Major Project Update: Explain Everything

I have spent a lot of time really trying to understand the ins and outs of Explain Everything and let’s just say that I still haven’t got it all figured out. I have watched tutorials and tried to play around with the tools on the interactive whiteboard, but I have come to the realization that it’s a lot more complex than I thought it would be. Which has made me re-evaluate the usefulness of the app. I still think that I could make use of this to help students outside of school by working through a question on the whiteboard and recording it for them so they can see how to do a specific question. I may use it to record portions of lessons for my flipped classroom as well. I still wouldn’t recommend it to students because they can use free apps such as Show Me and Educreations that are similar and look to be a little more user friendly.

I have yet to figure out how the ‘advanced’ editing tools work (which is maybe why they are considered advanced). I am not sure how to lock a PDF document into place or lock some items into place. I have used the lock feature but it never seems to work the way I want it to. Like I said before I have watched tutorials to try figure it out and usually tutorials help me, but sadly it hasn’t for this app.

I was hoping to be able to create some videos showing how I could use it in class, but I won’t be able to show a lot of the features. It will be a very basic video, but if that’s all I will be using it for is basic features then I guess that’s alright too. I have been struggling with how to create tutorials for this because it is only available on an iPad and I cannot screen capture my iPad screen. I have made one tutorial using screenshots and I think it does the trick but it would be nice to be able to capture the screen while I’m using the tools to make a video so you can see exactly how it works. I found out that I can airplay the screen through my apple tv onto my tv but I would then I have to record my tv screen and I’m not sure how to accomplish that either.

To sum all this up I guess what I am trying to say is that I am a little disappointed with how my Explain Everything review will turn out on my weebly page. I haven’t been able to learn as much as I would have liked to learn from the app because I have had extreme difficult learning the ins and outs. I have realized that it’s not as useful as I had hoped which is another disappointment. I apologize for the mediocre review but I did my best with what I took away from the app.