MindPrime arose from a cry for help, which was heard loudly and clearly by Jane Wilkinson.

It was a cry uttered frequently by frustrated parents…parents whose children were performing poorly at school and who wanted desperately to help them, but didn’t know what to do or where to look for help. Enter Jane Wilkinson, a concerned educator who wanted to answer that cry.

From the very beginning, Jane wanted to empower individuals by developing their ability to learn, and that became the mission for MindPrime. MindPrime is a company dedicated to developing, marketing and supporting products that create significant improvement in learning ability and are inviting, accessible and affordable.

One of the first things Jane noticed in her classroom experience was that some students could read fluently but did poorly in discussions or tests about their reading assignments and had great difficulty remembering. She researched the subject and determined that some individuals, although they read the words well, have a problem understanding or comprehending their meaning. Thus was planted the seed for MindPrime’s first program, its IdeaChain Reading Comprehension Program. While there were other programs on the market that used traditional classroom strategies, there were few that addressed the core issue of ‘understanding.’

IdeaChain was designed for use by a parent, lay person or teacher to help a student overcome his or her reading comprehension difficulties by increasing his ability to create mental images. It is a program designed for a parent or teacher to use without being dependent on the ability or energy level of anyone else. It is completely scripted and shows how to take an individual through the appropriate steps, in the proper developmental order, to overcome those difficulties.

The seeds of the solution to this comprehension problem had incubated in Jane’s mind for several years. After a year and a half of intensive research, work and writing, the IdeaChain Reading Comprehension Program was completed. It was tested in 1998-99 with a small group of parents whose children had been identified as having reading comprehension difficulties. After proving to be quite successful with the test group, the IdeaChain program was first marketed in 1999.

Initially marketed primarily to children, adults soon learned that the IdeaChain program could help them overcome the same problems. Since that time, the program has been successfully used by college students, graduate students, Ph.D. academic professionals as well as successful business men and women wishing to increase their ability to understand and remember more of what they read and hear.

After learning that their students were benefitting from the IdeaChain program, individual teachers began to inquire about the program and to use it in their classrooms. As an outgrowth of its use in schools, MindPrime teamed up with Baylor University to test the applicability of the IdeaChain program in classroom situations. A 14-week test was structured at an middle school in Waco; the participating teachers were trained in the use of the program and the results were very encouraging. (For a report on the results, go to Comments). Following the test, MindPrime began receiving requests from schools to have their teaching staff trained to use the IdeaChain program.

At the present time the IdeaChain program is being utilized by adults and children at home, by business people and professionals, for home schooling and in schools for small class groups. Clients throughout the United States as well as in several foreign countries have utilized and benefited from the program.