Review: BrainSpark to help improve reading skills in a ten year old

I saw a guy on TED that claims he can retrain the brain with some exercises so that it can recognize spoken language better. He claims a lot of kids have learning issues due to their brain developing in a noisy environment. That could be ambient noise or the tubes in their ears may be full causing the brain to hear muffled english instead of clear english. He claims this can be corrected in about 30 hours of exercises. My smallest daughter had recurrent ear infections when she was a toddler and it was caused by her tubes from her ears not draining properly and hence the fluid kept infecting her ears. We fixed this with a procedure when she was 2 but it took several months before we figured it out. The guy specifically mentions this as a noise cause that stops the language processor in the brain forming correctly. They have a program for schools called Fast Forward and BrainSpark is their consumer oriented version of this software program.

So, our daughter, now 10 is at grade level and has some trouble reading and doing comprehension. We already had a private tutor for a year who as far as I can tell just reads with the kid and does not much else. I'm not satisfied with the tutor approach and this is based on results for her exams, I haven't seen an improvement after this time. This program strikes me as more 'scientific' with some research behind it so we're trying it out. It's 200 bucks for 3 months, this is MUCH cheaper than a tutor so we'll see if its effective or not. The idea is to do the exercises for about 30 minutes 5 days a week for that time. We're hoping for an improvement in reading and comprehension tests. I'll post more information as it unfolds. The summer vacation provides a great opportunity for us to try it out.

The exercises are delivered using a flash application in a browser. We're using our iMac with some headphones to isolate distracting noises.

Results: Here is an example of the stanford tests taken on Sept 25, 2008 and Sept 29, 2009 after the BrainSpark summer session. The numbers are National Percentile Ranking (NPR). The first number is 2008 and the second is 2009

• Reading:    (73, 44)
• Math (63, 78)
• Language:    (27, 59)
• Spelling:    (58, 69)
• Science:    (75, 96)
• Soc Sci:    (42,47)

I can't explain the reading. It gotten worse but that could just be a bad day. I do know she is reading a lot now. She enjoys reading books and is currently reading Harry Potter and Twilight as examples. The others improved a lot. So, this is hardly scientific but it's all the data I have on whether it works or not. The reading is the only glitch but on the whole, she's improved significantly over the last year relative to other kids so I'd say the brain spark did help but a lot happened during that year also, could be better teaching etc. I still think it was worth it. I just wish I'd a test she took in May/June 2009 which would be a better comparison.

Comments

[robbiema]

Hi!
How is the program going? I'm currently looking into this for my daughter, who is 6. She is reading at grade level, but her teachers are concerned and we just had her tested. I would love to hear from you about your experience.
Thanks!
R

[renee]

hi
I was also considering this program for my daughter who is 9. Please post again when you have some results you'd like to share.
thanks
RC

[wendy]

Hi!

I'm looking at this program for my 8 year old son who is not reading at his grade level. He is a visual/spatial learner and I'm wondering if this may be helpful. Thanks, W

[Lydia]

Hello,
I am anxiously awaiting your results with the Brainspark program. My daughter, who is 8, was diagnosed with PDDnos as well as an auditory processing disorder. I am currently homeschooling her and was curious if this program would be worth the money and time. Thank you for caring enough to reply. Many prayers for your daughter. Thanks, LM

[claudia shuster]

Here we are In September. I am very intereseted in your personal story. How is yoru daughter responding to the materials, Is it hard to get her to work on them after school? can you see any results? Thank you for posting! Please email me = CS

[nl]

I wold really like to know if anyone ordered the program lately with a credit card and if that worked

[Billy Newport]

We finished the program now. It ends kind of abruptly. There is no summary email report or anything, one day it just stops working. She was finding it hard to keep doing it but she stuck it out. She ended up at about 92% complete when the time period elapsed. It's hard to know whether the program had any impact. Her story writing skills do seem better at the start of this next school year but thats subjective. I'm waiting for tests during the year to compare with last years to check for percentile improvements and the like.

She did feel it was boring. It's very repetitive. When we take some standardized tests in school then I'll post anything interesting.

[nl]

My son finished brainspark recently and we have seen tremendous improvement with him. I think it is definetly worth giving it try if your child needs the extra boost.

[Tallee Whitehorn]

I am very interested to know if this worked for the people posting here. My 6 year old is doing well academically and is well behaved at school but his teacher is concerned that his level of inattention will creep into academics and at some point he'll fall behind. I am looking for a way to strengthen his attention skills. If this is just a online reading program that could be accomplished through similar sites I don't want to pay the money but if it truly exercises and develops parts of the brain that control attention I want to do it. Please let me know what you think of this program from an attention learning program. I would SO appreciate it. Thanks!

[HC]

I am a school nurse looking for alternatives to drugs like Ritalin, Sraterra and Adderall for students with ADHD or other learning disorders. So I would like to hear from anyone who has used it so I can find out the pluses and minuses.