Picaa
| Category | Price | Seller | Device |
|---|---|---|---|
| Education | Free | Everyware Technologies S.L. | iPhone, iPad, iPod |
Important: The application is in English (as well as in Spanish) although sample activities provided are in Spanish. You can customize or create new ones with the pictures and sounds you want, including synthesized sounds (Text-To-Speech) in English.
Picaa aims to bring flexibility and adaptability in the education of children with special needs (autism, PDD, Down Syndrome, etc). The app allows defining five kinds of activities fully customizable to be performed by the users:
- Exploration: this activity can be used like an augmentative and alternative communicator (AAC) system. Exploration activities also can be used like navigation-based histories that let students learn concepts through the navigation of a hypermedia system with components.
- Association: the student must indicate relationships between elements that belong to several sets.
- Puzzle: a decomposed image must be rebuilt from multiple pieces. Number, size and shape of pieces can be configured.
- Sorting/selection: a list of elements that must be ordered in a sequence or where the user must find a particular item.
- Memory (Memory-Match). Create activities for working memory, can use images and text.
More innovating factors of the platform are:
- It is designed like a mobile platform, following an approach where activities run on entertainment mobile devices that turn out to be more attractive to users.
- It provides support for group work, fostering integration and interaction with other users.
- It has the capability of user adaptation and content customization.
- It provides functions to synthesize sounds (requires WiFi/3G connection).
- Activities can be shared via email or can be imported/exported via iTunes sharing files feature.
(*) Sample pictures given by the DiverTIC Association (www.divertic.org).
Reviews
Useful for autism and speech therapy!
specialappssk
Please I'd love some instructions in English. I've managed to figure out how to edit but I'd love to be able to navigate in the app better to create many different vocabulary files. The activity where you can drag an item to it's matching category is very useful! I just added 1 more star! THE NEW UPGRADE IS VERY HELPFUL, THANK YOU! I LOVE the agenda feature and how you can preset different activities for each day, specific to each user. I love how you can set a timer with a picture of an activity. The puzzle feature is really fun. I don't understand the really low rating stars. It requires some patience for programming, but this app is free and very helpful for my son with autism. It is also quite useful for my speech therapy students.
Not my language
alabasterpixie
Your screen shots show this in english - but what I got is in spanish. My son's autistic. This isn't helpful.
Misleading
Erin Kathleen
The pictures show a wonderful application that could have great possibilities for theraputic reasons... however; it is in Spanish. While I can read a few words here and there, I am SURE my students will not be able to. If you have bilingual students, this would be a great app, but for English students it's not applicable.
Fully customizable
Momofspecialkids
I got this app even after reading the reviews of it being in Spanish because I figured that it could have an option to change the language as many apps have. After getting the app, I saw that, yes, it was in Spanish, and there was no option for English. So then I explored the app and realized that it is able to be edited, adding your own things, etc. So, I changed the typed words to English, then realized the editing option for 'custom tts' allows you to type the spoken word also. My daughter has an aac device so I am used to programming it. After I changed the spoken word, it spoke English! The words on this app are not a pre-recorded voice but similar to an aac device where it says the words that you type. Therefor the app is incredible and fully customizable. You can add your own pictures and whatever you want the words to be also. I would definitely have paid for this app, but really appreciate the fact that it is free! If you want something you can customize yourself, than this is it!
This program keeps crashing when I open it
SSupernaut
It used to work great until latest update. Now it crashes right after opening. It took me a long time to upload all my pictures and now it doesn't work!
More Details About the App
marinanoelle1
The app is in english, but the activities built into the app are in spanish. When you click the edit icon on the main activities screen, then click the add icon, you will see all other screens are in english, allowing you to create an activity Please note: if you go to add an anamation, everything is in Spanish. All in all, you should be able to find out that the app itself is in English. Hopefully you will find this helpful. Thanks.
