My youngest son has Down Syndrome and severe speech delays. There are many times he cannot make himself understood, and others that only his father and I can understand him. Because he can’t always communicate effectively, he gets frustrated at times, understandably so. I’ve often felt most sympathetic for him at times like when he returns to school after a vacation. I mean, the limited amount of friends that he does have are in school and I’m sure he’d really enjoy it if he could communicate with them better. I was recently invited to try Pictello, an app that creates talking photo albums. I accepted, wondering to what extent it would be useful for someone like my son.
ABOUT PICTELLO
Pictello is a universal app that runs on iPad, iPod touch and iPhone. Pictello is a simple way to create talking photo albums and talking books on your iPad, iPhone and iPod touch. Each page in a Pictello Story can contain a picture, up to five lines of text, and a recorded sound or text-to-speech using high-quality voices. Stories can be shared using iTunes File Sharing or via WiFi with other Pictello users through a free account on the Pictello Sharing Server. Pictello is developed for all ages and skill levels, so it is easy to use and requires no reading skills to locate and read stories. Pictello offers an easy visual story creation wizard so everyone can use pictures and sound to share important moments in their lives. An advanced editor gives full control of the editing capabilities.
Uses for Pictello stories include:
- Stories to teach social skills or to recall events.
- Photo albums to allow non-speaking people to share their news and interests.
- Sharing important events and memories with family who live far away.
- Talking books.
- Teaching narrative skills as part of a literacy or language skills curriculum.
- Schedules, Task instructions, etc.
MY THOUGHTS
I received a fully functioning version of the Pictello app. The app will work on iPod Touch, iPad and iPhone. It installs like most other apps, just purchase from the store and then put it onto your device from within iTunes. When you open Pictello the first thing you’ll see is albums. As a new user you won’t have any so you’ll want to create one. Creating a new album of your own is easy, you can use the Wizard or do it in Expert mode. FYI before you start – if you’re planning on creating an album of your own you’ll need to add photos to the device, or use the camera if the device has one. Back to album creation. First you’ll enter your album’s name, using the onscreen keyboard. Then you add the album cover photo. Your album has now been created. Now you add pages, also very easy to do. Click add a page, and then add a picture. Next you’ll add any text that you want to appear on that page, followed by the voice that you want to narrate the page. (If your device permits there’s even an option that let’s you add your own sound and voice.) now your page is done. From here you can edit existing pages, add more pages, or save and return to your album library.
I started by creating two albums, one for our recent family trip to Lancaster, PA and one for my son’s 12th birthday. I thought these were events that my son would enjoy remembering and sharing with his class if possible. Once the albums are created, you can choose which album you want to view from the library screen. nce you choose the album you can select it to play manually (you turn the pages) or in slideshow mode.
I tried getting video of our album while it was playing but the quality of the video wasn’t very good (not the app’s fault, I have an old camera that just couldn’t get it clearly). The playback within Pictello is clear. I prefer the sound of the man narrating over the woman. I was pleased to find that the narrated words sound clear and aren’t hard to understand.
I let my son bring his iPod Touch to school the following Monday. His teacher wrote me a note that day telling me how much he’d enjoyed showing all of his classmates and friends the stories. As it turns out the Pictello app is perfect for him, so he can share memories and stories despite any speech delays and limited communication abilities he may have. I’ve even found him watching his stories at home, smiling as the pages turn. I’m super pleased with the app. Pictello is very easy to use and I recommend it highly.
Pictello is available for purchase for $14.99 in the iTunes store.
MORE INFO
Pictello website
Pictello on Facebook
AssistiveWare on Facebook
AssistiveWare on Twitter
The product featured was provided free of cost to me for the sole purpose of product testing and review. This post has not been monetarily compensated and is based on the views and opinions of my family and/or self. Please note that the opinions reflected in this post have not been influenced by the sponsor in any way.
I couldn’t get the pages to turn on your blog–what did I do wrong?
WOW! This app looks awesome. I am going to check it out for my son. He is struggling with reading and perhaps something like this will encourage him!