App Review: Sunny Articulation & Phonology Test

How many of you have tried out this awesome app from Smarty Ears?  I know that several of my bloggy buddies have done some fabulous reviews of it, and now I happily take my turn.  Enter: Sunny Articulation & Phonology Test App!  I'm so excited to be reviewing an actual test!  All of the opinions in this review are my own.

Be sure and click on the screenshot photos if you need a better view of my notes and comments.  When you enter the app, this is the "home" screen.  To get started, just add the student's name and birthday.

Select the student then click "new test" to begin testing.  This app comes with a screening test and a full evaluation.  Just select the one you would like to use.

When you select the screening tool, you can make your way through various slides that contain different target phonemes.  Each word has a phonetic transcription with target phonemes in the different positions.  Check out all of the cool features.

After you've made it through the images, click on an intelligibility level to add to the assessment.  Results for the screening yield a raw score.  You can view the results in a break down of place, manner, words, voicing, and position.

Clicking the settings tab will allow you to turn off sounds like the transition audio.  Every time you tap to go to the next slide, a voice says "good job!" or another positive saying.  You can opt to turn that off by clicking the transition audio tab to "off."

The main difference between the screening and the full assessment is the capability of distinguishing between the types of errors that the student makes.  You can choose deletion, distortion, substitution, assimilation, or cluster reduction.

Tapping on substitution will allow you to choose the phoneme that they subbed for the targeted phoneme.

Another really cool feature is being able to reverse the direction of the toolbar in case the student is sitting across from you.

At the end of the assessment, you again select an overall intelligibility and obtain a raw score.  You can view the results by position, manner, place, voicing, words, and errors.

You have the option to review any notes you took, email the results to yourself, review the audio recordings, or open in another program (like Therapy Report Center).

When you email the results to yourself, you get a nice long write up all ready to go!  

There is also a manual available inside the app.  It's got lots of good information on how to use the test and different data about the tests.  The SAPT is not standardized, but you can use it to gather some really good information about a client's articulation and phonology.  It's a great tool to supplement any eval.

What I dig about this app:

• It's straightforward and easy to maneuver through
• It gives a lot of good data about a student's articulation and phonology skills
• You can reverse the toolbar to test students across from you.
• You are able to email the reports to yourself, giving you a nice long description to add to an evaluation. 
• Because you can use this from you iPad, you are able to give this assessment anywhere without having to lug around a lot of materials
• The price is pretty good if you compare it to other testing measures.

What could make it better:

• It's not standardized, so you are not able to yield a standard score or percentile rank to explain results to parents.  
• Because it isn't standardized, this may not be a good option if you are trying to qualify a client.  

Overall, this is a great app!  You can grab it HERE on iTunes for $59.99