Explain Everything – Firster

Reflection:

• I completed the Explain Everything PD.
• Summary: Explain Everything is an app that I have been incorporating into my instruction since I started learning how to flip instruction for my students. I love this app and have always found it very useful for creating teacher-made instructional videos when I couldn’t find a pre-made one that covered all of the content that I wanted my student to receive in any given lesson. The capabilities for creating and recording an interesting video, have made it well worth the $3 price tag. I am very excited to try using it this year with my students now that the county has purchased it for everyone. The very first lesson I will be teaching my student in my upper level, blended learning courses this year will be to flip their own self-made videos using EE.
• I like the recording features the best. The way that you can stop, record and edit blank or predesigned slides makes it very easy to use. The timeline use while recording and the ability to jump between slides that you can easily see is also nice. It is also very easy to save and share the videos with other apps.
• I was inspired to use Explain Everything this year to replace the whiteboard app that I used previously with my students.
• I wish Explain Everything had the capability to show the teacher while they are recording the video with their voiceover. Although I have seen ways that could be done on EE, I am kind of unclear of how well it would work. One way is to app smash a mirroring app like Reflector while recording on EE. It seems like it would just be easier to try a different whiteboard at that point, though, like maybe Touchcast.
• I wonder how easy this app will be for my students to navigate. In the past, I always used Doceri since it was free to use. It is also a good recording app; however, it’s capabilities are limited. The most difficult missing feature to work around is the inability to use a text box in Doceri. This is something I really liked right from the beginning with Explain Everything. I am very curious to see how intuitive this app will be for my students to use on their own and how much direction they will need in order to use it proficiently.
• In the future I hope to try this app out for digital storytelling, possibly. I am not 100% sure that this would be the best app for this function though. I think it will depend on the type of story they are narrating. I can think of a couple of other apps that might be better for digital storytelling but I am not sure. This might be a good one to use with older students. I will try it out and see how it goes.