Turning students into teachers

Platform:
Educreations: iPad app
ShowMe: iPad app
Explain Everything: iPad, Android, Chromebook, Windows devices

Grade Levels: all, theoretically

Subjects: all

Prices: Educreations and ShowMe are free, Explain Everything "Classic" version is $5.99, but "Interactive Whiteboard" is free

Purpose & Features: Educreations, ShowMe, and Explain Everything are three popular interactive whiteboard apps that allow students and teachers alike to communicate and share ideas and lessons. You can use these apps to record audio and visuals on a "whiteboard" screen. Each of these apps have public databases where you can see projects created by users, and I've noticed that many of these are created by teachers to show certain concepts or processes.

I can see the application for my own use as a teacher (it's very Khan Academy-esque), but I am interested in the idea of my students creating their own projects to teach a lesson or concept. Isn't there a common saying that teaching someone else is the best way to learn, aka "the protégé effect"? And of course, creating a lesson hits high on Bloom's Taxonomy and challenges students to explain their thinking and show their understanding.

Here's where I come clean: I have only used two apps out of these three in my own classroom, but I'm excited to try out the last on my list, Explain Everything. At the outset, Explain Everything looks like it is designed for the older set, perhaps 8th grade and beyond. I have used ShowMe and Educreations with 6th graders, and I know a 3rd grade teacher who used Educreations successfully with her students for a reading comprehension assignment.

Project Ideas: With these apps, the ideas are really endless. I can see teachers using them as alternatives to more traditional summative assessments like Unit tests and essays, quick Friday projects for students to reteach certain concepts they've learned that week, or ways to get even the shyest student to create an excellent presentation. A 3rd grade teacher at my school had her students use the app to explain a text-to-self connection they had made for a book they were reading in class. I can also see these apps as a great way to have students explain their thought process while solving a problem in math.

In my 6th grade reading intervention class, I had pairs create projects in Educreations that taught about a particular syllable type we had studied previously. I admit, the project was a challenge for my students, and I definitely had to do quite a bit of direct instruction on how to explain a concept using audio, text, and visuals.

In the end after two "drafts" of presentations, my students were proud of the quality work they produced and they had so much fun watching their presentations as a class. They couldn't quite believe that I could actually show their presentations to other classes as a way to teach concepts, but honestly, I definitely could use them within my lessons. In fact, I did a few days later!

Here are some Pros/Cons about my experience using Educreations and some tips based on my experience:

Pros

• the app is simple and easy-to-use - most students could figure it out in a few minutes
• because I assigned this project to partners, students had to discuss the concepts with one another to make sure that they could explain them, thus solidifying their understanding
• final drafts of the project can be viewed and linked-to on the web
• artistic students loved how they could use their drawings in their presentation

Cons

• some students experienced glitches in the app where it would delete the first part of their recordings 
• students have to sign up for an account before they can share their final drafts with their teacher, and the free version only allows students to be working on one draft at a time
• students cannot edit their recordings in the middle of the project - they can only edit the most recent recordings. They also can't rearrange slides.

Teacher Tips

• for a first project, you might want to start small and have students solve one problem or explain just one small concept
• especially for the upper-elementary and middle school set, you need to scaffold, scaffold, scaffold if you are planning on having them do a multi-step project using this app! Students need an outline and/or script so they know what they're saying and doing while they're recording
• you may need to do some direct instruction about how students can animate their writing and drawing as they speak - if they're in pairs, you can talk about how one student can narrate while the other writes or draws
• making an example project of my own was helpful to show the capabilities of the app