iAutism

Picaa is advertised as a platform to develop learning activities suitable for children with special educational needs. This objective is very ambitious, but after spending many hours reading web sites about such applications and testing some of them, I am convinced that the Research Group on Software Specification, Development and Evolution (GEDES) at the University of Granada (Spain) has developed a remarkable application.

Four activities

Currently, Picaa supports four types of activities (association, puzzle, sorting and exploration), but the concept and design of this platform is scalable, allowing it to incorporate more activities in the future.

In the association activities, a number of elements are shown on the left of the screen (for example, food and site images), and some category elements (for example, “food” and “places”) are shown on the right. The user must drag each element into the category to which it belongs. A digital counter increases every time the user does a correct association, and the box of each category incorporates images of the elements already associated. Once the activity is finished, a “Yaju!” sounds. The picture shows this activity when some elements have been associated and I was going to associate the juice.

Picaa is delivered as a “learning platform” and emphasizes its flexibility. Out of the box, the application includes only a few example activities, but provides editing options to define new activities which are really easy to use. In a few minutes, and assuming that I already had pictures loaded on my iPod touch of toys and food, I could define an association activity. I only had to create categories and items, associate pictures and optionally sounds to each one, and define to which category each item belongs and voila!, I had created a new activity as shown in the picture below.

When defining activities, the iPhone brings a very practical benefit: it allows to take pictures and record sounds, which makes it possible to define activities on the fly and without much planning. The newly introduced 4th generation iPod touch includes a microphone and camera, which will make it much more practical for applications such as Picaa (and many others).

Puzzles and users

The puzzle activity allows you to create puzzles with 2, 4, 5 or 9 pieces from any image or picture previously loaded, and it is possible to define whether or not the solution will appear as a blurred background and also whether the outline of the pieces will also appear as an aid. Also, you can choose whether the pieces of the puzzle will initially appear mixed or not, and when mixed they can be scattered far or close to the position where they will fit. Each time you place a piece, a short beep sounds, and when you finish the puzzle you hear a longer one.

After having spent many hours looking for suitable puzzle applications for my daughter, I find this application very well prepared for children with special needs. Moreover, Picaa allows you to create and manage several user profiles, and to define for each of them which activities can run and how. Thus, one user of an of an association game might view only the pictures, only the text or both parts of each element; may or may not see what other users do in group activities; and may use one way or another to interact with the device during the activity.

The application provides three interaction modes. The first, Drag, is the usual for this type of tactile devices and requires the user to trace a continuous route from the source (for example, an element in the association activity) to the end (the element representing the category in the same activity), which is something relatively easy for my daughter with autism but maybe not so much to other children with severe motor functions problems. The second, Move, allows you to move an element by steps, keeping the element where it is dropped until it reaches the target. And the third, Touch, simply requires yo to touch the first element and then the second (the category) to establish the association.

Sorting and Exploration

Another activity is sorting, which consists of sorting a series of elements (images and/or texts) based on other images and/or text labels. One typical use is for exercises where the user needs to create  phrases from their various component words.

The exploration activity allows you to define various activities involving navigation through a hierarchy of elements, like images with or without text, text labels, sounds and even animations (Picaa includes 167  sign language animations based on the Benson Schaeffer’s Total Communication System). Each element also can include a count-down timer, which allows you to define social stories with an agenda of exercises to be performed, each with a maximum time. For instance, I defined four categories of items (food, rooms in the house, places and tools) and I added various images to each of them as a way to implement a first PECS (Picture Exchange Communication System) for my daughter, as shown in the accompanying picture.

Cooperation

Picaa allows you to run an association activity in group or cooperation mode, and for this you need to connect devices using Bluetooth connectivity. In my case, I connected the my daughter’s iPod touch to my wife’s iPhone with ease. I then chose the same association activity on both devices. Once connected, when I moved an item on the screen of one device, the same item was also automatically moved in the other.

This option can clearly be very useful for group activities, to help someone or to teach a new pupil. Alvaro Fernandez, the developer of the application, indicates that in the near future Picaa will also support WiFi connectivity and that this cooperation mode will be extended to other activities available in Picaa.

All activity editing functions can be locked with a password, and you may even define a set of activities per pupil per day through a calendar feature, which may help to manage shared devices, such as in schools.

Under development

Picaa fully supports the iPad, allowing to enjoy a much larger and spacious screen, something that I believe is not essential when using devices for PECS but very useful in activities such as puzzles.

The application itself is still being improved. Alvaro says he is working on adding tips to some activities, the option to integrate video, group cooperation in all the activities, and new activities. (For my part, I would love to see that puzzles with 16, 25 and 50 pieces for the iPad, for example). That does not mean that, as it is, Picaa is a fully operational platform.

Finally, I’d like to highlight the excellent support provided by the developers and the quick responses to the questions raised.

Over the coming weeks and months I will add reviews of other applications. I started with Picaa because it is in English and in Spanish! and seeing an application with support for other languages than English is a pleasant novelty. The manual is only available in Spanish, but the application is so intuitive that I did not need to read it. By the way, who reads the manual before using anything?

I will gradually validate itover the next months, because my experience using this kind of applications is quite limited, but my first impression is that Picaa is remarkable as a multi-activity platform designed for people with multiple disorders and with a few notable options. And it’s free!

-Francesc Sistach

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Picaa 1.3

Web: http://scaut.ugr.es/picaa

Developer: Research Group on Software Specification, Development and Evolution (GEDES) at the University of Granada (Spain)

Languages: English, Spanish.

Features: Activity platform (association, puzzles, sorting, exploration -social stories, PECS-).

iPhone/iPod touch version: Yes

iPad version: Yes

Price: Free.

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This post is also available in: Spanish