Announcing Fun & Functional (v. 1.1)

One of my first clinical experiences in graduate school involved planning and implementing classroom-based lessons in the school setting.  It really shaped my thinking for the years to come, as I learned how important semantics was to students' functioning in the classroom.  We would do book-themed lessons and many activities in which students would describe items related to the activity.  It seemed strange to me at the time when my awesome supervisor, Joan Hargrave, who I think reads this blog from China (Hi, Joan!), emphasized how important it was that we were teaching the kids to describe by function.  You know how you don't learn much about language therapy until you do it?  In the years to come, I would see the importance of function as an attribute in so many places- just try administering the Word Test or CELF-4 Expressive Vocabulary and looking at the scoring standards, let alone the "functional" curriculum-based applications of describing by function. Aside from category, it is probably the most salient descriptive attribute.

It was very exciting, then, when my first project with Smarty Ears Apps involved working with prolific author Rosie Simms on an app that targets identifying and describing items by function! Fun & Functional was a great learning experience and it hit the app store about a month ago. I sort of haven't had a chance to write about it until now! Please check out the video tutorial below, and I hope you find the app helpful:

Fun & Functional 1.1 from Sean Sweeney on Vimeo.

Disclosure: Author has a contractual relationship with Smarty Ears Apps and receives a portion of the profit of the sales of this app.