Picture Can Talk

Picture Can Talk

Review, Appy Chat & Giveaway

Developer: App Consult Pte. Ltd

Appy Chat:

When did you decide to develop this app?
My son was using PECS book. And i thought an iPhone/iPad app would be a natural transition. There wasn’t an app at that time that incorporate PECS and AAC concepts with sound and ability to add own pictures. That’s when i decided to build such a hybrid app.

When did you first release this app?
Initial release was May 12, 2011

How long did it take you to develop this app?
It took me about one month

What is your favourite feature?
There are many. But if i have to choose, it will be backup and restore via email. Yo could zip up a copy of you entire setup and restore onto another device.

What is your favourite page in the app?
3 Pictures. Ease of selecting pictures and constructing sentences make it practical for users.

What skills were you hoping to help the end user to develop?
Visual aid communication and motor skills. The app allows customization on gestures to cater for gross motor skills

What age range would this app most suit?
Anyone who requires picture communication

Are any new updates coming soon?
Has always been applying updates once ideas are conceived. I am open for ideas and feedback.

Description:

PictureCanTalk helps individuals face with speech challenges to communicate their needs with the use of pictures. You could use it as a PECS or AAC tool.

**Close to 2000 free picture symbols**

Every picture allow

• Recording of personalized voice
• Text To Speech. Synthesized voice supports English, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Spanish, Swedish, French, Italian, German and Chinese Simplified. No internet connection is required.

Communication boards

• Play back voice by tapping picture or “one tap speak all”
• For starter, “I want” board require just a tap on the picture to show on the comm. strip.  He/She can progressively move to “3 Pictures”, “Sentence Prompt” and free-form mode
• Email communication  strip pictures
• Locate me

Sentence building and prompting

• Build preset picture sentences
• “Sentence Prompt” strip to prompt and teach sentence construction
• ‘Fill in the blanks’ feature

Multiple page sets/templates/boards

• Customize your own types of board e.g. Categorized, Theme or Topic Based, T.A.L.K., Core Vocabulary, etc.
• Use ‘swipe gesture’ on scrollable strip or ‘button tap’ on template index to navigate the templates
• Sort images by drag and drop
• Export template to PDF file for printing and email

Your own picture catalog (i.e. MyCatalog)

• Build up from photo library
• Category management
• Bulk upload images via zipped file. The file name of the zipped file will be used as category title. One level of directory is allowed in the zip
• Bulk upload via email

Image editing capabilities

• Crop, Resize, Flip and Rotate
• Several built-in symbol sizes
• Define own crop size

Text to image

• Type in text and save as pictures
• Choose font, size and color
• Create “sight” or any words

Games feature that is beneficial cognitively

• Comes with color, shapes, numbers and alphabets
• Customize any number of identification and matching games and exercises
• Personalized voices for praises and encouragements

Backup/Restore feature to share your images and configurations with multiple devices and users

• Select a backup version to restore
• Reset to original settings
• Backup/Restore via email. Do it all within your device!

Configurable options

• Male/female, voice speed and pitch for TTS
• Mulitple symbol sizes and text
• Colorful background selection simulating PECS book
• Free-form comm. strip to drop any no. of pictures
• Sound and wriggling effect
• Default email addresses
• Show or hide “email”, “customize”, “location”, “list icon”, “backspace” button and TabBar. Hiding them will prevent user accidentally moving to other screens
• Communication strip on top or bottom of the boards
• Disable edits to prevent accidental updates
• Passcode protect “Options”
• Drag-n-drop or tap gesture, up/down or left/right swipe gesture for the communication boards.
• Playback voice immediately when picture is placed on communication strip
• Clear images on communication strip when ‘Play All’ voice playback is completed

Other features

• Connection Service between PictureCanTalk and your computer
• Popup explanatory notes
• Dropbox integration
• Search catalog

InApp storefront

• Built-in browser to surf, search and download images from Internet directly into MyCatalog
• Student list (i.e. multi-user)
• Color coding system lets you use colored frames to represent agent, action, object, etc. The possibilities are unlimited!
• PictureAssistive
• Possibly the only App in similar category to offer these unique features!

Reviews:

Spectronicsinoz.com

You Tube:

Specifications:

Category: AAC
Updated: 06 November 2012
Version: 4.0
Language: English
Requirements:  Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch and iPad. Requires iOS 4.3 or later. This app is optimized for iPhone 5.

In App Purchase:

Color-coding system

Set a color to picture symbol.  eg you could use blue for subject, red for verb, green for adjective and yellow or black for others like where, etc.  This will facilitate understanding of the picture communication

Downloader

A built-in browser to browse, search and download images from the internet.  Images downloaded are saved directly into MyCatalog for immediate use in the app.

Student list

The student list feature allow caregivers or educationists to keep track of a list of students/users in the app. Each student can be assigned a set of templates to himself or herself. Once that is setup, the app will only display relevant templates.

Review:

Pictures Can Talk is an AAC app based on the PECs program that can be used either way.  If you currently use this system, this makes it so much easier on the iPad as you don’t have to worry about loosing the pieces – everything is here on the iPad in one place, easy to search and find the pictures and with the help of watching the suite of You Tube videos outlining the way to use the app – you will be using in a very short period of time.

The choices along the bottom are: I want, 3 pictures, Game Set, App Catalog (in built Catalog of images), My Catalog (your own images), InApp (mentioned above) and Options (pictures above)

I Want:

This is very quick easy to set up.  To add an image, select customise in the top right hand corner and there is so many images to choose from the many many categories already built in – 80 different categories to choose from.  If you can’t find the image that you need, you can use an image in your own photo library, crop the image, flip and image, change the font color and size and even record your own voice.

3 Pictures:

You have a choice of 3 Pictures, Free form and Sentence prompt.  Again very easy to set up.  I used it to teach my child to count up to 5.

Game Set

You can have a choice of 2 games Touch or Match.  You can use this to introduce new images for your child to learn, so many things have been thought about.

Links:

Website: Pictures Can Talk
Facebook Page: Picture Can Talk
Twitter: @PictureCanTalk
Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/picturecantalk/
You Tube: http://www.youtube.com/PICTURECANTALK
App: PictureCanTalk
Cost: $34.99

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Giveaway:

We have a Rafflecopter giveaway until March 12, 2013