Apple incorporates in its iOS operating system, you can send different material to a printer with WiFi and support for AirPrint or to another printer attached to an Apple computer with WiFi.

So, for example, you can print the certificate of having finished each level.

You can also print two sheets with the characters and their emotions, three with the coping strategies to follow in certain situations (from the DPS), one with social cues and five with the profiles of each of the characters. For each type of document there is also a blank template that you can print as a basis for creating new exercises.

Assessment
The Social Express is a very carefully designed app. The screens, buttons and messages, the background jazz music or the animations make me to think the company has devoted many resources. For the users, it is excellent news that apps like this appear.

From an educational point of view, the curriculum of The Social Express allows you to work with some social skills with the advantage that you can see the effects of wrong choices (based on seeing clearly displayed characters angry or sad) and not only happy faces when you select the right solution. With 16 lessons and 30 scenes, and two or more possible endings for each scene and the final exercises of each level, the app provides many hours of educational work. The tabs of each lesson provide clues for complementary activities that can be performed after each lesson, which in some cases involve printing sheets that already includes the application itself.

I can hardly criticize aspects of The Social Express. Well, I wish I could turn off the background music, although it is very nice –and can be bought as a music CD for $9.99– and I wonder if the characters should speak a bit slower. But the truth is that what I really want to see is the DPS app and a second part of The Social Express with 16 lessons more (and, of course, the option of working in other languages).

And I am thinking on the second part because The Social Express takes 1.79 GB. It is by far the largest app I have installed on my iPad, and its size approaches dangerously the 2 GB limit imposed by Apple, so there is not much space to grow. Its size is also what made Apple to categorize the content for people with more than 17 years, but the app does not include any sexual content or anything that is not suitable for children.

As always, the reader has the last word. The authors of The Social Express have made it easy, since they offer a Lite version with only two lessons (also available for PC and Mac). I recommend downloading it, so at least you can see how apps for the iPad are evolving and what you can expect in the exciting future of tablet apps. Or you can also watch a demo video in the company’s website. It is worthwhile, I assure you.

-Francesc Sistach[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

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60 Minutes Meets Jake the Math Wizard with Autism

Did any one catch this interview on 60 minutes about Jake the prodigy math wizard? I had a feeling when I saw the preview that he was a kid with autism. What’s kind of weird to me, is that they didn’t mention his autism until the segment started. It would have been nice if they had brought this up in the headline of the story as in my opinion 60 minutes always features doom and gloom. Almost to the point where I told my wife that every time we watched the show I felt depressed.  But not this time….

The story features a really spunky boy with autism but also with this incredible memory for numbers. He was one of those children that appeared to be hitting all his milestones as a child and then began regressing rapidly.

His incredible parents decided to focus in on his strengths and boy did they make the right decision. Not only did his regression stop but he turned out to be a mathematics genius! He is actually in college and seems to be making friends there and is well respected. This story made my day!

Great segment to watch if you have a kid with autism! Never give up.

Do your children with autism display any incredible talents? Let us know…

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Chantal Sicile-Kira Founder of Autism College and Award Winning Author, Endorses The Social Express

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]The Social Express is a great program in many respects. First, the aesthetics: Often programs have so much going on visually that it is too distracting from the actual lesson – but not Social Express. The background is a beautiful calming yet happy blue, with only the necessary visuals for the lesson at hand. The quality of the images  are amazing – just like a Pixar movie. The music and the voices are very enjoyable to hear as well – and we all know how important these sensory aspects are to our loved ones on the spectrum.

Secondly, the lessons are interesting and move at a nice pace.  They cover social skills that many of our children and students do not pick up by osmosis, including identifying emotions, self-regulation coping strategies, perspective taking and reading non-verbal cues to name a few.  The lessons all contain visual cues, and teaching tips, learning points, pacing controls, and preference options – all easy to use by a parent or professional without prior training on the program.

Thirdly, there are worksheets or printables – so the lesson can continue off the computer, and provides the opportunity for the parent or professional to generalize the lesson to other possible situations before practicing them out in a real social context.

I wish this program had been available when my son Jeremy was younger (although he enjoys this program now). I can’t wait to see the teen and young adult version!

I highly recommend this program for parents and professionals.

Chantal Sicile-Kira,

Author of 5 books on autism including A Full Life with Autism

Founder, AutismCollege.com[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

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With a Brush of Love Interview with Marc Zimmerman

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]On January 10th, 2012 With a Brush of Love’s interview link.

Thank you so much Lauren, I had a great time and I love your show!

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/familynetworkradio/2012/01/10/with-a-brush-of-love-presentsthe-social-express[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

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Techie Tuesday – The Social Express

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Momma’s Time
Faith, Family, Autism and so much more…
A stay-at-home mom with an opinion on just about everything!

Techie Tuesday – The Social Express

One of the best apps I have purchased and placed on my son’s iPad has got the be The Social Express.  This is hands down the most amazing social skills app I have found and it was worth every penny I paid.  And yes, it is expensive, but when it comes to helping my son I made a choice to suck it up and bring on the big guns… And this app is the big guns!

Now I know the first question in your mind is how much did it cost so before I tell you that I want you to know that there is a lite version you can try for FREE to make sure that the app suits your needs before purchasing it.

As for the full version, well, it is $89.99.

Don’t freak out!  Take a look at this video and see what the app is about…

Incredible, huh?  Just the graphics alone are amazing, but what’s inside is a fantastic world of social skills adventure just waiting to be tapped into.

I’ve been using the app for a couple of weeks now with my son and it has proven itself over and over again.  The app has 16 lessons and over 30 scenes with two different skill levels to choose from.  With lessons, teaching tips, and printables (all included in the app) I am able to create actual social skills lessons that go right along with things we are working on in therapy – it’s reinforcement at its finest!

If you have a kid like mine that struggles daily with his social world then this app may be something you’d like to look into.  Being an Aspie, my son just doesn’t get those social cues that so many of us take for granted.  This app helps to teach him proper reactions to situations and to teach him how to look at body language in a situation to tell how people are feeling and how it might be best to proceed in a given situation.  It’s an amazing teaching tool and because it is so vibrant and interactive my son is happy to do the lessons and has been fully engaged every time we open the app.

I can’t praise The Social Express enough!  If you’d like to learn more you can visit their site here: TheSocialExpress.com

*This post is my opinion. I purchased the app for $89.99 from the iTunes App Store and I use it with my son regularly. I received NO compensation for this post.

Posted by Momma Gone Crazy[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

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How to Choose an App for Kids With Autism

You’re so excited! You just discovered the app store on your computer or your mobile device, however, your head is spinning with the amount of apps available for kids with autism. From social skills to math and everything in between, no worries, I know how you feel. I remember my first time checking out apps and thinking ‘how in the world I am going to know what is a gimmick versus what will actually hold my twins attention?’

There are tons of free apps out there and just as many for less than $5.00. My first advice for you is to download an app based on a target area which you are currently working on. I found the non educational apps such as Angry Birds, Bubble Popper, Can Knockdown and Ant Smasher (just to name a few) to be good for my twins to play just for fun. Some of these actually seem to have helped with hand and eye coordination as well.

Be careful though not to let them play some of these apps for too long. Angry Birds in particular seems to make one of my boys extremely anxious. I understand as I have clocked several hours playing this addicting game myself.  Here are just a few apps which I have found to be very useful for my kids with autism.

TT Clock- A great app for learning how to tell time

Kids Math Fun- Another great one for addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. They have it broken out for different grades which is nice

Vocabulary Builder- Learn a new word every day

Sentence Builder– One of my favorites!

Question Builder- A great way to learn who, where, what and why questions

Story Builder- Helps to teach what will happen next.

Shell Lagoon- Works on Homonyms, Synonyms and Antonyms

Piano Plus– A fun way to learn how to play the piano

A Checklist for Choosing an App for Kids with Autism

Making a checklist before jumping into the app store makes a lot of sense to help you decide which app to buy.

1. Write down your target areas.
2. Read reviews before downloading.
3. Ask you therapist or teacher which apps they are using and you can download the same to supplement at home.
4. Make sure to open up the preferences or setting in each new app (if part of the app) and customize to your child’s ability.
5. Pick up a few fun non-educational apps which can be used for downtime fun.

Can you tell us which apps you like to use for your kid(s) with autism?

Image:iStockphoto.com

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Teaching Kids with Autism How to Learn Social Skills

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]You probably ask yourself every day, assuming you are a parent of a child with autism, ‘what is it going to take for my kid to make a friend?’ Or, how many times have you said either out loud or to yourself, ‘yeah, right?  A play date, don’t think so….’

You know the core deficit for kids with autism is the inability to relate to others, but can you actually teach these kids how to socialize? We know for sure children with autism certainly will not learn this by observation, so, the only way they are going to learn social skills is to teach them. Before we founded The Social Express, we tried several different approaches to helping our twins with social learning. Here are groups we have participated in:

Resources or Tools That Helped Us
A Regional Center program called The Star Program consisting of kids with autism.
The Soar program, a program in our elementary school which pairs a ‘typical’ child with a ‘buddy’ learning social skills.
An after school program at our school called “Bunch of Friends” that may or may not include ‘typical’ peers.
Each one of these programs were building blocks for our children to learn how to socialize. All of these programs included adult intervention. The programs providing the most peer interaction proved to be the most beneficial, particularly if outdoor play was included.  Programs exclusively for kids with autism, conducted in an indoor room, often provided more examples of inappropriate behavior than appropriate behavior.

We used Carol Grey’s Social Stories to help our kids learn social skills they needed to learn at various times. These included: keeping the right distance between friends, borrowing and returning supplies, and even bathroom etiquette and recently the twins have really enjoyed using Michelle Garcia Winner’s Social Thinking® Seminar.

While our twin boys are alike in many ways, the peer playmates they respond best to are very different.  One of our boys responds best to girls who are full of energy, basically bossing him around to engage in dramatic play.  Our other son would exit stage right in that situation.  He is more likely to hang out around a mellow child.

As I am sure you know, every child responds differently to various approaches to teaching. Our twins happen to be visual learners as are most children on the spectrum. The Social Express exploits this learning method by incorporating video modeling, engaging characters, an interactive environment with lots of social situations they experience on a daily basis.

The key is patience, and making sure that when you have a moment which requires social skills, try not to do the talking for your child, and see if they will respond to the situation appropriately.  For example, when greeting a familiar person, let them have a chance to say hello, if they don’t, then this becomes a teachable moment.  You need to remember that this is a marathon and not a sprint.

This is how we helped our children with autism. If you would like to share what you have done to help your kids with autism, we would love for you to share. Please use the comment section below.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

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Getting Your Kids with Autism into Community Sports

Community sports and kids with autism can feel like a scary situation for most parents who are raising a child or children on the spectrum.  How could our boys possibly follow the directions, stay with the group or not have a meltdown which could distract the other team members from their fun time?

These were the thoughts that ran through our heads when some friends suggested that we sign the twins up for sports. After all, making friends, developing a competitive spirit, learning how to be a good sport and having a social outlet were all the things we were working toward. And, as a child, I couldn’t wait to go and play sports with my friends. In fact, my father was a co-founder of a basketball league which was a huge success!

Our first try was soccer, however that ended fairly quickly after several different occasions where the twins just kept running a la Forrest Gump style, away from the field. Next was basketball, ah my favorite sport. I volunteered to be a coach on the team. Greatest achievement was when one of the boys got a basket, however, it was the other teams basket.

We still cheered along with everyone else in the gym like they just dunked like Michael Jordan. You know, we would have kept them in the program but the gym was so incredibly loud with whistles, buzzers, and people everywhere that it quickly became clear that this was way too over stimulating for them.

We then said let’s try some individual sports. We signed them up for swimming and gymnastics, and SUCCESS! We continue to be involved with these sports today

Here are three things that we learned which gave our kids with autism the best results.

1.It was better to have them play with kids that were younger.
2.While most parents dropped their kids off, we stayed to provide extra support.
3.Individual sports with other children present, such as swimming and gymnastics, worked better then group sports particularly where there were just too many directions.

Resources to Check Out in Your Community

There are plenty of places which offer community sports such as the Boys and Girls Club, local community centers, Boy Scouts, local chapters for the Autism Society, Autism Speaks and Kids Included Together (KIT).

National Organizations That Helped Our Kids with Autism

Every geographical area has its own organizations, here are some of the National ones which we found to be very good with the twins

My Gym– Nation’s leading non-competitive gymnastics and play program. 200+ locations offering Mommy and Me, gymnastics, birthday parties, camps and other fantastic

J.W. Tumbles– Exercising young minds and bodies is important. So is having fun. Our goal is to make learning not only a great experience, but also a rewarding one.

YMCA– We know that lasting personal and social change comes about when we all work together. That’s why, at the Y, strengthening community is our cause.

All in all, our experience of putting our twins in sports was a mixed bag. However, once we found out what worked and what didn’t work, we now feel like everyone in our family is winning from being involved with the community.

Do you have any thoughts on what sports you would try for kids with autism?

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iPad Apps, GFCF diets & Shark Teeth

Thank you to Ariane Zucher who authors an amazing blog Emmas blog for this post.

I was sent a trial to a new ipad app for children on the spectrum called The Social Express.  If you click on the link it will take you to Social Express Lite which you can try out on your ipad or computer.  The characters are Zack and the aptly named Emma with her dog Sunny.  There are a series of vignettes where your child is encouraged to identify the character’s emotions.  I tried both levels with Emma.  She was amused when she purposely chose the “wrong” emotion and then laughed when the voiceover says – “Hmm,  look at Emma’s face…”  then it says, “Can you try again?”  To which Emma would choose the right one, while saying out loud – “Look!  She’s sad.  She lost her ice cream.”  Em particularly liked the scene with the boy who is terrified of the dog, something Em can relate to, and when the girl mistakenly lets go of her balloon, another situation that has caused Em great upset.


 

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