Picaa: Interactive and Cooperative Mobile Learning.
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).