Best Instructional Solution for Special Needs Students

Recognizes the best teaching application specifically designed to benefit students with unique educational needs, including those with physical or learning disabilities or those who are gifted and talented in the K-12 or postsecondary markets. Includes solutions that are 508 compliant.

Products nominated here are eligible for the Best Instruction Solution, Best K-12 Education Solution and Best Postsecondary Education Solution supercategories.

SmartTutor.com - Learning Today SmartTutor.com is a fun, online elementary program that helps your child succeed in Reading and Math through engaging activities. Go To Learning Today's Web Site Go To Product Site
VizZle - Monarch Teaching Technologies VizZle(R) is a rich web application that gives educators access to interactive instruction for children who learn best from visually supported materials (e.g. children with autism, in early education, or typical children with a visual learning style). VizZle was designed using exclusively licensed intellectual property stemming from research proving the efficacy of a visual language-based approach to educating students with autism, but it has proven equally effective for any student who learns best visually. VizZle lessons can be printed for tabletop use, but are most effective when played interactively -- especially on interactive whiteboards, which promote joint focus and practice of important social skills, or on mobile tablets, which allow the generalization of skills into different settings. Interactive play also allows VizZle to take advantage of the autistic population's documented affinity for all things video and computer oriented, increasing their engagement exponentially. Increased engagement leads to better learning outcomes. VizZle helps both the students struggling to overcome learning differences and the teachers who need to customize their lessons in a time and cost-effective way through three areas of the product: CREATE lets teachers, parents or therapists create or edit any and every feature of a lesson for differentiated instruction of students with diverse needs. They can choose from thousands of images, audio and video clips in our database, or drag-and-drop in their own media directly from the desktop. Each interactive lesson template has customizable reinforcers and rewards built in. TEACH provides the tools to organize and launch those individualized lessons, and includes powerful data collection, either generally or by specific IEP goal or state standard -- a feature unique to VizZle. SHARE allows users to share and borrow adapted curriculum from a vast and ever-growing peer-reviewed shared library of effective materials. Effective visual language supports are lessons (like stories, matching boards or games) and tools (like schedules, token boards, timers or first-then boards) that take advantage of the visual learner's stronger visual processing abilities. A vital part of any child with autism's education -- be it ABA, TEACCH, blended model, or any other curriculum -- individualized visual supports are one of the very few non-controversial and universally lauded methods in special education for autism. The reason customized visual language supports have not been used consistently and constantly for every child with autism is that up until now they were extremely time consuming, expensive and difficult to produce, and impossible to share in any meaningful way. As a web-based subscription service, all our users immediately benefit from a continuous improvement and development schedule, supported by internal budgets as well as funds from competitive grants (NIH, Department of Education). VizZle takes advantage of the best features of the cloud, current classroom technology (whiteboards, touchscreens) and future innovations (Android mobile player) to make best practices in special education for autism accessible to anyone with an Internet connection. Go To Monarch Teaching Technologies' Web Site Go To Product Site
RethinkAutism.com - Rethink Autism, Inc. Rethink Autism was founded with a mission to make effective and affordable best practice treatment tools available to professionals and parents of children on the autism spectrum, no matter where they are located worldwide. According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), 1 in 110 new born children in the U.S. will be diagnosed with autism, making it more common than pediatric cancer, diabetes, and AIDS combined. Also according to the CDC, there are over 730,000 individuals between the ages of 0-21 on the autism spectrum (and an estimated 19 million worldwide). While effective treatment does exist, the controlled availability of credentialed providers and high cost, as much as $70,000 to $100,000 per year for the prescribed 25-40 hours/week of therapy, limit its potential benefit for the growing population with the disorder. Limited public support services further amplify this challenge for typical families caring for an affected child. Using technology to deliver research-based clinical best practice treatment programs, Rethink Autism has created a unique online service providing schools and organizations (including early intervention providers, social service agencies, managed care organizations, etc.) as well as caregivers and parents with training for implementing treatment, tools for evaluating an individual child's needs, a comprehensive video-based curriculum with over 1,200 teaching steps, data tracking systems for measuring a child's progress and automating case management, and an online professional support system. It is geared towards children with autism from point of diagnosis through early adolescence, covers a broad range of skills (e.g., academics, language, social, motor, daily living, behavior management), and spans the entire autism spectrum. The recently-launched Rethink Autism Training Center provides training tools for organizational staff and our comprehensive curriculum allows the professional to prepare their own programs for individual clients. Our Company plans to offer its services in Spanish next year. In addition, leaders in the field of autism treatment, education and research serve on our Scientific Advisory Board, including Dr. Fred Volkmar, Director of the Yale University Child Study Center and Dr. Louis Vismara, Co-Founder of the M.I.N.D. Institute. Go To Rethink Autism, Inc.'s Web Site Go To Product Site
Schoolnet Respond - SchoolNet, Inc. Respond is a comprehensive Response to Intervention software solution that empowers educators to evaluate the needs of all students, identify those who are struggling, and create targeted intervention plans to guide them toward success. Leveraging the data in the Schoolnet Instructional Management Suite (IMS), Respond makes it easy for districts to design and implement consistent RTI processes. Go To SchoolNet, Inc.'s Web Site Go To Product Site
Waza - Six Red Marbles In Waza, kids embark on an interactive adventure through five galaxies to free Wazas friends, the Wuffles, while mastering the math skills that will set them light years ahead in school. This web-based instructional software solution helps students at any level build a strong foundation in mathematics by developing number sense and skills related to 1:1 correspondence, comparison, sequencing, arithmetic operations, place value and basic fractions. Waza incorporates play and creativity with learning mathematical language, concepts and procedures -- making math fun for every kid. Wazas robust Adaptive Curriculum automatically adjusts to meet the individual learning levels of students, allowing kids at any age and skill level to progress at their own pace so they build confidence and competence. Waza supports students who are performing below grade through readiness activities that scaffold learning progress. Waza provides automated intervention by real-time diagnosis and remedial prescription to support continuous, sustainable progress. If a student has difficulty on a certain problem at a particular level, Waza helps them to build appropriate readiness skills. Instructional animations provide students additional support they need for independent progression. Students can work with Waza independently or in a group. Waza fits well within a classroom environment where students of different levels are expected to progress. Waza is a multisensory environment where all types of learners thrive. To retain student attention and interest, Waza is enriched with sights, sounds, and lively characters. All graphics, images, and animations are easy to understand while inspiring interest through creativity, humor, and fun. Through our research into emotion we know that keeping students engaged is all about keeping their emotions positive. Learners are more engaged when they feel at ease. Math concepts are presented visually and verbally, leading to better memory retention and understanding. Research guided the creation of visual displays for both content and interactivity in Waza. The design is intuitive, simple, straightforward, and easy to use. Six Red Marbles Natural Learning Approach blends the latest neuroscientific research into Whole Brain Learning with a thing we like to call Tribal Pedagogy: learning by necessity, imitation, and story-telling. Waza is informed by whole-brain research on perception, attention, short and long-term memory, sequence learning, the role of novelty in motivation and learning, emotions and anxiety, concepts and rule formation, how people learn mathematics and language, linguistics, procedural, and kinesthetic learning and performance. Wazas robust Dashboard allows administrators, teachers, and parents to generate real-time reports tracking student performance and progress against national and state standards. Thus, teachers can tailor lesson plans to meet individual or whole class needs. Waza is accessible via the Internet anytime, anywhere through the Home Connection. Students learning at home can work independently or with an adult. Students needing additional support or supplemental curriculum outside of school, benefit from Wazas versatility. The dialogue between home and school has never been stronger, and kids really feel like they have a team of adults on their side. Go To Six Red Marbles' Web Site Go To Product Site

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