The CD teaches young children basic peer interactions and play skills such as taking turns, sharing, requesting, cooperating and shifting activities through real life social situations like a day at the park, in pre-school or going to a play date. “Unlike passive videos, this software allows the user to visually see the social interactions re-enacted by children and then choose what should be said or done next,” Laurie Jacobs of Social Skill Builder Inc. told TDmonthly. “In this fun, familiar, but safe environment, the user can become increasingly aware of social expectations and more successfully interact with their peers.” This product is a 2007 iParenting Media Award winner. Launch date: September 2007.

This program teaches children and teens appropriate social behaviors, interactions, expectations and precautions with peers and adults within their community. The CD incorporates more than 350 video sequences of real people interacting in various settings (restaurant, doctor’s office, friend’s house, grocery store), and allows users to predict what should be said or done. It targets a broader age range than the first version of “My Community,” and is Macintosh and IBM PC compatible.
— “The CD-ROM technology allows for repetition and practice, which will enable the individual using it to effectively learn the desired behaviors,” Jennifer Jacobs, M.S. CCC-SLP, co-founder of Social Skill Builder Inc., told TDmonthly. “There are no other tools on the market that equal this teaching tool in this format.” Launch date: January 2007.

Engaging real-life onscreen videos teach social awareness and the unwritten rules of peer relations and acceptable behavior in the difficult middle to high school years. All Social Skill Builder programs include an easy to use lesson plan to customize the video sequences shown for each student. These lesson plans also include predeveloped lesson plans that emphasize items like exclusively positive behaviors, peer-interaction scenes, problem solving scenes and more. Each of these programs includes seven complexity levels and over 350 videos to target a broad range of abilities. All levels include the ability to earn energy points that result in a fun motivating computer game. Both volumes target individuals with a cognitive age of 8 to 18 years. These programs are both Macintosh and IBM PC compatible.