March 25, 2013

Appy Hour: Speech FlipBook Review and Giveaway

a review of Speech FlipBook by Tactus Therapy {and Giveaway!}

***GIVEAWAY NOW CLOSED***

It's my first giveaway! I was thrilled when Tactus Therapy provided me the opportunity to review their new app: Speech FlipBook. I was even more thrilled with how great it was :)



Speech FlipBook is a very versatile app from Tactus Therapy that can be used to address a variety of speech/language goals. The app contains 125 single phonemes & clusters, which can combine to create over 2300 single-syllable words and 60,000 nonsense words. Wow!

GETTING STARTED:

I highly suggest watching the online videos before using Speech FlipBook to familiarize yourself. Their website is also very helpful. I put the Speech FlipBook Basics PDF on my iPad for easy reference during the first couple times using the app.


The app has a very clean and simple layout, and you can customize the sounds and types of words you'd like to target: initial sounds, initial clusters, vowels, final sounds, and final clusters.


You can tap a label to select or deselect all sounds in that category. In the picture above, you can see I've selected only labio-dental sounds. One thing that really struck me as 'awesome' on this app was the ability to control which vowels are used. I don't have enough tools to target vowels!


In the settings menu you can customize even more by choosing how the words are presented and how the pages flip, and even choose which words appear on the word list.

Back to the home tab, select if you'd like your targets to be presented in words or sounds, and you are good to go!


While flipping targets, you can hear the word, and can also record/play your students' productions.

WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR?

Articulation Therapy:
The obvious use for Speech FlipBook is for articulation therapy. It's great because it takes away the possibility of students falling back into habitual pronunciations of certain words in error as they often do when naming pictures. They really have to think about the sounds in the targets. It's great that you can customize the targets so well and eliminate any potential troublesome targets due to coarticulation (such as 'cat' if a student is fronting). I love that you can select more than one phoneme to work on minimal pairs and it's also great for RtI work in the hallway or for groups of students.


It's not just for Articulation Therapy!:
*APRAXIA THERAPY: easily progress through therapy from V, to CV, to CVC, etc. *PHONOLOGICAL AWARENESS: sound blending/phoneme manipulation/rhyming *VOCABULARY: for different sound combinations, you can find homophones listed along the bottom. Have students define the homophones.


*IT'S NOT JUST FOR SPEECH-LANGUAGE PATHOLOGISTS! Speech FlipBook will be great for special ed/reading teachers to teach sound blending, word fluency skills, word families, and so on.
*LITERACY: Many of my students are not yet readers, but enjoyed flipping the pages and didn't realize they were working on their early reading skills at the same time as their speech skills!
*OTHER: Website also suggests uses for aphasia, IPA transcriptions, accent reduction, auditory training, and dysarthria.

THE BOTTOM LINE: 

Things I Like:
~ Color-coded tabs make it easy to select desired sounds.
~ Lack of pictures stops students from relying on habitual pronunciations for familiar words.
~ Can be used with much more than just articulation therapy.
~ So many options for customization!
~ No more lugging around numerous articulation cards for each speech sound. Almost any combination you could want are now all in one place!

Suggestions:
~ I didn't feel the app was very self-explanatory at first. But the online video tutorials are EXCELLENT for learning your way around.
~ Would like to see ability to take data and save settings to various 'users' in order to reduce set-up time for each student.
~ More difficult to use with non-readers, which is the majority of my current caseload.


Speech FlipBook is available for iPad/mini, iPhone, and iPod Touch. It is currently $4.99 in the App Store. What a bargain for such a versatile app! Want to win your own copy of Speech FlipBook?! Just enter in the Rafflecopter below!


Winner will be chosen on Friday! Have a great week!

Disclaimer: Tactus Therapy provided me a copy of Speech FlipBook to review and giveaway, but all opinions are my own.

25 comments:

  1. This looks great, Abby. Thanks for the review!

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  2. My favorite go-to therapy activity would have to be . . . secret square for language :)

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    1. Ohhh, what's Secret Square?! I am intrigued :)

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  3. This app looks amazing! Thank you for your thorough review! :)

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    1. You are welcome. It really is a great app. Good luck!

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  4. I was JUST looking at this app the other day! :) Right now I like the Plix games...but I don't know if you can get them anymore.

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    1. I'm not familiar with the Plix games. Will have to investigate!

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  5. I just started on the journey, so don't have a favorite therapy yet. Son has a language processing disorder. We are hoping to encourage phonological awareness and avoid as many other potential reading problems as possible.

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    1. This app would be great to address both of his goals. Good luck on your journey!

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  6. Just got an ipad! So excited to fill it with great apps!!!! Right now my favorite is storybuilder for narrative kiddos! Check it out!

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    1. Storybuilder is a great one! It's easy to fill up an iPad fast, especially with free apps. There are so many great ones! Speech FlipBook is such a great deal at only $4.99! Good luck!

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  7. My favorite go to therapy material would have to be my iPad:)

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  8. My favorite go-to activity is still my artic cards because there are so many ways to use them.

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  9. Thanks for the review Abby. I would have to say my favorite go to activity are my artic apps on my iPad. I always use game boards or jenga while working on artic apps and the kiddos enjoy it a lot more.

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  11. My favorite go therapy for articulation is using apps on my ipad. I also love vocabulary games such as Blurt! (My Favorite) The kids are very competitive and this makes their "work" seem like fun! Thanks!

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    1. Isn't the iPad the greatest?! I'll have to check Blurt out :)

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  12. My favorite go to therapy activities are board games and the iPad.

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    1. Candy Land and Connect 4 are constantly being used in my room :) Which ones do your students enjoy?

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  13. My go-to lately has been "Language Dice" by the Buckeye Speech Path. I've used her materials and adapted it to meet all of my group's needs! Love it for artic and language.

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    1. Thanks for the activity idea - I just checked out her Language Dice and they are awesome!

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