Author: Julian Maria Morejon Carmona
Date: April 2021
This fantastic application is thought to facilitate learning to read in children with special educational needs, for this it has relied on a wide group of professionals from pedagogues to speech therapists and teachers specialized in therapeutic pedagogy, to obtain a useful and quality app.
In this review we will do an analysis of the app for Android devices, it is specially designed to be used on tablets or Ipads but it can also be run on a normal mobile device, using Android version 9.0 and a Samsung Galaxy Tab A Tablet in the analysis. .
Interaction
Next, we proceed with the detailed analysis of the application.
When we open the application for the first time we find an interface to create our tutor or educator profile, we will be given a free 7-day trial of the app, so that we can check all the benefits it offers us.
Once the profile is created, we can access several options related to the profile or the app, such as:
- Configuration: It allows us to change the language, font and various aspects that will affect the activities that can be carried out in the app.
- Customize now: Allows advanced customization of the activities, choosing the vocabulary, with many options related to it, establishing how the learning works or even adding new words.
- Progreso: Shows various very complete statistics regarding the progress made in the activities.
If we already have the application adjusted to our tastes, we can access the children's area through the icon located at the bottom right, in this area the children can begin to enjoy and learn.
In the children's area we find 3 areas, adapted so that children can differentiate them without problem and with different animations, so that they will have no problem accessing them. These areas group the same 3 types of activities each. With the difference that each area has a different level of difficulty, therefore we have the following areas:
- Blue Area: It includes the simplest difficulty in its activities and is located on the left of the screen next to the letter A.
- Orange Area: Contains the activities with medium difficulty, it is located in the middle of the 3 areas, above the letter B.
- Green area: It is the area that contains the activities with a higher difficulty compared to the other areas and is located on the right side of the screen, next to the letter C.
Each area, as we have commented, has the same three types of activities, these types are:
o Type 1: The activity focuses on relating each image with its similar, appearing the word associated with the image each time we get it right.
o Type 2: The activity shows us an image and when we select it, it reproduces the sound with the word associated with the image to help them learn.
o Type 3: The activity tries to make puzzles on the image that appears to our right until they are completed correctly.
As we can see, it contains a lot of content that together with the multiple adjustments that we can make if we are tutors / teachers in the app for the activities, makes the app very useful and helps those children who need special care and affection in their learning by reading and identifying objects with their words.
In summary, the application is very good in its functionality, complete and well designed, users will be able to enjoy it a lot while learning at the same time, also with a complete customization system to adjust the activities to the needs of each child. To comment on any possibility of improvement, perhaps in the last level of difficulty some extra activity would be interesting to provide some variety in the maximum difficulty and facilitate a greater advance of the user.
Accessibility
Since its main target audience is children with special educational needs or cognitive difficulties, its development has focused especially on these groups, so it is normal that it does not have adaptations for other groups.
Although it does not have adaptations for other groups, we can say that its accessibility is excellent since for the group to which it is directed it fully complies, not to say that it borders on perfection, since it is well developed and implemented.
Finally, we must point out that, the app has good accessibility, perhaps some simple accessibility options could be included in case any user of the app apart from special needs had some other type of disability, in order to cover a wider community of possible users .
Conclusions
After having tested the application, its activities and settings, it can be confirmed that it is a great app to help children in their learning process, in which the love and good intention in their development is appreciated to help this collective.
In summary, we are facing a great application, very efficient and entertaining, that will help all those children with special educational needs to train and improve their reading or word association, although it is very good, it would be advisable to add some new activity on the highest difficulty.
Highlights
Improvement points
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AccessibilityAlthough the app is designed to focus mainly on children with special educational needs, including some accessibility option, even if it is minimal, can be really rewarding, especially for those children in the group who may have a disability.
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Extra activity: Adding in the area of activities of greater difficulty some more advanced extra activity would be an option to take into account since it gives the possibility of a more extended and fun learning when the user reaches this more advanced difficulty.