New app melds together education, technology and photos to ease communication pains of Superkiddos
PRLog - July 9, 2015 - DENVER -- At the Autism Society National Conference - Superplus, a Norwegian based Edtech Company focused on improving the lives of special needs children, today announced the availability of SuperSpeak, a one-of-a-kind assistive technology application for nonverbal children. The application enables these “Superkiddos” to express themselves and to communicate with their family, friends and loved ones by using mobile devices to build vocabulary. SuperSpeak also encourages parents, teachers and family members to use everyday personal images to communicate with their children.
SuperSpeak’s cloud-based service allows for a consistent vocabulary across multiple devices, that parents, teachers, and therapist can use. When taking and adding photos of familiar, everyday items such as people, places, things and actions, to utilize for communication, all items are saved in the child’s “SuperSpeak profile” and will sync across all of their devices and user accounts. Through simple, yet intelligent shortcuts, Superkiddos can build clear sentences. With SuperSpeak, parents can also ease anxiety and prep a child for a change in their routine schedule using photos that they know and understand.
“Using real pictures creates a direct correlation for children who struggle with communication,” says Roald Øien, a Norwegian Autism Research Scientist and visiting Research Scientist at Yale Child Study Center.
In a world inundated with video games, technology and apps to entertain children, many times those special Superkiddos that could use the technology and entertainment the most for their education, are left behind. Øien, realized his daughter, who has speech and communication issues due to Autism, was unable to gain traction using what he refers to as “crapps”, “crap apps” currently available. Superplus was formed when he teamed with Katrine Gulstad Pedersen, a special education instructor who regularly manipulated technology to help her students, world famous game developer Kim Daniel Arthur formerly on the founding team of Playfish along with gaming engineer Stian Hansen, to create technology that would help children and families. Together with Dr. Fred Shic of the Yale Child Study Center, Superplus created SuperSpeak - a one of a kind AAC (augmentative and alternative communication) assistive technology application that leverages all the technology on iOS mobile devices to help children communicate.
“The EdTech industry can surely benefit from the positive elements from gaming, motivation, concentration and so on to empower those who often are left behind,” said Arthur.
Benefits of SuperSpeak include:
*Cloud based service that provides access for parents, teachers and Superkiddos across multiple devices
*2GB storage for your photos, sounds and videos
*Ability to have multiple unique profiles under one account, ideal for special needs professionals
*Ability to share access to profiles with different user accounts (Parent/Teacher)
*Learn more here: http://www.superpl.us/superspeak/
“I’ve been an educator for over 12+ years and have endured countless apps and technologies that fall short,” said Katrine Gulstad, CEO and co-founder. “We have been working tirelessly for a year coming up with something that can really make a difference in the lives of Superkiddos. They are our focus, our priority. We came at this app from multiple directions - education, technology, academic and gaming. Our goal was to set a higher standard, a higher bar for these children and their families. I believe this first release is the first step in, what I hope to be many, in creating technology for these amazing children.”
SuperSpeak is now available in the Apple app store and can be downloaded here: http://get.superspeak.today
About Superplus
Born out of necessity, Superplus, created in 2014, is Norwegian startup focused solely on improving the lives of special needs children. Made up of educators, scientists, gamers and parents, Superplus is one of the first special education technologies funded by the Norwegian government and impact investors. The company came out of stealth in July of 2015 with SuperSpeak - the first assistive technology application that combines personalized pictures with an easy interface and guidance for parents to help expand the understanding and vocabulary of non-verbal children. Superplus works in conjunction with Yale’s Child Study Center to better the lives of special needs children around the world. For more information on Superplus, please visit us at www.thesuperplus.com
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Superplus Transforms Communiction for Nonverbal Children & Their Families with Launch of SuperSpeak
July 09, 2015 at 10:52 AM EDT
