SkateKids^TM cultivates early readers by engaging them in educational activities scientifically designed to stimulate the development of cognitive processes that are necessary in learning to read. SkateKids^TM provides multiple reading levels and presents various formats for practice and skill development, effectively creating critical thinkers and teaching children how to learn. All of these activities take place within a safe and age-appropriate online world designed specifically for these young "digital natives".

SkateKids^TM takes learners from early literacy levels to word reading and comprehension; they acquire skills in a developmentally appropriate sequence, moving to higher levels only after prerequisite skills are mastered. The scientifically-designed and clinically-proven activities help students develop a true mastery of skills that can be applied and transferred to other academic areas.

The early levels in Beach Builder consist of simple sentences; later levels introduce complex syntax, action sequences, challenging prepositions, and longer paragraphs. Students develop fluency through repeated readings of sentences, passages, phrases, and eventually, larger paragraphs. Learners must create comprehension strategies to retain what they've read. Later, as the levels become more complex, students must read the content repeatedly and develop new strategies for retaining the information long enough to recreate the scene. Advanced levels also require more complex problem solving skills, such as reversed spatial relationships (right/left mirror image) and require problem solving that goes beyond simple visualization. Players are presented little problems or brain teasers that require the application of skills that most struggling readers never master. Rehearsal and the use of inner speech are examples of strategies that students employ in order to advance through the levels. Beach Builder 's activities develop reading comprehension in a way that is measurable because students are required to actively demonstrate their understanding by recreating scenes from passages they've heard or read.

Students immersed in Beach Builder 's activities are highly motivated to complete a round, and that motivation remains high, because the program encourages and helps students develop new strategies for success if they experience difficulty with any of the activities. The intelligence built into the program ensures that each individual student is learning in a way, and at a pace, that's right for them. Cognitive psychologists have a term for this instructional sweet spot-the "zone of proximal development", an ideal place where learners are continuously challenged and rewarded, where they're never bored and never frustrated! This is important, because to fully comprehend content, students must actively engage with and pay close attention to that content.

This capacity to keep learners fully engaged is a key attribute that sets our products apart from all other educational technology products. Cognitive scientists have shown that almost any subject can engage a student as long as the context is inherently interesting. Our research has shown that rebuilding a scene in Beach Builder and getting it right is intrinsically rewarding for students; seeing their scores posted further increases their sense of achievement.

Finally, we also know that the immediacy of gratification is far more important than the size of the gratification; many little victories are much more valuable than the occasional big win. This is why our activities have a built-in scaffolding strategy that gives learners the right tools for gradually and successfully navigating levels of increasing difficulty. Through this process, students are introduced to virtually every component needed to develop reading comprehension. Also important for maintaining students' interest is variety, which is why our products are continually updated, with new games, features and activities introduced on a regular and year-round basis. The technology created for developing reading comprehension strategies in Beach Builder has been scientifically developed, clinically proven, and is so unique that several patents are currently pending.

Simultaneous processes involve "both nonverbal-spatial as well as verbal-grammatical activities" (Naglieri & Das, 1997), and require integrating stimuli into groups, or recognizing that a number of stimuli share common characteristics. Board Tech focuses on developing nonverbal-spatial activities which can be described as "holistic thinking". Simultaneous strategies are useful in a variety of academic activities such as reading comprehension, finding themes in poetry, and certain mental math operations.

As students progress through levels of increasing difficulty, additional objects and characteristics (colors, shapes, sizes and locations) are added to the patterns, ensuring that students are suitably challenged, but never overly frustrated.

The activity begins with an interactive tutorial, the objective of which is twofold: (1) help learners gain competency in the dragging and dropping of objects; and (2) allow them to become familiar with the tools that will be available to them during the activity. As the tutorial progresses, learners rehearse the actions they'll need in order to fully participate in the Silly Scenes activities. During the tutorial, audio instructions guide users to each specific tool and action.

As students work their way through the different levels of the game, naturally, the passages become more complex. However, students can still read the stories as many times as they wish prior to recreating the scenes; they quickly learn that repeatedly reading the passages before attempting to recreate the scenes helps them encode and retain the information. This repetition not only develops fluency but also builds reading vocabulary, and is one of the many comprehension strategies that students learn to use for retaining what they've read. Players are continually challenged with increasingly difficult; advanced levels require more complex problem solving skills, such as reversed spatial relationships (right/left mirror image) and require problem solving that goes beyond simple visualization. Players are presented little problems or brain teasers that require the application of skills that most struggling readers never master.

Gallop Park 's activities develop reading comprehension in a way that is measurable because students are required to actively demonstrate their comprehension by recreating scenes from passages they've read. The program accomplishes this by making the activities interesting and enjoyable, which is significant, because in order to fully comprehend content, students must actively engage with and pay close attention to that content.

The technology that powers Gallop Park is the same scientifically developed, clinically proven, and technology that underpins Beach Builder , Snowboard Blast and Space Bumpers and is covered by the same patents pending.

Along the way, students are required to collect the targeted objects while avoiding obstacles and distracters such as crocodiles and rocks, as well as incorrect shapes and objects. These obstacles and distracters force students to focus and use verbal rehearsal/internalized speech in order to remember the items in the correct order.

Completing the activities in Kayak Attack requires the use of successive processing, which requires integrating separate elements within sequences. Sounding out unfamiliar words, for example, involves what is known as successive integration. Skills such as these not only help students decode unfamiliar words but also promote the development of successful spelling strategies, which are later used for decoding unfamiliar words in text and for verifying the correct decoding of text.

In this activity, students must use: rehearsal skills to remember the items; successive processing to remember the order of the items; and feature recognition to discern the differences in color, shape, etc. among the items. In order to guide their skateboarder to the correct objects at the correct time-while also avoiding obstacles and distracters such as open manholes, various water hazards, and incorrect objects-students must also develop considerable planning skills.

Over time, as learners gain proficiency, the cognitive demand is methodically increased by adding additional target features such as new shapes and colors, and by increasing the number of items required to be held in working memory. The processes used in this task are the same as those needed to decode unfamiliar words.

The state-of-the-art technology in Kickflip Fury that carefully and methodically increases cognitive demand - in ways that are unique to each individual learner - underpins every Quantum Learning Technology program.

Students adopt verbal rehearsal and internalized speech strategies in order to retain the visual information in memory long enough to recreate the pattern on the skateboard. As learners make their way through increasingly difficult levels, Skate Create provides additional opportunities to practice reducing information and shifting strategies; this type of practice correlates highly with improved reading comprehension and with the development of strategies used in certain areas of mathematics such as geometry and the ability to recall specific math facts.

Integrating stimuli into groups, and recognizing that a number of stimuli share common characteristics invoke simultaneous processes that involve "both nonverbal-spatial as well as verbal-grammatical activities" (Naglieri & Das, 1997). The simultaneous processes emphasized in Skate Create focus primarily on developing nonverbal-spatial abilities-often referred to as "holistic thinking"-which are useful in a variety of academic activities including reading comprehension and certain mental math operations.

This activity places a heavy emphasis on planning; learners are required to evaluate different types of information, survey maps, and develop appropriate plans for completing the objective. For example, because they are required to "drive" their car all over the city, students must consider the efficiency of their plans and make adjustments in order to conserve fuel. Their plans also need to take into account the amount of traffic on the different streets so they aren't slowed down while trying to complete their missions. "Skid" Marks gives students the clues, but it's up to them to put the pieces together and crack the case!

As in all SkateKids^TM activities, the tasks increase in complexity as learners gains proficiency. As students progress through the levels, the complexity of the cases increase and there are more clues to remember.

While maneuvering their snowboarders down the mountain and collecting the red letters (sounds), students must also avoid numerous obstacles (avalanches, logs, rocks) along the way; learning to tune out these distractions helps students develop strategies for remembering the sounds in the correct order. These strategies and processes include verbal rehearsal/internalized speech and successive processing.

After collecting all of the letters/sounds, students must then recall them in the proper order so as to assemble the pronunciation of a word. Early levels present simple CVC words and progress to multi-syllable and multi-syllable pseudo words. Completing these activities requires resistance to distraction, visual scanning, and chunking strategies; also, successive processing strategies are required when de-contextualized items are presented in a serial order (Das, Naglieri, & Kirby, 1994).

The technology that powers Snowboard Blast is the same scientifically developed, clinically proven, and unique technology that underpins Space Bumpers and is covered by the same patents pending.

Soda Jerk is an amusement park "dining establishment" that draws some pretty unusual customers who also happen to demand top-notch service. They place their out-of-this-world orders, and it's up to the students to come up with plans for serving their customers in the most efficient way possible. Like Skidmarks, P.I. , Soda Jerk places a heavy emphasis on planning - learners must evaluate many types of information and make quick decisions.

As students progress through the levels of increasing difficulty, the complexity of the orders increases as does the number of customers. After completing these activities, students will surely have developed a newfound respect for the short-order cooks of the world!

Students pilot their space bumper car against opponents in races to collect letter-filled bubbles as quickly as possible. After collecting the space bubbles, students must recall the order in which those bubbles were collected so they can use the letters to recreate words on their solar spelling palette. Assembling the letters in the correct order and matching them to the correct sounds earns bonus credits for students. The more advanced levels feature tougher competition and longer letter sequences to collect and recreate.

As the levels increase in difficulty, the monsters become more intent on stopping the students' progress, and the gem sequences they need to collect increase in length and complexity. Quick thinking, strong recall and fast reflexes are needed to come out on top in this activity!

Using the computer keyboard, students control their avatars as they water-ski through treacherous waters, while avoiding obstacles (sharks, logs) and distracters (incorrect sound symbols), in order to collect all of the sound symbols in the correct order. This requires resistance to distraction, visual scanning, and chunking strategies. Students must develop rehearsal strategies in order to remember the sound/symbol pairs that they are looking for, and they must also develop successive processing skills to capture those sounds in the correct order. Early levels present short two- and three-letter words while later levels progress to multi-syllable and pseudo words.

Using the computer keyboard, students control their avatars as they water-ski through treacherous waters, while avoiding obstacles (sharks, logs) and distracters (incorrect sound symbols), in order to collect all of the sound symbols in the correct order. This requires resistance to distraction, visual scanning, and chunking strategies. Students must develop rehearsal strategies in order to remember the sound/symbol pairs that they are looking for, and they must also develop successive processing skills to capture those sounds in the correct order. Early levels present short two- and three-letter words while later levels progress to multi-syllable and pseudo words.