Social Quest 5.0

Best Educational App by Teacher with Apps

Social Quest is an application developed by author and Speech-Language Pathologist (SLP) Rosie Simms to enhance pragmatic language comprehension and expression in various social situations for older elementary, middle school, and high school-aged populations. It incorporates real-life scenarios and contextual images to provide discussion points for exploring the rationale behind using social language. The app adopts a problem-solving quest theme where students navigate different locations and earn “rewards” associated with social competencies.

Social Quest features narratives on everyday situations at home, in school, and within the community, accompanied by questions intended to foster positive social communication. The app is grounded in story-based intervention, a method proven effective for children with autism, as outlined in the National Autism Center’s Evidence-Based Practice and Autism in the Schools (2011). The questions cover aspects such as perspective-taking, conversational skills, understanding other people’s reactions, problem-solving, humor comprehension, greetings, and social context dialogues to enhance social skills.

Students accumulate visual rewards to reinforce their progress within the app, aligning with crucial social competencies for upper elementary-high school students. For example, the “Hall of Rewards” showcases virtual tokens like a Steed designed for motivation and a Book of Spells intended to aid in planning and task completion. These rewards can be revisited anytime and utilized beyond the app environment to encourage skill application.

Social Quest facilitates:

• Identification of appropriate and inappropriate responses to social scenarios.
• Encouragement of flexible responses through the ability to provide multiple answers in a given situation.
• Selection of locations—Home, School, Community—for responding to questions that foster individual or group discussions based on personal or similar life contexts.

Social Quest boasts various features:

• Receptive Activity where students identify correct answers to social questions with text, audio, and images.
• Customization options for Receptive Activity to modify difficulty levels by requiring one or two correct answers.
• Selection of specific locations to target varying social contexts.
• Expressive Activity for students to respond openly to questions similar to those in Receptive Activity, aiming for skill generalization.

An array of over 800 questions span both Receptive and Expressive Activities. The “Hall of Rewards” offers virtual incentives for progress tracking along with facilitating further skill discussions. Detailed student data and report cards are stored within the app, allowing for easy printing or emailing of records to parents or for personal record-keeping purposes. Additionally, players can personalize their profiles with photos or avatars.