Get Started to PicTalk now !
In this short tutorial, we will go through the major features of PicTalk. It can be installed from the :
- Play Store
- And directly from the website (Click install in your browser menu)
Let's go :
This is the first screen you will see. At the top you can see the navbar. The navbar helps you navigate through the app. As you can see, there are many tabs in PicTalk. To begin your journey, please click on the "Sign Up" button.
This menu will show up. Please complete the form and read carefully the legal informations message. Don't put a false email or you will lose your account if you don't remember your password... The language is also important so the voice will speak your tongue. The name and surname are needed because of legal requirements.
Here is the form after a valid completion.
Congrats ! You can now see the PicTalk homescreen. As you can see it is full blank for now. But don't panic, we will fill it up soon ! But before diving deep into PicTalk, let's see how it works.
These are collections. We can think of Collections as a big folder. They regroup pictograms per themes. Of course, you decide. In this example I've put some basic themes my little brother uses daily. We loves telling us what he wants for dinner ! He also loves to travel and let the others know where he went... Let's get back ! The big squares are the collections. In the collections you can see little squares with some text in them. I call them pictograms. Don't worry if you don't fully understand, we will go through an example later on. All good ?
Let's talk now about pictograms. Here we zoomed at the Drink & Eat collection. We can see pictograms of a different size and shade. It is because pictograms can, as collections, contain pictograms. That maner allows us to make sentences with ease. Let's say we enter in the Drink & Eat collection. We want to drink so we click on the "I want to drink..." pictogram. Once we clicked, we have the choice to click on "A cup of water" or "Some tea" or "A juice made of...". If I click on "a cup of water", Pictalk will say "I want to drink a cup of water". But if I clicked on "a juice made of..." and "Apples" instead of "A cup of water", Pictalk would say: "I want to drink a juice made of apples". The sentence may not sound a bit natural but this is an example were this method is the worst... Most of the time it's very good. Now, let's head up to creating collections and pictograms ! I hope you are excited !
Click now in the violet button at the top of the screen. The usual one where it's for the parameters. You will see a popup like this one. Answering to the addition will bring you to the supervisor mode. It let you create, edit and delete collections and pictograms. Before answering the question, let's talk about why I implemented this mecanism. I want my app to be as simple as possible. This mecanism doesn't need another supervisor password or a complicated thing. Educators, parents and brothers can add pictograms remove, edit etc... And that, with only one account. we can have a supervised area and the playground. And the child will not be able to delete by error some pictograms.
We are now in the supervisor mode. At the collections level. Because, as we saw before, you need to pick a collection before accessing it's pictograms. You can see the purple button changed to grey. If you click the grey button, you will leave supervisor mode. Did you saw the circled "+" appear ? It let us create a collection.
Complete the name, the color and upload a file to create the collection ! At the bottom of the form, there is a little rectangle with a cross in it. Once your file is selected, it will display you file's name. (Take a look at the next picture)
And here is my collection. I selected the "manger.png" image. Click on"create" to continue.
In addition to the "EAT" collection, I created two others. Let's add some content in the "EAT" collection. Click the EAT icon.
You will now see a blank screen, that's normal, you don't have pictograms yet. Repeat the same steps as for the collections (click in the purple button and answer the question). Here's the create pictogram form. The speech is what actually the app will say. The meaning in opposition is simply the name of the picto. The third element is the "Folder". If you want your pictogram to contain other pictos, put it to true. Otherwise I recommend you leave it in false. In this example the sentence is finished when we will say "I am hungry"... We don't need to put other words behind this one. Next, upload the image and Create !
Here is an example were it's good to make a pictogram folder. "I want" can be followed by many words !
Here are our two pictogramms. The first means "I'm hungry" and the other "I want". As you can see, the color of the bar at the bottom is the same as the color you defined in the collection. Take a closer look at the pictobar...
The "trash" button will bring you to the collections and erase the sentence. The other red button is for deleting the last picto of the sentence. The last one is for talking. Click on the pictos and try constructing sentences. Delete them, etc...
Here is what happens when I click on a pictogramm. It appears on the bottom bar, the pictobar.
Now if I click on the "I want" picto folder it brings me to the pictogramms it contains. It's pure blank because it doesn't contain any pictogramms yet. Let's create one !
Here is the pictogramm I'm making inside of the "I want" folder. As we will not put any word after "some french fries" our pictogramm isn't a folder. <b>Edit:</b> Now the pictobar will show the MEANING of pictogramms and not the SPEECH as shown in the picture.
Now, click on the "FRIES" pictogramm. See how the pictobar adds "some french fries" to the "I want". Let's Talk (click on the blue button) VOILAAAA A SENTENCE !!! You have all the knowledge to use Pictalk at his best ! I will try to give more examples of pictgramms my brother have. Go on for the last screen I'll present here.
