Product Reviews

Sound Beginnings is an innovative program from Semerc, the part of the educational software company Granada Learning that caters for pupils with special needs. Designed for use with a microphone, it encourages children to produce vocal sounds.

It has five interactive exercises designed to develop an awareness of the dimensions of speech: volume, inflection, pitch, breath control and the presence or absence of voice. The main menu uses colourful aliens who also appear in the games. The simplest activity is a jigsaw puzzle where each piece is revealed in response to any sound.

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The most sophisticated is one in which an onscreen character reacts to commands such as run, jump, cry and giggle. An obstacle avoidance game relies on pitch, and in Blow Up a balloon inflates as the user produces a sustained sound, which is good for breath control. The final game, Space Invaders, can be configured so that even severely disabled users can play.

The result is a powerful tool for use with pupils who have a speech or language difficulty. It caters for multiple users by providing individual user records so that teachers can monitor progress. It isn't designed for children to use unaided but, as with many educational titles, there is no onscreen help for teachers. They are expected to read the accompanying booklet.

The only limitation is its speech recognition technology. In our tests using a general-purpose microphone with minimal configuration, the program was not responsive enough. In order not to defeat the objective of building confidence with speech, teachers or parents need to spend time configuring their microphone and training the speech recognition to ensure each activity is working satisfactorily before exposing it to children.