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Social Emotional Exchange
Teaching children how to read facial expressions
APP DETAILS
Developer – Sam Basheer
Age – 4 to 11 year olds
Skill – Social Skills
Special Need - Autism
Score – 76/100
Price – £7.99 / $9.99
App Store Link - http://geni.us/2xN7
Play Store Link – Not Available
Windows Store Link - Not Available
App Review
Social Emotional Exchange (S.E.E.) is a very well presented app that teaches children to recognize a range of facial expressions. It is inspired by the work of Dr. Paul Ekman and his study of emotions and their relationship to facial expressions. Social Emotional Exchange will benefit all children who are learning to read emotions but will be particularly helpful for children on the autistic spectrum. Typically ASD kids find it very difficult to understand facial expressions and need them to be specifically taught.
Four Levels
There are four levels within Social Emotional Exchange – Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced, and Expert. Each of these contains different games and targets different facial expressions. In the Beginner Level children learn about Happy, Sad, and Angry. They have the opportunity to study pictures of these facial expressions in the Emotional Vocabulary section. Then they can test their understanding in Show & Tell. Here, children are presented with pictures of two facial expressions and asked questions like ‘Which person feels happy?’
The Intermediate Level has three games available, Frame the Emotion, Yes/No, and Linking Emotions. Frame the Emotion presents users with three facial expressions and they have to place the one that represents a particular emotion into a picture frame. Yes/No is a straightforward questions activity, e.g. ‘Does this girl look happy?’ and the final game, Linking Emotions, asks users to match several facial expressions with the emotions they represent.
In the Advanced Level there are a further two games, Wheel of Emotion and Multiple Choice. Wheel of Emotion gets children to spin a wheel. Whatever facial expression this lands on the child then has to scroll through a second wheel to locate the matching emotion. Multiple Choice presents a facial expression and children have several emotions to choose from.
The final Expert Level contains an activity that children are really going to love doing. They are shown a facial expression and have to reproduce it. They then take a picture of themselves showing that expression and this is saved within the app alongside the original picture of the emotion. This is a great way to make the learning personal to each child.
A Very Useful App
Social Emotional Exchange is an engaging app that makes learning facial expressions and emotions fun. There is enough variety within the games to allow parents or teachers to bring children back to this app time and again. In doing so they will be reinforcing their knowledge and understanding of this vital social skill.
Wishes
It would be nice to see the ability to include multiple users in future updates and more feedback regarding user progress would also be helpful.
Peter
Educational App Advice
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