At TLT’s latest Faculty Roundtable Discussion, held on Monday, February 24th, faculty discussed their use of polling, in particular Poll Everywhere, into their teaching to increase student engagement and assess understanding. Poll Everywhere is an online polling and quizzing app that works like an audience response system (clicker) but using the student’s cell phones, computers, and mobile devices. A university-wide license for Poll Everywhere is available to all CofC faculty, staff and students. If you are interested in trying Poll Everywhere after watching the Roundtable recap contact your Instructional Technologist. We’d like to thank Sarah LeBlanc (Communication), Ryan Milner (Communication), Cynthia Hall (Geology), and Brooke Van Horn (Chemistry) for giving their time and expertise to this conversation.
With more people flipping their classrooms and teaching online screencasting has become a popular way to deliver content. Screencasting is a video recording of what occurs on a computer screen. Normally, computer screencasting apps will allow you to record anything that you do on the computer. Screencasting on an iPad is slightly different. Currently there is no app that records everything that you do on the iPad but there are apps that let you record many of the things that you would use in a lecture or a lesson. Over the past few days I tested ten different screencasting apps (some paid, some free). While they all allow for voice recording over a whiteboard many of them offered extra features that set them apart from each other. I was looking for the ability to add presentations, images and files, a whiteboard, and overall flexibility. The iPad Screencasting App Matrix is a full matrix of each app’s features, price and restrictions. Below are the apps that I evaluated and my thoughts of each. Keep in mind that this is my opinion. I encourage you to choose a couple and try them yourself.
Playback is a free screencasting app. It’s primary focus is as a whiteboard app. You can create a Playback session from an image or a PDF but you have to do it at the beginning, before you begin the recording. You can’t add images or PDFs on the fly. What I don’t like is that you have to open these PDFs and images from Dropbox or your iPad and then send them to Playback. Playback also has the ability to record the camera on the iPad (see image 1). It allows you to have the small camera image in the upper corner or you can have it display larger in the middle of the screen, which is a unique feature. However, on playback, the video in the corner, shot from the camera, was way behind the audio and it was very distracting.
This is my personal favorite. It allows the most flexibility of any of the apps I looked at. You can import most any file type (doc(x), ppt(x), xls(x), pdf, jpg) which gives you so much freedom. You can also insert a web browser that allows you some basic web navigating to allow you to show websites and discuss them. You can also insert video and audio files. All of these can be added on fly while recording the session. Because it has so many features it is not as easy to use as some of the others and zooming and scrolling requires a special tool instead of just allowing you to pinch and stretch like other apps. It does allow you to add a video recorded with the iPad camera but it’s not a constant recording like in Playback. Overall, I think it’s worth the time to learn to use it.
ShowMe is a simple to use app and is good for those who are wanting a whiteboard app for uses such as explaining math problems or diagramming. You can only use the whiteboard feature and import images from the Camera Roll. When it comes time to export and share you upload it to ShowMe’s public website. This makes it easy to share with your students via a web link but it’s also available to anyone who goes to the public site. I don’t like that you can’t import other formats or from anywhere else but the Camera Roll. For me, I like an easy upload but I also like to have the option to save it to my Camera Roll so I can edit it if necessary. One feature that I didn’t like was that the recording paused when I added an image. I’m assuming this was to save recording time but the problem I encountered was remembering to turn the recording back on after I added the image. I ended up annotating and speaking over the better part of a slide that didn’t record due to this feature.
Knowmia offers many of the same features in Explain Everything but with the iPad camera recording like in Playback. There are several things I really like about this app. First it is set up in Stages and you can record each stage or slide individually instead of recording straight through like in other apps. There is also a area at the bottom where you can add additional items that you can bring into the session on the fly. It’s feature rich and fairly easy to use. My two complaints are as follows: First, while free to both instructors and students, videos created with the student account are only kept on their server for 30 days then they disappear. They are not downloadable so they can’t be kept. Second, it kept freezing up on my. I estimate it froze 10 times while trying to create a 5 slide session.
These are just a few of the apps that I tested out. For a full listing of the features compared check out the iPad Screencasting App Matrix. If you are interested in incorporating any of these apps into your course contact your Instructional Technologist. We’re happy to help.
Dr. Barfield is a professor in Health & Human Performance. As a result of the 2013 Faculty Technology Institute he implemented AirSketch in his classes.
I use Air Sketch in kinesiology and personal and community health (summers) and plan to begin using in biomechanics class. The Air Sketch (app) allows me to make notes on PowerPoint slides in real time and can even have the students participate (by having them write on the slides). It is especially helpful when I walk around the room and can make points from anywhere (without being tethered to the teacher station by a cable). I think the students think it is cool too the I can actually use technology, simple as it may be.
Our guest blogger is Reid Adams, an Assistant Professor in the Teacher Education Department.
During the 2013 FTI, we were introduced to a number of iPad applications and given tutorials on how they might be implemented into our courses and in a few case, our research. The applications all seemed interesting, convenient, and relatively easy to use. Some of the apps were specific to video editing (Splice, ScreenChomp), some to document editing (GoogleDrive, and others to aid in the delivery of lessons (AirSketch, SyncPad) and apps used for organization and communicating with students (Remind101, EverNote, Dropbox). The next step was deciding which ones made the most sense to incorporate into existing courses I taught or current research projects.
I chose two apps to use based on a couple of existing needs. First, I was looking for a better way to organize the work I was doing on a couple of manuscripts being developed and an ongoing research project. Evernote seemed the obvious choice and I began using it as soon as the FTI ended. It allowed me merge a number of existing digital texts (notes from other iPad apps, articles for lit reviews, links to articles online, videos) into one central location. Better yet, I could take this collection anywhere with the iPad and also run the same application on my home and office computer while keeping all three synced. So far, this app (Evernote) has allowed me to streamline how I work on manuscripts and also allowed me a new tool to help keep texts organized for courses I teach. In short, the app allows for easy organizing.
The second app I chose was based on my effort to communicate more efficiently with my students and provide another level of access to them. I often teach field-based courses that don’t allow as much face time with students that one gets in traditional courses so I am always looking for new ways to interact with them. I decided to try Remind101. The app is fairly straight forward. It allows you to send text messages to students. Most of us are aware that students spend a good bit of time texting and that many of them find texting more efficient than emailing. I used Remind101, along with email, to send students reminders about assignments in all courses but the app was really helpful in getting “last minute” messages to students when scheduling was disrupted or changed in field- based courses. These were instances when they may have not had access to email or they weren’t checking email regularly. With Remind101, they would receive a text (IM) from me and be alerted to it on their phones immediately. Students do have to register for the app to work but it is free and fairly easy to initialize. I informally surveyed all three courses and most students agreed that getting texts from me was much easier than having to check emails. I saw a slight bump in student evaluations regarding access and I feel like this additional tool probably helped.
Overall, the apps discussed in this post were very helpful. It was nice to find ones that applied to teaching as well as scholarship and I plan to continue using both. Since both apps are straightforward in their use and setup, I would encourage other faculty to give them a try.
