Articulation Carnival from Virtual Speech Center {Appy Friday Review}

This is probably my favorite VSC articulation app to date.  Here’s a bit more about it and some tips:

This is the opening screen.  From here you can access all parts of the app!  If you click “Play Games” you can utilize this app as a general reinforcer app for any clients!  Awesome!

The included settings are shown here.  I love that you can customize the reinforcer game length as well as how many correct productions get a student to the game.  When I have larger groups I can pull this number down to 5 or so.  For individual therapy/RtI I can up the requirement to the maximum of 10!

If you click “start” on the main page you will be brought to this screen to select students.  I’m not sure what the maximum amount of students per session is but we haven’t hit it yet.

After clicking “Start” you will have the ability to chose phonemes for the student to practice.  Great for mixed-phoneme groups or students working on multiple phonemes.  The vocalic /r/ is also divided up which is helpful.

The stimulus items are presented on screens like this.  You can move between phonemes, positions, and word/phrase/sentence in each stimulus item.  You can also record/playback student productions, track if they were correct/incorrect/approximate with their production, add notes to the item, and adjust settings without exiting.

As the students move through the items, balloons are awarded for correct productions.  After the determined number of correct productions is reached, they will move automatically to the carnival game reinforcer.

There are four games to choose from: Spray Ducks, Basketball, Balloon Darts, and Strength Hammer.

After you complete a session, any data you collected is immediately available for review/sharing.  You will see this session report after clicking “finish” in the stimulus page.

The session reports are always available for students.  This data can be backed up via various options in the main menu.  It will be stored on the app until the app is deleted from your device.  Data can be viewed by phoneme or by date and can be shared via e-mail to anybody including parents, teachers, and other SLPs.

Watch this video for more information on the app:

Overall, this has been a great app to use with all articulation students!  Here is my quick pros/improvements list:

Pros:

• Nice, colorful, realistic stimulus photos.
• Clear voice.
• Ability to select specific sounds for each student in a group session.
• Several points of customization included in settings and stimulus words including the ability to add custom words to the app!
• Data tracking included in the app with the ability to print/e-mail the progress.
• Keeps thorough data stored on the app for each student!
• You can change from word to phrase to sentence, change phonemes, and change phoneme position without exiting the session.
• The carnival reinforcer games are motivating for students!
• Overall a great app… wonderful for SLPs with elementary and middle school artic clients!

Improvements:

• You have to manually move between players.  No option is given for it to automatically move to the next player.
• The background graphics are a bit much and can be distracting.
• The ability to shuffle sounds/positions automatically is not there – you must manually shift between sounds and sound positions.

Overall a great new app!  The pro (full) version is currently available for $36.99 in the app store:

There is also a “free” version to try out the app before purchasing or if you only need to purchase select sounds via in-app purchases:

 

Disclosure: VSC provided a copy of this app for review.  No other compensation was provided and all opinions are that of the author.