About us

Philosophy of our software:

Our software began as a family venture. If our youngest child, Kevin, had not been born with Down Syndrome (he was later also diagnosed as having autism), Geddes Productions and Geddes Software would not be in existence. We began writing software to assist his development, initially to assist his spoken language and then his written language and then to develop other skills. Others started to request our software for their children, teachers in New Zealand schools asked us to develop it further and so we had to move to a commercial basis to make this possible.

The primary programmer for many years was Kevin’s dad (in his spare time), although all the family have been involved in some way. More recently we have begun to add other programmers, beginning with Reuben Elder.

All our software has been developed in conjuction with professionals in the special education field in New Zealand.

Some of the concepts for our software have come from outside the family. For example, Alice Castelano from New York came up with the original concept for Flashcards and contacted us and asked if we could write the software, She assisted us with the development of the US version providing sounds and correcting spelling. Others from the US have helped us with sounds in more recent times.
Teachers involved in education of children with special needs have provided many useful suggestions. StoryMaker was in part developed as a result of a suggestion by Judy Black, a teacher involved with children with special needs in Dunedin, New Zealand.

Our aim is to keep our software affordable for families with children facing special educational challenges. We gladly make it available to others with the desire that it will prove a blessing to them. We would love to hear from you concerning your experiences with the software, especially from those of you who also have the privilege of having children with special needs.

We are committed to continuing to develop our software, including developing for other languages and cultures – we are currently working on three versions of StoryMaker – one in Spanish for use in countries in Latin America, another with British sounds, and a third with South African sounds. We are also beginning to investigate the use of software in Asia including looking at a version in Mandarin.