Universally compatible with
all Apple devices
Articulate It
Articulate It is a speech app from Smarty Ears. Although I can see some parents of autistic children using it, it's probably best left for Speech Language Pathologists who are familiar with SLP jargon like "Fronting", "Deafrication", "Affricate", and "Fricative". All those words make my spell checker go crazy insane.
The first thing you'll notice about Articulate It is the cute, friendly opening screen and the Smarty Ears logo duck. That duck is cool! He looks happy, innocent, and smart! The next thing you'll notice as you enter the app is the screen orientation switches from landscape to portrait making you rotate your iPad or iPhone 90 degrees. If you are using an iPhone this is the second time you've had to rotate your device.
Initially, you'll need to add at least one student's name into Articulate It to get started. Then you touch the name, which then highlights, and touch the check mark. At this point you have a decision to make; Do you want to work on Phonemes, Phonological Processes, or Mode of Articulation? After making your choice Articulate It lets you further define EXACTLY what you want to work on depending on your selections. Which phonemes, phonological processes, or modes do you want to concentrate on? You have the option(s)!
It's nice that you can input multiple kids, select them, and Articulate It switches between the kids, taking turns!
Once your selections are done Articulate It gives you word/image combinations on the screen that are appropriate to your selections one by one. Touch the image to hear a male voice say the word nicely and clearly.
During use of the app you can touch the little yellow speech bubble at the bottom left corner to type in notes as needed. That's certainly a plus!
I like how you can flip forward or back to the previous or upcoming image/word by swiping. It will repeat words that are missed automatically, giving the child multiple chances to pronounce it.
You can also email any results you like. That's also a great feature!
However, Articulate It has some notable flaws. There are minor grammatical errors here and there such as "Please select atleast one student." Within the generated email, the app's own name is misspelled as "Aticulate it!"
Many of the images are questionable. The image for "Run" is dominated by a tile wall, while the man running is wearing a business suit and he's pretty small. The image for "Race" shows mens' legs running, only from the waist down. "Moon" is a black image with a small orange Pac-Man in the center. All these images could be better given the word they are trying to emphasize. The "Skate Board" word had no picture with it... just a blank screen. And it also didn't say the word, AND the app crashed on that screen. Same thing on "Briai". And I have no idea what "Briai" is. Some of the images look like they were just clipart taken from Microsoft Word. But I also understand that some words can be difficult to find images for.
"Catamaran" is pronounced in a way I'm not familiar with. Articulate It says "Cat-ah-mar-en" while I've always heard it pronounced "Cat-uh-merr-ann".
The bright, bright green used on the results screen is quite hard on the eyes. But you get to see which words the child got correct, and which ones he needs to continue to work on. Even if the green color is offensive, it makes it clear the green words were the correct words while the red ones were not. It would be better if the app used a deeper shade of green.
As I noted above, the ability to email results is fabulous! However, the app crashed on me while I was viewing the results.
There are a few other small quarks with Articulate It. Unfortunately, for all it does, all these quarks make for one big beef.
