Earobics Review-It's a Doozy!!

After months of searching for an appropriate auditory/phonological home program, I finally settled on Earobics. The price was right and it was readily available. Earobics has 3 versions, although I will only review Step 1. The version that I purchased, Earobics Step 1, is for ages 4-7. I felt pretty confident about this product due to all the positive reviews that I had read previously. I purchased my CD-ROM from Super Duper Publication, not only because of the price, but the free shipping.
Thankfully, it arrived shortly after I placed the order. My expectation were high. Maybe a little too high. I tore the box open and immediately tried to install it on my daughters computer. Key word: Tried. After several failed attempts to install it, I recruited my hubby for help. Unfortunately, he ran into the same obstacles that I had earlier. He suggested we try on another computer to see if it was a disc issue or operator error. When we tried to download it on our other computer it downloaded without a problem. Or so we thought. We tried to open the program and an error box would pop up stating we didn't have permission to do so. At this point, I was beyond frustrated and wanted to throw it out the window. Although, $69 is not a ton of money, its too much to just throw away. My hubby came to the conclusion that the disc was most likely corrupted and to call the distributors for a 'quick fix'. Yeah, right. Anyone who knows me, knows that nothing I do is either easy nor quick.
The next morning, I find myself on the phone with a customer representative for Earobics. The Representative seemed happy to help until he realized I purchased the home version($69) and not the clinician version($329) of Earobics. Honestly, I swear I heard him 'sigh'. No joke. I began to tell him the issues we were having installing the CD-ROM. He quickly asked what system we had installed on her computer. I told him Vista. He sighed again and stated, "Ooh, we don't guarantee that it will work on Vista" Um, okay, so what now? He quickly gave me a website( which I had gone to the night before to try to troubleshoot the problem ourselves) and bid me good day. Seriously? Really? You've got to be kidding, right? Hello...? To say I was livid would be an understatement. I found myself staring down at this disc contemplating shredding it to a thousand little pieces. Thankfully, I'm cheap as all get out and the ideal of throwing away $70 just didn't sit well with me at all. In a last ditch effort, I decided to call Super Duper Inc., to see if the could/would help me. At this point, I expected NOTHING, but I wanted someone to genuinely try to help us fix this problem.
I'm so glad I did because they were fabulous. I spoke to someone in customer service who quickly transferred me to the computer tech guy. The computer tech guy, walked me through all the steps I should take and unfortunately, the same error message kept popping up. Eventually, after about 30 minutes of trying to figure out, tech guy stated what my husband said earlier, "Your disc is most likely corrupted. We've been having a ton of problems with Earobics disc lately." Once again I find myself asking,"Um, okay, now what?" I braced myself for the worse and waited for him to give me the same send off as the customer service agent for Earobics. The tech guy, now affectionately referred to as super sweet,computer tech guy, told me to toss the disc and they would send me a new one ASAP. I almost passed out! Really?! No groveling on my part? Wow!! I was happily shocked and relieved. In a two hour span, I had just experienced the very worse and the very best in customer service. Thank goodness great customer service prevailed in this instance.
After several more days, we received our new Earobics and thankfully, it worked fine. Even after all the crap that we went through, I still wanted to love this product. It wasn't love. I barely liked it. The animation is rudimentary, at best, and the sound quality is often poor. Basically, Earobics is outdated( just check out the picture below of the kids in the band? The black kid is sporting a high top fade hairdo. Seriously, that style hasn't been popular in about 20 years!) Earobics seems to be stuck in a time warp and it needs a complete overhaul.
That's the bad, now for the good.
It works. Okay, I think it works. If you look at the bottom of the page you'll see a progress report. Doesn't state exactly what she completed, just that she finished. She blasted through some and struggles with others.
Earobics has 6 categories:

1. Karloon's Balloons-38 levels of play-auditory short term memory, auditory sequential memory, auditory performance and auditory attention. Basically the clown plays a sound and your child must pick the corresponding picture(s)before the balloon pops. COMPLETED!!
2. C.C. Coal Car-74 levels of play-Phoneme discrimination, Phoneme identification, phonological sequencing, and sound symbol correspondence. It helps children to learn recognition of long vowels, short vowels and consonant sounds. DD doing well, but its now getting increasingly difficult for her.
3. Rap-A-Tap-Tap-16 levels of play-Auditory short term memory, phonological segmentation, auditory temporal resolution. Basically your child counts the number of drumbeats and speech sounds in a series of sounds and syllables in a word.COMPLETED!!
4. Caterpillar Connection-56 levels of play- Phonological blending, auditory attention, auditory short term memory and Auditory sequential memory. Child learns to blend words into compound words and blend syllables and sounds into words. COMPLETED!
5. Rhyme Time- 11 levels of Play- Rhyming auditory attention, auditory sequential memory, auditory short term memory, auditory performance with competing signals. Teaches rhyming skills, using both rhyming and non-rhyming activities. My DD is struggling with this category.
6. Basket Full of Eggs-114 levels of play. Auditory and phoneme discrimination, auditory attention, auditory short term memory, auditory sequential memory, auditory pattern recognition, auditory temporal ordering. Teaches how to hear the differences between vowels and consonant vowel combinations. STRUGGLES, but completes activities.

I recently asked my daughter how she liked the program and without any hesitation, she quickly blurted, "It's so B-O-R-I-N-G!!"

Seriously, if you can't grab a child's attention, you've lost half the battle. We will continue with this program until she completes it fully, but I can honestly say, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. Unfortunately, Earobics has now become a form of punishment;

me: Come on baby, you have to focus.
DD: What?
me: Are you even listening to me?
DD: **crickets**
me: That's it! We're doing Earobics for 15mins!
DD: Whaaaa! But...but....Why? I was listening.
Overall, Earobics is a decent program for the money. Would I buy it again knowing what I know now...probably not. Thankfully, there are now other options. Better options, in my opinion, with more technical support, to boot. Namely,Webber Hear Builder Phonological Awareness. I will do a review of this sometime in March.

Note: I was not paid or giving any kick backs for this review of Earobics, Webber Hear Builder or Super Duper Inc. I'm honest to a fault. Seriously, if you were Earobics, would you pay me after that review? LOL!!