Tech Tips Tuesday

Explain Everything for 3D Solids and Location

When my husband was planning a trip in Japan, I worked on the part of his trip in Kyoto - at Shijo Dori. After typing out all my instructions and inserting screen shots of Google street view, I felt there should have been a more effective way! I decided to have a go at Explain Everything for iPad.

I used images from Google street view and a map from a Lonely Planet book to create a video with Explain Everything. This video could then be saved to the camera roll, or exported to YouTube. My husband was able to take the video with him on his iPad to help him navigate the area, and while not perfect, it was a good guide given the available information.

As my students have been learning about mapping, I decided to use Explain Everything with them, so that they could give directions from their house to a location in their local area. We don't have Google Maps, so students used Google Maps through Safari to capture their images, and then they recorded their audio and pen strokes. Students shared their work using AirServer. To improve this: I would like to get the Google Maps App on the iPads.

The following week we used Explain Everything to record our exploration of nets of a cube. Students were give construction materials to build their nets. They took a photograph of their proposed net, made a video of themselves trying to fold it into a cube, and then labelled whether it was a net of a cube. They repeated this on additional slides. While the videos were great, I need to do further research into how this production could be put together into one video. To improve this: I would talk to students more about the sort of vocabulary they could be using in their videos.

So far I am impressed with the potential for using Explain Everything in the classroom.