Mobile Education Store

New Speech Therapy Apps Reviews!

Kyle — Tue, 07 May 2013 14:20:26 +0000

We have a number of new reviews of our speech therapy apps to share.

The first review by Peachy Speech is about our Speech Journal app. Speech Journal is my most versatile app, you can use is to create just about any speech activity you can think of. In this very positive review, the author describes the app and all of things she has used it for in therapy.

The next review was written by SLP In Between, and she writes about our Rainbow Sentences grammar app. Rainbow Sentences teaches proper sentence formation with color coded visual cues. What is interesting about this review is that the author speaks of other SLP’s in her district that have used Rainbow Sentences and had their students have measurable improvement. It’s always nice to have data to support what we are saying an app will do.

The last new review was done by Kristine Lamb of Live Love Speech. Kristine is a elementary school speech pathologist. This is her first review of any of our apps. She takes on ConversationBuilder. She goes over how to use the app and talks a little bit about how much her students liked it.

To find out more about Speech Journal, Rainbow Sentences and ConversationBuilder, tap on the icon below!

Speech Journal, Rainbow Sentences and ConversationBuilder are part of our award winning suite of education apps. Mobile Education Store has won over 50 app awards and has been named education app developer of the year in both 2011 and 2012.

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SentenceBuilder Grammar App Used in Study

Kyle — Mon, 06 May 2013 14:14:28 +0000

Last year, I was contacted by a master’s student at NYU University about using our SentenceBuilder grammar app in a small study to test the effectiveness of speech therapy apps. The subject was an 8 year old boy who has autism.

He used three apps including Sentence Builder. The boy’s ability to focus on a learning activity increased dramatically when introduced to Sentence Builder and Simplex Spelling. While SentenceBuilder wasn’t the primary app he used to collect data, the subject was just as happy working with Sentence Builder. All three apps where wildly successful and I received a personal thank you from the subjects parents for creating SentenceBuilder.

It is so exciting to see how these apps are changing lives. It’s what keeps me going!!

To find out more about SentenceBuilder and our other award winning speech therapy apps, tap on the icon below!

SentenceBuilder is a member of Mobile Education Store’s suite of award winning education apps. MES has won over 50 app awards and has been named educational app developer of the year for the last two years.

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Review of MES speech and language apps

Kyle — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 20:26:03 +0000

We have four new reviews of our speech and language apps to share with you today.

The first review was written by Carrie Manchester. Her Carrie’s Speech Center blog was named one of the best speech pathology blogs of 2012. Carries writes about our award winning conversation app, ConversationBuilder. Carries goes into quite a bit of detail about how the app works and includes many images of it in action. Towards the end, she has a nice summary about what she likes about it. It is well written and if you are curious about how ConversationBuilder could help your students or child, it is worth a read.

The 2nd review is also about ConversationBuilder. It was written by Jean Hendrickson of appabled.com. Appabled.com does a really nice job of categorizing apps. Their website is worth visiting for that reason alone. They have many categories of apps where you can select what you are looking for and then read their reviews. It’s real easy to navigate and find information. They also go through ConversationBuilder in much detail and give it a very positive review.

The 3rd review is about the teen version of ConversationBuilder. It is similar to ConversationBuilder, but it covers teen centric topics and also includes modules on bullying, sarcasm, and relationships. This was written by Suzanne Berhow of the iMum’s. The iMum’s is a really need blog, as there are contributors from english speaking countries all over the world. It’s very interesting to hear the perspective from english speaking folks in Singapore, Australia and England. Suzanne discusses the details about how ConversationBuilderTeen can be used in therapy and the kind of kids it benefits. It’s very gratifying when a professional really understands what I tried to achieve with an app and why I tried to achieve it. She give ConversationBuilderTeen a rate 5 star rating.

The last review is about something different I promise! This review covers our Rainbow Sentences grammar app. The thing that is most interesting about this review is the author suggests five therapeutic uses for Rainbow Sentences and includes published papers backing up the proposed use. I haven’t seen anybody do this before in their reviews. It is very informative.

To find out more about our other award winning education apps, tap on the icon below!

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Review of Three MES Speech Therapy Apps

Kyle — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 15:05:42 +0000

We have three new reviews of our speech therapy apps to share with you today. These reviews were all written by well know award winning bloggers. On top of the reviews, each is having giveaways for free promo codes.

The first review of ConversationBuilder was written by Tatyana Elleseff of Smart Speech Therapy. Her blog was named one of the best speech therapy blogs of 2012 and for good reason. She does a really nice jobs with her reviews. Not only does she have quite a few images of the app in action, but she has a very extensive list of likes and possible uses of the app in therapy.

The next review was done by PlayOnWords.com. Also an award winning site, they have done a very positive review of the teen version of ConversationBuilder. On top of the description of the app and how they use it, they have included some insights from parents using it with their kids.

Our last review is from Brea at Let’s Talk Speech Language Pathology. She reviews our Speech Journal app. Speech Journal is our most multi-purpose app, and Brea goes into some detail about all the different ways you might use it. As always, her review is well written and thoughtful.

To find out more about these apps and our other award winning education apps, tap on the icon below.

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Review of MES Speech Therapy Apps

Kyle — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 00:23:16 +0000

We are excited to share several need reviews of our speech therapy apps! A few of these were written by brand new people who have just been introduced to our speech therapy apps. It is nice to hear new folks have the same positive feelings about what we have created as others before them.

The first review was written by Angelia Wood, an occupational therapist in North Carolina. She reviews our SentenceBuilder and StoryBuilder speech therapy apps from an OT’s perspective. OT’s have a little different perspective, so it is always interesting to hear what they have to say. They have a nice chart where they rate the apps in nine categories. Both SentenceBuilder and StoryBuilder scored 4 or 5 stars in each category.

This next review is interesting because the reviewer talks about both PrepositionBuilder and Speech With Milo’s Preposition app. She does a nice job of comparing and contrasting the two apps.

This review of our LanguageBuilder expressive language app was done by Robin Scheib of the Children’s Institute. The children’s institute is a private school for children on the autism spectrum. They work with parents and schools all across the east coast and hold many seminars and workshops on Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA), Differentiated Instruction and Universal Design.

The last review comes to us from the Let’s Talk About Speech Therapy blog. This blog was named one of the top speech therapy blogs of 2012. The cover our Speech Journal expressive language app. As always, they do a nice job covering the basics of the app and they include lots of images. On top of that, they are doing a giveaway of a free copy. Stop by to enter!

To find out more about these award winning educational apps, tap on the icon below!

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4 reviews of ConversationBuilderTeen Conversation App

Kyle — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 15:36:07 +0000

Today’s post is all about our ConversationBuilderTeen conversation app. Over the last 2 weeks, there have been no less than 5 reviews written about ConversationBuilderTeen. As you will read, all are very positive. It is such a thrill to be receiving so much positive feedback. I worked on this app for over 18 months, and after putting that much heart and soul into it, it’s a thrill to know that so many kids are benefiting from it.

ConversationBuilderTeen is a virtual conversation simulator designed specifically for teenaged kids. At it’s core, it helps kids understand pragmatic language and how the back and forth flow of conversations works. What makes ConversationBuilderTeen so powerful is that students are not passive participants in the conversation, they are actively engaged in them. They listen to what others say and then they get to record their answers. Because we are re-creating a real conversation for the students, they gain a deeper understanding of how conversations are supposed to flow. In the end, they get to hear themselves have a real conversation, with all the wrong answers and wrong tone stripped away. They hear themselves have a conversation in real time as it is supposed to sound. Not only is this incredibly motivating for the students, but it teaches them the basics of pragmatic language in a way that they can rapidly understand. ConversationBuilder has over 300 conversations broken into 8 themes. We cover all the normal teen obsessions like sports, summer, and entertainment, but we also cover all the unpleasant things teen must deal with such as bullying, peer pressure and relationships.

The first review appears in the award winning blog Public School SLP. Her review gives a quick rundown of how she is using the app. She also mentions how much her high school students are enjoying it.

This review was written by the iMums. This award winning blog site has an international reach, with contributors from the United States, Australia, UK and Singapore.

BridgingApps is affiliated with Easter Seals. They do a fantastic job with their reviews not just because of the review itself, but they also have tabs on their reviews to show different things. There is a skills tap which lists several skills and the age range the app is appropriate for. They have an attributes sections that lists all the different issues the app address. They give you a LOT of information without overwhelming you with a 20 page review.

The last review is from Apps for Homeschooling, one of the leading websites for homeschooling parents. Their reviews always give an interesting perspective as they come from stay at home parents rather than educators.

We thank all of these reviewers for their time and kind words!

To find out more about ConversationBuilderTeen and our other award winning education apps, tap on the icon below.

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How To Help Kids Stop Being Victims of Bullying

Kyle — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 14:55:28 +0000

Although I’ve been enjoying the halo of ConversationBuilderTeen winning best middle school app of the year, my bubble was burst last night. I received an angry email from a SLP about the content of one of the conversations. She called one of the responses completely inappropriate and that she couldn’t believe I would put something like this in the app. The conversation goes like this:

Student – Hi guys!

Peer – How’s the most popular girl in the school doing? (with heavy sarcasm, obviously being mean)

Student possible answers – 1) Uhh ok. – this is correct 2) Am I really that popular? 3) I didn’t know I was popular

Peer - So how many friends you have? Anybody? What are their names? (again with heavy sarcasm, not only being mean but trying to publicly humiliate the student)

Student possible answers – 1) I was just saying hi. What’s with the attitude? – this is correct 2) I don’t have very many friends. 3) Mary is my friend.

Peer - I’m just asking questions. (with heavy sarcasm)

Which brings us to the student response she objected to: 1) No – you’re being a total jerk. Get over yourself. 2) You’re not being nice to me. 3) Leave me alone!!

She felt that teaching kids to tell someone that they are being a jerk was completely irresponsible.

There was another lunchroom conversation I received a different message about. In this one, the student is trying to sit down at the table and the kids won’t let him. They are being very mean about it. The final correct answer for the student was “Dude, you suck, I’ll go somewhere else”. The SLP felt that this was rude and the correct answer should have been much more friendly. And there are a few other examples in the sarcasm and bullying modules of ConversationBuilderTeen.

I understand why they didn’t like that correct responses, but I stand by them. Teaching kids to always be polite and turn the other cheek when they are being bullied may seem like the “right” thing to do, but it just doesn’t work and it never has.

When I created this app, I didn’t want it to sound like an adults interpretation of what a conversation should sound like, I wanted it to sound exactly like teenagers. As such, these conversations were not written by me, they were written by teens. I hired 12 teens to write and record all of them. All of these conversations are based on real events. Believe it or not, I had to sanitize many of these conversations because the real life conversations were a whole lot nastier. And these conversations were written by kids who attended a private catholic school, so they were already more sanitized than conversations that take place in public schools.

The fact is, any non-spectrum kid in this situation with an ounce of self confidence would respond exactly as I have laid out. The peers in both of these conversations are being a jerks, and a non-spectrum kid would call them out for it. By responding “No – you’re being a total jerk. Get over yourself.” or “Dude – you suck”, in a sarcastic voice, the student will gain a little measure of respect, if not by the bully, then by everybody else around them. It makes it clear that the student is not clueless to the fact that she is being bullied, while at the same time showing she won’t be intimidated by it.

I wish kids could just walk away or be polite when they are bullied and it would all stop, but it won’t. If that did work, then bullying wouldn’t exist. Sarcasm and having a little edge when someone is being mean is the ONLY way to make this kind of thing stop. It’s not any fun to bully somebody who stands up for themselves. My only interest is helping these kids get through this difficult time. And that means giving them the tools to verbally defend themselves. Being politically correct is what adults with college degrees do, not teenagers.

This philosophy is backed up by the latest research. Current research shows that the best way to prevent bullying is to help kids learn how NOT to be victims. Using biting sarcasm like this is a diffusion tactic. It puts the bully off balance. They are not expecting someone to come back at them. Calling someone a “jerk” or telling them “you suck” when they are acting the way they are in these conversations is about as tame a response you can have and still be standing up for yourself. Most teens in this situation wouldn’t stop at calling the peer a jerk.

I knew that I was taking a risk by having conversations like this, because it goes against what many SLP’s have been teaching for a long time. But being nice when somebody is bullying you will not prevent it from happening again, it does the opposite. It invites the bullying to continue. As a parent of a special needs daughter who is starting to face this, and as someone who was bullied as a teen, I could not in good conscience put out an app that while would make all the SLP’s happy, would be absolutely useless in helping these kids get through these situations.

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MES Suite of Apps Named to Best Speech and Language Apps List

Kyle — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 18:32:33 +0000

Mobile Education Store is excited to share a new list of the 33 best Speech and Language Apps by TeachThought. TeachTought.com is an incredible resource for educators. They discuss trends, technology, and social media in education. There really is something for all educators on this site. This list names 8 of our speech therapy apps including SentenceBuilder, QuestionBuilder, StoryBuilder, LanguageBuilder, ConversationBuilder, PrepositionBuilder, Rainbow Sentences and TenseBuilder. It is an honor to have so many of our apps included on this exclusive list.

In addition, there have been a couple positive reviews written about our speech therapy apps over the last couple weeks. It’s always gratifying when we receive positive feedback from parents and therapists who are having success with our apps. This week, we have reviews about Speech Journal and LanguageBuilder.

The review of Speech Journal was written by Jenn Alcorn. Her award winning speech therapy blog, Crazy Speech World, not only has reviews of many speech therapy apps, but also many tips and resources for SLP’s. As always, she does a great job with her reviews, going over the apps in detail, providing lots of images and suggestions about how to use the app.

This review of LanguageBuilder was written by Common Sense Media. This is a list of the best language apps for special needs kids. This is a pretty big deal, as common sense media is very well known respected by parents and educators alike.

To find out more about our award winning suite of speech and language apps, tap on the icon below!

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ConversationBuilderTeen Wins Best Education App of 2012

Kyle — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 14:56:33 +0000

Mobile Education Store is very excited to announce that our ConversationBuilderTeen social skills app has just been named the best education app of 2012 for middle school students by Best Apps Ever. This is a really big honor. Over 5 million votes were cast for this years honors.

The Best App Ever Awards were first conceived after the iTunes App Store opened in July, 2008. They were created to celebrate the best mobile apps and games available, as chosen by their readers. Their goal is to help gather together the very favorite apps of the real users, not just the best-selling ones. Each year, apps are nominated under a variety of categories. The top ten vote getters become finalists and then voting opens up for the finalists.

Mobile Education Store is the developer behind the award winning “Builder Series” of educational apps. Founded in 2009, MES is dedicated to providing engaging, cost effective educational apps for students, parents and teachers. Our product suite of 16 apps range from honing the basics of sentence construction to learning how to build narratives to mastering social conversations. MES has won over 50 app awards and have been named the educational developer of the year for both 2011 and 2012.

To find out more about ConversationBuilderTeen and our other award winning apps, tap on the icon below!

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SentenceBuilder Named as a Top Education App in Primary Classrooms

Kyle — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 14:21:23 +0000

Mobile Education Store is excited to announce that SentenceBuilder was just named a Top Education App for Primary Classrooms by Pandora Books. Check out the link here. They have recommended 20 apps as being essential for the classroom.

Pandora Books is one of the biggest suppliers of books in England. They specialize in compiled book collections to meet the criteria of the National Curriculum and the National Literacy Strategy. As iPads are becoming more popular in England, they have started to address the best education apps to include on the iPad. It is an honor to be included on this short list by such a well known institution.

SentenceBuilder helps kids learn how to build grammatically correct sentences. Students are presented an image and asked to create a sentence about that image. Words are placed in dials and the student simply turns the dials to select the words. There are three levels of play and 100 images to build sentences around. To keep things fun, there are 30 animations that play once the students get the correct answers!

SentenceBuilder was the first app in Mobile Education Store’s popular and award winning “Builder Series” of educational apps. Sentence Builder has over 100,000 paid downloads and has won multiple awards, including app of the year by iEAR.org. Mobile Education Store has won over 50 app app awards and was named education developer of the year in 2011 and 2012.

To find out more about SentenceBuilder and our other education apps, top on the icon below!

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