Mobile Monday: Explain Everything for creating “flipped” video explanations for your students

Info: Explain Everything for the iPad.

Cost: 2.99$

Quick overview: Explain Everything is a an iPad app that enables you to EASILY create short video explanations on your iPad in just a matter of minutes. Your voice is recorded with the iPad’s built-in microphone while you write on the screen with a stylus. It’s a great tool for teachers looking to “flip” elements of their classroom!

Wait.. doesn’t this suggestion sound a little familiar? In May 2012, I posted a blog article article about Explain Everything. Since then, there’s been a lot of changes to the program (the app has been updated to version 2) and it has been improved dramatically. As so, I’ve created a new video tutorial to explain how the new app works.

What has been done with Explain Everything since I last posted an article? I’ve done a lot of workshops with Explain Everything since last May. It’s currently my ABSOLUTE favorite way to create short “screen recording” video capsules for the classroom. If you’re sitting on the fence about getting your own iPad to use at school, this app is a great excuse to go buy one!

How can Explain Everything be used in the classroom? Math teachers could use a stylus to write out a math problem and explain step-by-step how to solve it. Language teachers can create small capsules to help students with pronunciation or commons grammar concepts. Biology or science teachers can import an image or video (anatomy, cell structure) and use the app to highlight or move different parts of the image while narrating. Students can be provided with these videos capsules during class to help them better understand a tricky concept. Once they’re done watching the video, you can sit down with them if they need any additional help.

Where do I put the videos? Video capsules can be exported to YouTube, Dropbox, Evernote, or left on the iPad’s Camera Roll. If the videos are placed up on YouTube, students can bring them up by scanning a QR code or typing in the YouTube address manually. If you’re curious about making your own QR codes (which is surprisingly easy to do) please watch this video here.

Benefits and limitations: While I’ve covered other iPad apps that allow you to create a screen recording, you’re forced to do the entire lesson in one take. The great thing about Explain Everything is that it allows you record ONE slide at a time. This means if you cough or make a mistake, you’ll only have to re-record the slide you were working on and not the entire presentation! The iPad microphone is also extremely sensitive so it will pick up sounds of your clothes shuffling or other sounds around the room. Be sure to record in a very quiet environment.

ICT Tip: Two on-line multimedia production tools that can be used on “locked down” school computers

This ICT tip could be best applied to the following subjects:

Quick overview: These two tools are great for teachers and students that work in lab where the computers are “locked down” with administrator privileges and do not allow you to install additional software. Need to quickly record a sound file and export to MP3? No problem! Want to add effects or crop a digital photo without any fancy software? Easy! These two web 2.0 tools allow you or your students to do all this from any computer with a web browser.

Link: www.recordmp3.org

How can “RecordMP3.org” be used in the classroom? RecordMP3 is a free, on-line sound manipulation tool. With this little simple website, you’re only presented with just one single button – the record button! Click the button to record your voice and when you’re done the site will give you an MP3 audio file to download back to your computer. This is great tool if you’d like to create a sound byte of your voice (pronunciation, sound clip, etc) to insert in a program like PowerPoint or the SMART Notebook. While offline tools like Audacity have much more flexibility, you need administrator rights on the computer you wish to install the software. RecordMP3 works in any standard web browser. Here’s a one minute video tutorial that shows you how to use it.

Link: pixlr.com (basic) (intermediate) (advanced)

How can “Pixlr.com” be used in my classroom? Pixlr is a free, on-line image manipulation tool. One can use this tool to crop and rotate images, add special effects, text, borders, and so on. What I like about Pixlr is that there are three ways to use it. If you’re not a techie person, you can use the basic playful mode to apply a few simple effects on an existing photo, even if you’ve never retouched a photo before. Need more options? Pixlr also has an intermediate mode called efficient which offers you a bit more flexibility. Lastly, if you or your students are familiar with Photoshop, you can use the advanced mode which is basically an on-line “clone” of Photoshop. The main limitation of this tool is that your students might spend more time focusing on the bells and whistles (i.e. – making a photo pretty) rather than focusing on the learning objectives of the project. My advice? If you make your students aware of this tool, a good suggestion is to ask them to limit the amount of time they spend doctoring up images.

Teacher Feature: Tina La Rosa’s Smore project (EMSB, Galileo)

Featured teacher: Tina La Rosa (CCBE, English Literacy)

Centre and School Board: Galileo Adult Centre (EMSB) in conjunction with the RECIT FGA Regional Service.

What was the project? Tina’s literacy students (Accessing Services B124-4) used an on-line tool named Smore to create on-line posters to help develop writing and speaking competencies.

What did the students do? The goal of the Accessing Services course is to help adult literacy learners use oral and written discourse to deal competently with real-life situations related to obtaining access to public services. As so, the focus of the Smore project was to create an on-line poster to promote the benefits of the Access Montreal Card and what services can be accessed with it. Please watch the following two minute video that will give you a better idea of what Tina did with her students. Awesome work Tina!

What is Smore? Smore is web 2.0 tool that can be used on any Mac or PC. If you’d like to know more about Smore, it was featured on my blog in January 2013.

ICT Tip: Popcorn Maker allows students to remix and create new web videos

This ICT tip could be best applied to the following subjects:

Link: popcorn.webmaker.org

Quick overview: Popcorn Maker is a web 2.0 tool that allows you or your students to edit, annotate, and remix various YouTube videos. Students can take any video and overlay animated “pop-up” bubble comments, Google maps, text, images, Wikipedia articles, and so on. There’s lots of possibilities to make a very interesting video-type presentation. The tool was created by Mozilla, the same people that brought us the Firefox web browser. Free!

How can this be used in the classroom? Are your students bored of PowerPoint? Popcorn Maker can be used a new way for students to present an opinion, demonstrate a viewpoint, or deliver a mock newscast. Using this tool, a student can remix a new video from all sorts of different sources to create something unique. As Popcorn Maker is web based, all their work is stored on the web and one does NOT necessarily need a powerful computer to do video editing. If you’d like to know more about how Popcorn Maker works, please watch the following video:Is it easy to use? If you’ve ever dabbled with editing videos, then you’ll find the tool surprisingly efficient and easy to use. However, if you’ve never touched any type of video editing software before, there might be a learning curve involved. If that’s the case, I’d suggest that you keep this tool under your belt next time you encounter a tech savvy student who may enjoy a challenge and is looking for a different way to do a presentation. Normally shooting and editing video is difficult and time consuming. However, as this tool only focuses on remixing (rather than creating material from scratch) it might help speed up the process.

What about copyrights? Before students start remixing and editing together all sorts of videos from YouTube, they need to make absolutely sure that they are respecting copyrights! An excellent place to start would be to visit the Creative Commons search engine (http://search.creativecommons.org) where one can specify that you’d like to find a YouTube video that you can “modify, adapt or built upon” for a remixing project.

Mobile Monday: Remember everything with Evernote!

This ICT tip could be best applied to the following subjects:

Link: www.evernote.com

App: Mac and PC, iPad, iPhone, iPod, Android, and Blackberry

Quick overview: Evernote is a cloud based app which effortlessly syncs notes between your Mac, PC, tablet or smartphone. It also does photos and audio too. Free!

Why this article? The other weekend, I came across an web article that asked readers what’s their absolute “can’t live without” app on their tablet or smartphone. I immediately thought of Evernote! For the last two years, it’s an app that I use EVERY SINGLE day, both in my personal life and for work. It’s definitely one of my top five favorite apps. It was just then that I realized that I’ve never mentioned anything about Evernote on the blog! (Better late than never.. eh?)

Who should use it? If you own a smartphone or tablet and often take notes with it.

How can I use it as a teacher? Whenever I come across printed documents or other important information, I’ll often use my phone to take a “picture” of the text so that I can read it later. However, if I decide to take the picture in the Evernote app (or type a note) it gets saved to the Evernote “cloud” instead of my phone. This means that I then can then pull up the image or note on my laptop or desktop computer for further reference. I also use Evernote to take written notes during meetings on my iPad or when I’m writing my lesson plan on my laptop. Using Evernote, I know that I can always pull up any of this information on any of my other other devices.

How can students use it in the classroom? Do you allow your students to take a picture of your notes on the blackboard? Using Evernote, they can snap a photo of the blackboard on their smartphone and it will appear on their computer or tablet at home to study from later on. If they prefer to use Evernote to take written notes in class (or a laptop or phone) they can use tags and keywords to search through any of their notes at a later date. Language students can even use Evernote to record small audio snippets, like asking the teacher to pronounce a difficult word and then play back the recording at home. This all being said, students need to respect your guidelines and rules when it comes to using their own mobile devices in your classroom. Perhaps having a designated time to take note snapshots (i.e. – at the end of each slide or before you erase the board) is a good model to follow.

How is this different than Apple’s iCloud? This is not a service from Apple. Evernote works on any device and uses it’s own “cloud” system. It’s designed primarily to sync your notes.

If it safe? Personally, I consider Evernote to be very safe, but like any other service they have had security breaches in the past. Like your e-mail, be cautious about what you put in there.

Why not just use Word or the notes app on my phone? When you use Evernote, you don’t have to worry about where you save your information. No more forgetting about leaving your laptop at work or your phone in your bag with all your notes or photos on it. Using Evernote, ALL your notes travel with you wherever you go, sort of like how we all use webmail nowadays (Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, etc..) to get our e-mail wherever we happen to be.

How much does it cost? A basic account is free and is MORE than adequate for most uses. However, if you get really serious about Evernote (and want a few more bells and whistles) you can buy a premium subscription.

ICT Tip: Gooru is a search engine designed to help teachers and students to find educational resources

This ICT tip could be best applied to the following subjects:

Link: www.goorulearning.org

Quick overview: Gooru is a search engine. Unlike Google or Bing, Gooru organizes results into categories in the way you’d use the materials in your classroom. For example, if one were to do a search for “fractions” you’ll get results for fractions related videos, websites, exams, textbooks, handouts, lessons, slides, and quizzes. It can be used both by teachers and students. It’s free too!

How can this be used by teachers? Gooru is a neat place to start if you need to look for additional materials to use in a science, world history, biology, chemistry, physics, or math class. However, please keep in mind that as with anything else you’ll find on the Internet, it’s not a magic solution. You’ll likely find that you’ll be spending more time evaluating the materials, rather than finding them! (Source: Tracy Rosen, resource teacher at Nova Career Centre, NFSB)

Copyrights: All the materials linked on Gooru are Open Educational Resources, which are are “freely accessible, openly formatted and openly licensed documents and media that are useful for teaching, learning, education, assessment and research purposes“.

How can this be used by students? Students can browse “collections” based around specific topics on Gooru if they’d like to study on their own. Want to know more about how this all works? Watch the following video:

Announcement: FGA iPad “Language” webinar has been re-scheduled for April 9th (12PM-1PM)

Announcement: Due to circumstances beyond my control, I had to postpone the FGA iPad Language webinar that was offered earlier this week. I sincerely apologize for any inconvenience that may have caused.

When is the new date and time? The RECIT Regional Service is offering the FGA Language webinar on Tuesday, April 9th from 12PM to 1PM using the GoToMeeting platform.

What will be covered? In a nutshell, this one hour language webinar is designed to show you how the iPad is being used in actual FGA language classrooms and (hopefully!) spark some ideas on how you can adapt things for your students. This webinar applies to English, French, FSL, and Literacy level courses. If you like what you see, we can set up an appointment or videoconference to plan something specefic for your own classroom.

What do you need? Are you a FGA teacher or administrator? If so, all you need to attend is a computer (or iPad app) and an hour of time. If connecting by computer, a microphone is optional and a webcam is not necessary. To help me keep track of attendance and invitations, you must confirm your attendance by filling out the updated registration form. Please let me know if you have any questions before then. Hope to see you there!

Recommended viewing: Do you anticipate you’ll be in a situation where you’ll be involved in the process of managing and/or installing apps on a set of iPads in your classroom? If so, I suggest you read my blog post on managing classroom iPads and watch this 8 minute video about Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) by my collegue Marc-André Lalande before attending the webinar.