My School Day Enhanced CD-ROM Educational Classroom Social Skills Ages 6-12

I purchased My School Day for my 7-year-old son through a program at his school. He is interested in the video clips which show kids interacting, and I think the DVD has some very good teaching points.Unfortunately, it also seems as if the creators of this set have rarely worked with autistic kids. If you _have_ worked with these kids, you would surely have noticed the fact that sudden loud and harsh sounds unduly upset them. My School Day plays a very loud buzzer sound whenever an incorrect answer is chosen. When my son hears this he almost jumps out of his skin, his stress level zooms up, and he can't think rationally or learn. After about 3 of these buzzers he breaks down completely and the session is over.This isn't just a small beep either. Think of the most obnoxious buzzer that you've ever heard, perhaps when someone "buzzes" you into a high-security facility. That is the sound that I'm talking about. My typically-developing daughter has many educational DVDs. When she chooses a wrong answer, her DVDs give a cheery "take another look" or "try again".There is no option to change or turn off this sound. I have emailed this company asking for either an option to turn this off, an update, or a patch. I haven't heard anything after one week. This in itself is pretty unprofessional, I think. Even Amazon responds to my emails within a couple of days.I will post an update to this review if the company responds, but so far I just couldn't recommend this product to anyone even though it has a lot of potential.UPDATE:In September 2011, I emailed a copy of this review to the company and finally received a response. She stated that an earlier version of this software did include an option to turn off the "negative reinforcement", but that the development team must have left it out of the current version. She would make sure that they added it back to future releases. She also offered to send me the older version, which she did mail out in a timely manner. Unfortunately my computer couldn't fully run it, although I did verify the ability to turn off the "negative reinforcement".In summary, I was pleased with the customer service response once they responded. I strongly object to the very idea of "negative reinforcement" though, especially for special needs kids. Not even dogs are trained this way anymore! YMMV

This CD -ROM is a great resource for children on the autism spectrum. Not only does it have a ton of videos, but my students are very motivated to work on the program!

I am an experienced PC technician for a school district and so I know what I am doing when it comes to installing software. I wish I could tell you how this product works but the registration code provided does not work. Tech support is non-existent; all you get is an answering machine.