Social Quest

Features
Price $49.99
Age Range High School
App Type Learning App
Version Reviewed 3.0
Android Available?
Lite Version Available?
Help Provided?
Sharing

Bloom's Thinking Process
Creating
Evaluating
Analysing
Applying
Understanding
Remembering

Adaptability
Includes recorded voice
Includes text
Includes images

Review Comments
Social Quest assesses the child's knowledge of social behaviours. This child answer questions about what to do or say in different social situations. This is an activity which is used to encourage adults and children to discuss which expected social behaviour is appropriate in that situation. Social Quest uses an engaging adventure theme. On the "Quest Teletransporter machine" the adult chooses the context. Contexts include home (bathroom, kitchen) and community (school, mall, doctor). Receptive: The child sees a picture and reads (and hears) a question. For example "The movie starts in ten minutes. You have to turn off your cell phone, get a drink and use the restroom. In the lobby you run into someone you forgot to call last week. Decide what's most important to do". There are three written answers from which to choose, but only two are correct. The student tap on the answers to the questions. Expressive: The child sees a picture and reads (and hears) a question. For example "What can you ask when there is only one of something left in the refrigerator?" The child tells their answer to an adult. The adult rates their question as "missed", "almost" or "got it". As children play, they receive occasional rewards. The rewards look like certificates which also act as reminders of social behaviours. I wish the rewards were written in lower case There are over seventy different rewards to earn. These rewards are placed in the "Hall of fame". Social Quest can be used by multiple children.

Review Comments

Social Quest assesses the child's knowledge of social behaviours. This child answer questions about what to do or say in different social situations. This is an activity which is used to encourage adults and children to discuss which expected social behaviour is appropriate in that situation.

Social Quest uses an engaging adventure theme. On the "Quest Teletransporter machine" the adult chooses the context. Contexts include home (bathroom, kitchen) and community (school, mall, doctor).

Receptive: The child sees a picture and reads (and hears) a question. For example "The movie starts in ten minutes. You have to turn off your cell phone, get a drink and use the restroom. In the lobby you run into someone you forgot to call last week. Decide what's most important to do".

There are three written answers from which to choose, but only two are correct. The student tap on the answers to the questions.

Expressive: The child sees a picture and reads (and hears) a question. For example "What can you ask when there is only one of something left in the refrigerator?" The child tells their answer to an adult. The adult rates their question as "missed", "almost" or "got it".

As children play, they receive occasional rewards. The rewards look like certificates which also act as reminders of social behaviours. I wish the rewards were written in lower case There are over seventy different rewards to earn. These rewards are placed in the "Hall of fame".

Social Quest can be used by multiple children.

Use	Rank (*)
Social Understanding		Ranked 7th of 38

(*) This app has been ranked according to its' effectiveness to achieve the learning goals and strategies listed. Some apps may rank highly for achieving a specific use and lower for other uses. Some students will learn and engage with one app more than others, because of the individual nature of us all.

Learning App
Learning apps are designed for a specific purpose. The authors claim to teach a goal, skill or concept.

Bloom's Thinking Process
Bloom's Taxonomy is classification system used to explain the behaviours important in learning. Apps range from simple memory tasks such as flashcards apps through to creative apps which ask students to create an original story or video.

Bloom's Creating
The student creates new ideas, products or ways of viewing things. Activities include making, animating, designing, constructing, planning, producing and inventing.

Bloom's Evaluating
The student justifies a decision or course of action. Activities include counting to check, hypothesising, critiquing, experimenting and judging.

Bloom's Analysing
The student breaks the information into parts to explore understandings and relationships. Activities include explaining, ordering, inferring, comparing and organising.

Bloom's Applying
The student uses the information in a new situation. Activities include implementing, carrying out, using, illustrating, classifying and categorising.

Bloom's Understanding
The student comprehends the new information. Activities include describing, predicting showing understanding use a multiple choice.

Bloom's Remembering
The student recalls information they know. Activities include matching, 'fill in the blank', making a choice, answering using a multiple choice, naming a group.

Learning Connection
How well does the app teach the targeted skill or concept? This is the area where we refer to current research and pedagogy to evaluate the efficacy of the app.

Authenticity
Authenticity looks at the manner in which skills are learnt. Authentic apps use real life or genuine activities. Students learn in context rather than in a contrived or rote fashion (such as flashcards).

Feedback
Feedback needs to be specific and result in improved performance. Feedback should be supportive and encouraging rather than negative. Data should be available to support decision making.

Differentiation
Differentiation is the ability to customise the app to suit the student. The ability to record you voice, customise text, add pictures and alter settings enables individualisation of the app.

User Friendliness
User friendliness is a measure of how well a student can use the app independently. Some apps are simply intuitive to use. Others include audio or visual prompts which support the student.

Motivation
All apps are engaging the first time they are played. However, students with diverse learning needs may need to return to the app many times. Motivating apps offer rewards,games or incentives.

Social Understanding
Social understanding apps provide opportunities for children to gain an understanding of the social world. These may explain the hidden curriculum of social rules and etiquette. They help increase the awareness of the thoughts, behaviour and feelings of others. They may provide suggestions of ways to interact with peers.

Domain	Score	Details
Learning Connection	4	Social Quest is based on Story-Based Interventions. Story based interventions are usually not used alone as a treatment tool but in combination with explicit teaching (practise, role play, modelling), reward systems and environmental modifications (schedules and work systems).
Authenticity	3	The child chooses an answer and then explains their answers to the adult. The situations suit some teenagers, but many of the stories have American content.
Feedback	2	When the child is correct they hear a 'boing' sound. When incorrect, they can either hear a buzz, the incorrect item can fade away or there can be no response. Report cards are available for each child showing the number of games and total correct. These reports can be shared in a variety of formats.
Differentiation	3	Each child can work on either receptive or expressive skills. There are three choices for incorrect. Audio for reading questions can be turned off. A list of the social skills would be great so that the adult can choose the tasks appropriate for that student.
User Friendliness	4	This app is easy to use for high school students with good literacy and language skills. This is a visually busy app, so some students with autism may be challenged by this.
Motivation	3	The reward system looks interesting but my older students wanted something tangible or perhaps a game. I used the rewards as tokens for earning additional rewards and incentives.

From the App Store

Developer Smarty Ears, LLC
App Store Rating (from 0 reviews)
Current Version Rating (from 0 reviews)
Current Version 5.0

Developer's Description
Best Educational App by Teacher with Apps Social Quest is an application developed by author and Speech-Language Pathologist (SLP) Rosie Simms to improve pragmatic language comprehension and expression in a variety of social situations for older elementary, middle school, and high school-aged populations. Social Quest uses real life situations and contextual images to present the professional, parent and student with ‘’jumping off’ points for discussing the “why” and “how” of social language usage. The app utilizes a problem-solving quest theme in which students navigate various locations and earn “rewards” linked to social competencies. Social Quest incorporates narratives about real-world situations in the home, school and community along with questions designed to increase positive social communication. The app is based on story-based intervention, a technique found to be effective for children with autism as documented in the National Autism Center’s Evidence-Based Practice and Autism in the Schools (2011). Questions about what to say, do, and infer in a wide variety of situations will target skills such as perspective-taking, conversational maintenance and transitions, gauging other people’s reactions, taking turns, problem solving, understanding humor, greetings, and scripts for social contexts. Situations and questions also address development of self-talk for social situations, a strategy that can reduce anxiety and improve communication skills (Sze & Wood, 2007) Students earn visual “rewards” to reinforce their progress throughout the app, and these are based on key social competencies for upper elementary-high school students (Bedrosian, 1985, Larson & McKinley, 2003, Landa, 1992, Smith-Myles, 2004). For example, the “Hall of Rewards” will eventually be filled with virtual tokens such as a Steed, to “help you be motivated and get going,” and a Book of Spells, “to help you make plans and complete tasks.” Earned rewards can be reviewed at any time and can be used outside the context of the app to discuss and promote use of skills. Social Quest can be used to: -Help students identify a correct and incorrect response to a social situation. -Give students the opportunity to give more than one answer in a given social situation, reflecting the flexibility of social scripts. -Choose to respond to questions from differing locations: Home (kitchen, bedroom, living room, bathroom, garage/yard); School (classroom, auditorium/library, cafeteria, hallway/office, yard/gymnasium; Community (grocery store, mall, restaurant, neighborhood, movies, doctor/dentist office). -Stimulate individual or group discussion of occurrances and narratives related to students’ own life or similar contexts, which in turn allows them to practice social skills and language. Social Quest has the following Features: -Receptive Activity in which students identify correct answers to a social question (presented with text, audio, and accompanying image). -Ability to customize Receptive Activity to require student to provide one or two correct answers to modify level of difficulty. -Selection of specific locations and corresponding social contexts to work on. -Expressive Activity in which students respond to open-ended questions corresponding to those asked in Receptive Activity. Expressive questions are worded more broadly to promote generalization of skills. -More than 800 questions across Receptive and Expressive Activities. -Hall of Rewards provides virtual reinforcement of progress and context for further discussion of skills. -Data and report card kept on each student, report can be printed or emailed to parent or self for record-keeping. -Ability to add student photo or avatar to represent each player in the game. See app description on www.smartyearsapps.com for full titles of references.

Developer's Description

** Best Educational App by Teacher with Apps **

Social Quest is an application developed by author and Speech-Language Pathologist (SLP) Rosie Simms to improve pragmatic language comprehension and expression in a variety of social situations for older elementary, middle school, and high school-aged populations. Social Quest uses real life situations and contextual images to present the professional, parent and student with ‘’jumping off’ points for discussing the “why” and “how” of social language usage. The app utilizes a problem-solving quest theme in which students navigate various locations and earn “rewards” linked to social competencies.

Social Quest incorporates narratives about real-world situations in the home, school and community along with questions designed to increase positive social communication. The app is based on story-based intervention, a technique found to be effective for children with autism as documented in the National Autism Center’s Evidence-Based Practice and Autism in the Schools (2011)*. Questions about what to say, do, and infer in a wide variety of situations will target skills such as perspective-taking, conversational maintenance and transitions, gauging other people’s reactions, taking turns, problem solving, understanding humor, greetings, and scripts for social contexts. Situations and questions also address development of self-talk for social situations, a strategy that can reduce anxiety and improve communication skills (Sze & Wood, 2007)

Students earn visual “rewards” to reinforce their progress throughout the app, and these are based on key social competencies for upper elementary-high school students (Bedrosian, 1985, Larson & McKinley, 2003, Landa, 1992, Smith-Myles, 2004). For example, the “Hall of Rewards” will eventually be filled with virtual tokens such as a Steed, to “help you be motivated and get going,” and a Book of Spells, “to help you make plans and complete tasks.” Earned rewards can be reviewed at any time and can be used outside the context of the app to discuss and promote use of skills.

Social Quest can be used to:
-Help students identify a correct and incorrect response to a social situation.
-Give students the opportunity to give more than one answer in a given social situation, reflecting the flexibility of social scripts.
-Choose to respond to questions from differing locations: Home (kitchen, bedroom, living room, bathroom, garage/yard); School (classroom, auditorium/library, cafeteria, hallway/office, yard/gymnasium; Community (grocery store, mall, restaurant, neighborhood, movies, doctor/dentist office).
-Stimulate individual or group discussion of occurrances and narratives related to students’ own life or similar contexts, which in turn allows them to practice social skills and language.

Social Quest has the following Features:
-Receptive Activity in which students identify correct answers to a social question (presented with text, audio, and accompanying image).
-Ability to customize Receptive Activity to require student to provide one or two correct answers to modify level of difficulty.
-Selection of specific locations and corresponding social contexts to work on.
-Expressive Activity in which students respond to open-ended questions corresponding to those asked in Receptive Activity. Expressive questions are worded more broadly to promote generalization of skills.
-More than 800 questions across Receptive and Expressive Activities.
-Hall of Rewards provides virtual reinforcement of progress and context for further discussion of skills.
-Data and report card kept on each student, report can be printed or emailed to parent or self for record-keeping.
-Ability to add student photo or avatar to represent each player in the game.

*See app description on www.smartyearsapps.com for full titles of references.

Disclaimer: The evaluations and rankings information provided here are based solely on the opinion of the author and are for informational purposes only. Families should seek professional advice before making decisions regarding interventions for their child.