Social Skill Builder's My Community

Many people with autism have social deficits. To help them learn what behaviors are acceptable, many use social stories which detail certain situations they may find undesirable or may have difficulty in deciding the correct course of action. These social stories can come in the form of books, videos, and software. My wife and I use social stories with our son so I was very excited to take a look at Social Skill Builder's My Community software for The Parent Bloggers Network.



My Community is set up like a town. By clicking on different icons, you can see different scenarios played out at a friend's house, the movie theater, the doctor's office, a restaurant, and the grocery story. You can also view social situations in the car, on the phone, and while crossing the street.

My Community is also divided into five different levels:

• Level 1 -- you are shown videos of both appropriate and inappropriate behavior in social situations and are given a recap of the situations
• Level 2 -- you answer multiple choice questions based on the information you see in videos
• Level 3 -- you are shown multiple images and must pick the one that best answers the question you are given
• Level 4 -- you match the thoughts and feelings of the people in the images by placing speech balloons above their heads
• Level 5 -- you predict what happens in the situation by entering text
  

The videos are short and cover a wide variety of scenarios that could arise in each section of the town. The questions are straight-forward and are brief enough that the user will not become bored. To keep the learning fun, there are short games the user can play once he's answered five questions in Levels 2-5. The more questions one answers correctly, the longer one is able to play the games. The program keeps track of how many questions your child has answered and what percentage of those were answered correctly.

Social Skill Builder should be commended for making My Community so highly customizable. Not only can you focus on certain locations (the doctor's office, restaurant, etc.), you can also choose to work solely on certain social skills. If your child has difficulty in understanding others' feelings, you can select that skill in the lesson plan and your child will only be shown videos and images that pertain to understanding others' feelings.

This software was well-designed and would benefit anyone with social deficits. One of my favorite parts of the program was Level 4 as it taught you how to read facial expressions. While my preschool-aged son was unable to use this software (the program is designed for kids with a cognitive age of 5 to 15), I do know that one day he will be able to use and learn from this program.

The only negative thing I can think of about this software is there were no scenarios available for school. While I know Social Skill Builder produces separate software titles that deal solely with school, it would've been nice to include it on this title as well.

DreamBox Learning K-2 Math

I don't know about the rest of you, but I almost have to trick my daughter to get her to learn stuff. She does great at school, but if I'm trying to teach her something at home, she's busy thinking about the computer, the television, her CD collection, her toys, the playground, the dust bunnies under the couch, and pretty much anything else besides the words coming out of my mouth. Because of this, I was quite eager to review DreamBox Learning K-2 Math for The Parent Bloggers Network. It is for people like me that DreamBox Learning K-2 Math was created. The only difference is they don't trick your kids into learning things; they make learning fun and make your kids want to learn.

Upon logging on, your kid gets to pick an avatar. The actual game itself is divided into four bright and colorful lands that should appeal to most children: Pets, Pixies, Dinosaurs, and Pirates. Each land contains eight stories. To complete a story, your children must "find" six pieces of a desired object.

To find a piece of a desired object, your children complete various games. Your kids will think they're games, but they're actually math problems. My daughter has played games that deal with addition and subtraction, comparisons, and ordering numbers. Every time a new curriculum is introduced, the game assesses your child's ability. If your child has problems, like my daughter did with comparisons because up to that point, she had never seen a greater than or less than symbol in her life, the game will adjust accordingly. However, if your child shows no difficulty in completing the given curriculum, the game will move through it quickly and your child may skip or place out of this particular curriculum.

During the trek to find a piece of the desired object, your child will also earn printable certificates of achievement, friend cards (kind of like Pokemon cards), and tokens to use on fun carnival games. Remember what I said about how they make learning fun?

One of the great things about the game is the Parent Dashboard, which shows how your child is progressing with his/her math skills. Upon my first visit to the Parent Dashboard, I was pleased to find that my daughter, a first grader, skipped all of the kindergarten work which means a) she had a great teacher last year and b) she was actually paying attention in class. The game shows all the skills your child has mastered, the ones your child is currently working on, and the skills yet to come. The game also logs the amount of time your child plays in case you limit his/her computer time. I won't lie to you; I'm ashamed to admit the amount of time my daughter played this game (we're talking hours, not minutes). DreamBox also emails you when your child completes a story.

There were a few drawbacks to the game. My daughter twice completed tasks and was not given appropriate credit, so she had to go back and do them again. Also, the game seems to be a bit louder than most of the stuff we do online. When she starts playing, we have to race to turn down the speakers in fear of waking up her brother from his nap.

But hey, enough of what I thought about the program. Want to know what my daughter thinks? Here's her opinion: "I think it's a great game. It's really, really fun."

If you're interested in trying out DreamBox Learning K-2 Math, you can sign up for a free fourteen-day trial on their site.