“Show Me” The Money!

Okay, so you don’t have to show me the money, but I am excited about the new app that I found for the Ipad called “Show Me“.

“ShowMe” is a global learning community – a place where anyone can learn or teach anything. Our mission is to make learning as accessible as possible, while giving great teachers and experts a platform to reach even more students. (http://www.showme.com/about_showme/)

I have been reading some blogs such as Jumping Aboard on flipped instruction and am excited to continue to grow in this area and make it part of my practice. With that in mind, I set out to learn how I could extend learning beyond the classroom. Using the Show Me App for the Ipad, I created my first Ipad screencast on the water cycle for my grade 5 science class.

I know it isn’t perfect… I stammered a little, my writing was messy, and it may be a simplistic explanation, but I think part of embracing the process of incorporating technology and flipping the classroom is getting over our own insecurities and pressure that we place on ourselves that it does need to be perfect. Taking risks and embracing technology is necessary to inspire learning… and that is what we all want to do.

I don’t know if the Show Me App is the best Ipad app for screencasting and I do know there are a few other options available. With that being said, here is what I liked about using the Show Me App to create a screencast:

1. It is free
2. It syncs with your online account at www.showme.com so you can access it from any computer
3. You can easily share your screencasts via Twitter, Facebook, email or embed it into a blog or website (as you saw above).
4. You can share your screencast publicly or keep it private.
5. You can tag your screencasts by adding “topics” (tags).
6. You can access many other screencasts done and shared by other educators around the world that are sorted into topics.

Finally, I guess I would be remiss if I didn’t talk about how I am making this accessible to my students. Although, I am very early (emphasis on early) in the process I am going to make all the links available, among other web resources, on my Parkland School Division classroom blog. I have made a “students resources page” on my blog with links to subject specific pages that I will update throughout the year with resource links and screencasts. Well there you have it. This is one of the things I have been learning as part of the Parkland School Division 70 Learning Leader Project. I am excited to continue on in this journey of incorporating screencasting into my regular practice. Who knows, the thought has even crossed my mind to let the students make some screencasts, explaining their learning, that I can put on our classroom blog… because isn’t that after all when learning really takes place? When the student can show me and the world what it is that they know as opposed to just listening to what I know?