Earlier this year, we announced our plans for new progress tracking and advice services.
We presented details of the systems that we are developing to deliver these services at the 2024 Down Syndrome Research Forum. We also discussed how we hope they will transform future developmental and educational scientific research.
Following these announcements, we received helpful feedback from researchers, families and professionals about our proposed data collection systems, research opportunities, and expectations for the new apps and services. We have continued to evolve and develop the systems and services, working to incorporate this feedback.
Our initial plan was to release a ‘See and Learn Progress Tracker’ on the See and Learn web site. This was to offer a limited range of progress tracking, guidance and advice that was focused on early speech and language development – closely aligned to our See and Learn teaching resources. We saw this as a step on the way to more full-featured progress-tracking apps and advice services.
Over the past 6 months, we have made significant progress with our progress-tracking apps and services. We have therefore concluded that we should no longer release an interim web-based ‘See and Learn Progress Tracker’. Instead, we should continue to focus on the new apps and services that were always our end goal. We expect to be starting to release these early in 2025.
What is now planned?
As we described earlier this year, we have been building systems to collect observations and to analyse these observations to provide personalised, data-driven advice and guidance that is appropriate for each child at her or his stage of development. We have also been building apps to collect observations from parents and professionals and to provide timely advice and support. And, we have been working to connect these systems to new See and Learn apps to automatically collect practice and progress data from activities children complete in the apps. Finally, we are working on integrating these progress tracking and advice systems with the Reading and Language Intervention for Children with Down Syndrome (RLI).
Our goal is to bring evidence-based, data-driven and highly personalised advice to families and educators everywhere – and to expand and accelerate future scientific research
Our goal is to bring evidence-based, data-driven and highly personalised advice to families and educators everywhere – covering communication, speech, cognition, language, numeracy and literacy development from birth through to teenage – and to expand and accelerate future scientific research. Achieving this across this age range and with progress tracking and advice in multiple language will take us a number of years. However, we will be able to start delivering these services incrementally in the coming months.
Our plans currently include: (1) progress tracking and advice apps, (2) a new See and Learn app, (3) personalised stories, vocabulary and literacy teaching apps, and (4) updates to RLI Online and a RLI app.
Progress tracking and advice apps
These apps will enable parents, carers and educators to track children’s progress across a range of development milestones, speech, language and literacy measures. These will supersede our existing record-keeping forms and checklists.
In addition, these apps will highlight advice and guidance appropriate for each child, based on their current stage of development. This will include specific suggestions for appropriate speech, language, literacy and numeracy teaching activities.
We are developing 3 progress tracking and advice apps – each tailored to a different group of users: (a) parents and carers, (b) teachers and teaching assistants, and (c) speech therapists, early years professionals, and charity support staff and volunteers. Currently, we plan to call these three apps My Childs Progress, My Students Progress and My Clients Progress.
A new unified See and Learn app
When children are engaged in teaching activities using our apps, we can record information about their progress and practice sessions automatically. We are therefore working to build automatic data collection into our existing app-based teaching activities. At the same time, we are merging all our See and Learn apps into one app.
When we first developed the See and Learn apps, we closely modelled them on the printed kits. Now that we can take advantage of modern technologies to better integrate them with progress tracking and personalised advice, it makes more sense to develop the See and Learn teaching activities within a single app where advice and activities and record keeping can be accessed in one place – covering all areas of development.
While we divide our See and Learn resources into pathways, with activities targeting speech, language, reading and number skills, development is linked across each area. For example, speech skills impact language learning and language learning impacts speech skills. Bringing all the pathways into a single app will enable us to a better job of guiding users to appropriate activities across each area of development, and personalising each child’s journey through the learning activities to suit their stage of development and rates of progress.
The new See and Learn app will eventually supersede each of our existing See and Learn apps.
The new See and Learn app will also be where we will deliver the next steps in See and Learn, support later speech skills, number skills and language, grammar and literacy teaching.
As children develop at varying rates of progress, levels of achievement at any given age can vary more widely. As we progress with language and literacy teaching beyond a core early vocabulary and across a wider age range, it becomes necessary to support more personalisation in the teaching activities. Some children may be learning more advanced grammar at an earlier age than others, but we want to be able to support all learners with developmentally appropriate activities with age-appropriate vocabulary and content. Future See and Learn steps will be less ‘fixed’ than the early steps, to better support children as they progress. A single See and Learn app makes this easier to deliver and personalise for each child.
Personalised stories, vocabulary and literacy teaching apps
Keeping with the personalisation theme, we are also working on simple apps for creating personal story books, and for teaching personalised vocabulary and sight words. These can complement the more structured activities presented in See and Learn and go on to support later language and literacy teaching alongside RLI and more generally.
Again, we will be able to link these apps to automatically record language and literacy learning practice and progress. We are also exploring how generative AI can be combined with records of vocabulary and grammar skills to help create carefully targeted and personalised content for story books that is developmentally appropriate for each child.
Updates to RLI Online and a RLI app
Next, we are working on integrating the record keeping and intervention planning processes in RLI with the new progress tracking and advice services. In addition to enabling educators using RLI to keep records, this will allow us to automate some aspects of planning and organising the intervention. We are planning an RLI app for record keeping and planning, that will integrate with our other apps to help deliver some of the teaching activities within the intervention.
When will these new services and apps be available?
This is a lot of work and we are a small team!
Much of the infrastructure needed to support these services is now built. Our current focus is on the progress tracking apps (My Childs Progress, My Students Progress and My Clients Progress) and the new, unified See and Learn app. We hope first versions of progress tracking apps will be available in early 2025, with the new See and Learn app following later in the year.
We will begin to release the new apps as soon as they include sufficient features to be useful, starting with supporting early development from birth and adding additional features and support for later development thereafter. Once the first editions of the new apps are completed, we expect to be able to add new features and new content incrementally and relatively quickly.
Initially, we will release with content in English. However, we are already working on translations and adaptations, and will be seeking partners to help us expand the reach of the new progress tracking and advice services.
What devices will the new apps support?
We are developing the three progress tracking and advice apps (My Childs Progress, My Students Progress and My Clients Progress) to support all popular phone, tablet, laptop and desktop operating systems and form factors:
- iOS (iPhone and iPad) – version 16.0 and above
- Windows (tablets, laptops, desktops) – Windows 10 22H2 and higher
- Android (phones, tablets, Chromebooks, including Kindle) – version 10.0 and higher
- MacOS (Macs, MacBooks) – macOS 14 and higher
We are developing the new unified See and Learn app to support tablet, laptops and desktops. As with our existing teaching apps, we will not support phones as the screens are too small to support most of the teaching activities effectively.
We are developing and testing on all of these platforms. However, our first focus is iOS (iPhone and iPad) and Windows (tablets, laptops, desktops). Apps for these platforms may be released before apps for Android and MacOS.
What does this mean for existing See and Learn kits and apps?
Existing See and Learn kits and apps continue to offer current, evidence-based guidance and record keeping forms to support early speech, language, literacy and numeracy teaching from infancy to the early school years. They are carefully designed to take account of the specific learning strengths and needs of children with Down syndrome.
Existing users of See and Learn kits and apps can continue to use their kits and apps
Our current range of See and Learn kits and apps will remain available while we evolve new services and new apps and will continue to offer the best option for supporting early speech, language, literacy and numeracy development.
Existing users of See and Learn kits and apps can start to use the new progress tracking and advice services with their existing kits and apps
As new progress tracking services become available, existing users of See and Learn kits and apps will be able to choose to keep their records in a new progress tracking app while continuing to use their existing kits and apps, rather than using the existing paper record forms.
Users who choose to start using a new progress tracking app alongside their existing See and Learn kits and apps will gain access to personalised advice based on the observations they are recording about their child. This personalised advice will include links to See and Learn resources as appropriate and will therefore complement any kits and apps already in use.
What does this mean for future See and Learn kits and apps?
Future See and Learn kits and the unified See and Learn app will continue to evolve to support teaching later speech, language, literacy and numeracy skills and to work together with the new progress tracking and advice services.
Depending on feedback, we may package the kits in different ways over time. For example, we may offer the teaching materials without printed guides and record forms for those using the apps for record keeping and guidance – as this would help to reduce the costs of printed materials. We do not envisage any changes to packaging until later in 2025, when the new progress tracking apps are available and we have collected feedback.
Will the new services be free of charge?
We hope to make record keeping and progress tracking, using the new apps, available for free for parents and carers. However, it is not possible to offer comprehensive, personalised advice, guidance and teaching resources to tens of thousands of people around the world for free.
We do expect that by taking advantage of modern technologies we will be able to deliver current, evidence-based guidance that is carefully personalised for each child at a much lower cost than any other approach – and that this will be reflected in the fees we will have to charge.
How can I help and get involved?
The speed with which we can deliver new services and new research depends on charitable support for our work. While we can (and do) reinvest much of what we receive in fees and sales for existing services and products, this only goes so far in supporting new research and development activities.
The best way, therefore, to help us to do more, more quickly, is to donate. You can donate to Down Syndrome Education International (a UK-based charity) or Down Syndrome Education USA (and US-based nonprofit) easily and securely via our online donation service.
In early 2025, we will be seeking volunteers to help test preview versions of the new apps. We will also be seeking volunteers to help with translations and adaptations.
Meanwhile, please let us know your thoughts about our plans and any feedback you may have. You can reach us by replying here.
