Explain Everything

This was the best week in the whole year, probably, as far as a travelling teacher's job goes.  The fall colors were absolutely stunning, and I was in 7 different schools this past week, so I had many opportunities to marvel at this beautiful country we live in.

Today I'd like to discuss screencasting.  A screencast is kind of like a screenshot, except that screencasts contain video and/or audio.  Explain Everything is a screencasting app available for iPad and Android.  I have heard teachers say that if you could have only one app in your classroom, then Explain Everything is definitely the one you would choose.  At only $2.99, it's a real bargain, and you get lots of bang for your buck!  There's a little video on their site that explains how it works. My colleague Amanda Smith (@Mandy_S_24) created an awesome tutorial that I also recommend checking out. 

Here are some ideas for ways to use Explain Everything in your classroom.
1. Assessment: Ask your students to create an Explain Everything video to explain which personal strategy they would use to solve math questions or solve problems.
2. Projects: Students create a screencast to  showcase their learning on a particular topic (animals or habitats biographies, science experiments, etc).
3. Flipped Classroom: Teachers create screencast for students to watch at home as part of a flipped classroom assignment, or for students who were absent from class and missed a lesson.
4. Portfolio: Students can create video on EE to save to the digital portfolio.  Take a picture of the book they're reading in Guided Reading class and record themselves reading,  using decoding and/or comprehension strategies, and timing fluency.


One of the best features of Explain Everything is that the project can be saved as a photo or video, uploaded to Dropbox, YouTube, or Evernote, and then you may use the links to embed the project into a class blog, wiki, etc.  I'm sure there are many more applications that I haven't considered yet, and I'd love to hear feedback from others on how they've used screencasting in their classrooms.