Appy Friday ~ Feed Maxi from Speak Eazy Apps

Speak Eazy Apps has just released their first app - Feed Maxi.  It is described as an app to increase expressive, receptive and pragmatic language skills while feeding Maxi, an adorable monkey.  Here's more...

Once the app is open, this is the screen you begin with.  Options/Settings are available in the bottom left of the main screen.

Within options, you can change children/users (up to 5), change settings, increase/decrease difficulty, and customize the food options presented to the child.

Each child's settings are saved within the apps and changing between children takes only a minute.  After you have selected the child, you can head back out to feed Maxi.

Maxi will ask, using some ASL (give, more, please, want), for a specific food item from the presented items.  If the child chooses correctly, the food item goes to Maxi to be eaten.  If not, Maxi redirects them to choose again. 

Play continues until you choose to end play.  Statistics are available as well and can be kept or e-mailed.

Overall this is a nice app for use with young children or those with severe disabilities.  Here is my quick pros/improvements list:

Pros:

• Photos of food items as the stimulus.
• Use of ASL.
• Customizable for each child.
• Up to 5 users and data can be saved.
• Good price for a nice app ($2.99 at the publication of this review).
• Maxi is a cute animation.

Improvements:

• This app can be very slow to respond, particularly in the reinforcer between each correct answer.  My students (elementary-aged students with severe Autism) did not have the patience for it and were easily frustrated by the time between turns.  Being able to turn off the reinforcer animation would be great.
• The background/scene is very busy which can be distracting to some students - if at least the grass in front of Maxi were lighter to allow the stimulus to shine through a bit more that would be helpful.
• This app was one of the largest files on my iPad, most likely due to the graphics and real photos.  However, for the amount of content it includes, it takes up much too much memory at this time for me.

Overall a good new app for young children!  It is currently available for only $2.99:

Disclosure: Speak Eazy Apps provided a copy of this app for review.  No other compensation was provided and all opinions are that of the author.