Kids Self Evaluate™

More than three years in the making, Kids Self-Evaluate™ (KSE) is an iPhone App that helps school-aged children answer the question: “How is my life right now?” It is not, by any means, a game; but it does have some game elements, as it was programmed by an 18-year-old high schooler in northern California.

Moskoff hopes that the App benefits the user (ages 8-18) by giving them an objective sense of where they have both gifts and challenges in their lives. Possessing that knowledge will help them to avoid being confused by all the “noise” that comes from peers, the media, the culture. The App can be purchased from Apple for $1.99 in the App Store.

For parents, KSE™ provides a “window” into their child’s perceptions. “How’s school going?” when asked by a parent usually receives some sort of mumbled response; KSE™ changes that – parents can see, exactly, where their child is challenged or where s/he thinks he’s doing well.

The “engagement factor” is a known problem in getting young people to honestly and authentically respond to traditional surveys because they get bored and, often, perceive the survey, its questions and statements as irrelevant. KSE’s™ design and execution takes into account those realities and presents the sector with a new model in a young person’s language and package.

Another product from the mind and heart of innovator George Moskoff, KSE™ is the third app from his company, APG Mobile Applications (APG MA). His popular iSplit Divorce™ app is well rated by the Huffington Post.

Moskoff says, “I know we’re going out on a limb here by giving this tool to kids but this project is close to my heart; I’ve run a school and I know what kids are capable of – they can handle looking in the mirror.” The psychometrics in KSE™, says Moskoff, allow them to do just that.

“Kids were never able to get access to anything like this before and I want that to change. Yes, we’re concerned about any emotional and psychological dust this instrument may stir up,” adds the inventor. That’s why the company set up a partnership with the National Runaway Safeline (NRS).

Based in Chicago, the NRS supports more than 100,000 troubled youth each year. With a grant from the Department of Justice, NRS trains and supervises a large group of volunteers who help — through an “800″ number, email chats — troubled young people deal with a range of challenges. The NRS has now become a strategic partner of APG Mobile Apps.

NRS’s 30-year track record of successfully helping young people across the United States with a range of challenges was key in its selection. Logging more than 100,000 phone calls with 150 volunteers, NRS offers unique and competent support to users of Kids Self Evaluate™.

KSE™ satisfies APG MA’s three goals: it solidifies the company’s brand of visual computing while providing a social benefit and working to solve complex societal problems.

A self-styled human behavior guru and next generation mobile app developer, George Moskoff offers a cure for the negative ways that school-aged children interact with themselves and with each other.

“Self-hate, self-derision, self-berating behaviors are at an all-time high,” says Moskoff. These feelings are reinforced in the culture that seeks perfection, he says. And, ultimately, the discomfort comes out, often, as abuse visited on the weaker members of the system. Bullying made simple, he says.

Moskoff’s newest App, Kids Self-Evaluate™, helps kids become more conscious about how they perceive their own lives. It works to comprehensively and easily raise the user’s awareness and create a reflection of their own perceptions.

The U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Safe and Healthy Students reports that, last year, bullying ranked as one of the top five threats to creating healthy conditions for learning at their August 2012 Conference.

The insecurities that lead to these behaviors need to be dealt with, Moskoff argues, “And our App goes part of the way towards that goal by helping kids get a snapshot of how they feel about their lives at that moment…without the need of an adult to intervene.” It’s not a panacea but it’s a new and robust tool that needs to get used where it makes sense – and it makes sense in a lot of places, he claims.

The father, former Montessori-school manager, public-school teacher and management consultant and, mobile app developer thinks the current slate of solutions are too “top-down.” “Despite a raft of anti-bullying programs, the state of affairs has never been more charged.” He points to the fact that the Compton California School District keeps a full-time, paid SWAT Team on alert.

He suggests, from his consulting and life experience, that “we need to create programs that give the children the tools they need to help themselves and each other – that’s why I created Kids Self-Evaluate™.”

Moskoff, a student of “Systems Theory” backs up his bold claims: “Systems Theory teaches us: ‘the harder you push against the system, the harder the system pushes back.’” KSE™ can go a long way towards providing each child with a snapshot of how s/he feels at that moment in time, the child becomes more aware.