Review: Leading Step's Educational Apps

I still consider myself a new parent, even after seven years. I pretty fascinated with my son and how he learns, and what inspires him. I've been blown away at the level of curriculum he is involved in at just the first grade level. I was assumed that our elementary school was advanced until I learned from his teacher that many states have standardized learning goals in place. Being somewhat cynical and saddened about our states educational system, I would have guessed that those standards would be pretty low. How wrong it was! I've been blown away at what my son is learning.

The folks over at Leading Step have created a suite of products that are geared towards mid-ranged elementary school students, and are compliant with various state learning standards. As I played with all these apps I realized very quickly that these were not just your run of the mill educational "flash card" tools.

SpellChamp, MathChamp, Size It Up, and Shape Up are five separate apps that teach spelling, math, geometry, and a mix of math and comparative relations. Each program provides many, many, levels of difficulty, and immediate feedback for the student. Each app has a preference screen that allows the teacher or parents to tweak the kinds of questions or subject focus that the student will get presented to them. It isn't a short list of options. These products are deep and follow the learning goals that many state schools are already using, so as a study tool these five apps are a perfect tie-in for what your child is already learning in school. These will be an invaluable tool for either the struggling or the advanced student. The number of levels, the variety of question asked and number of "game" formats available means that your child has hundreds of hours of learning practice available through these five programs without much repeat at all.

Leading Steps primary marketing focus is to get their software into schools as bulk licenses. Apparently 80% of schools that have adopted handheld technology in the classroom have adopted Palm technology, but there just isn’t enough quality curriculum software available. If you visit Leading Step’s web site you can get info on which states learning standards their software meets or beats.

Although their primary goal is classrooms they offer it to individual parents via their on-line storeThe prices for each are $14.95. For those of you who have purchased any educational software products for your kids know, this is a steal!

For those of you who are home schooling your kids, Leading Step targets some of the most difficult curriculum for most parents to teach, as well as the incalculable value of being state certified.

We need more educational products like these in our schools. As funding issues become even more complex and the classrooms become more crowded it is critical that kids have all the tools they can get their hands on to learn, and learn well. Parents: get these applications for you elementary kids. For all you Palm using teachers out there, check these out and look into the grant programs and educational pricing Palm is offering schools. Bravo Leading Step!