Explain Everything Reflection

I really like the features and functionality of this app. The students enjoyed using it as well and were excited to make videos to be used to help others. It also gave an easy way for students to share the videos.

In many ways Explain Everything is similar to Show Me. There seems to be more storage in the free version of Show Me than Explain Everything. Comparing the two, I think I prefer Show Me but Explain Everything is also a great potential tool.

I think Explain Everything is similar to two apps our kids already have: ShowMe and DoodleCast Pro. I liked using it for my app tutorial videos because I could stick all my screenshots in and draw over them. It was easier to use than Screencastomatic, which is what I normally use for those types of videos. I could use the pen tool to circle things, and I also put an arrow shape in that I could move around. I liked that it had tons of features and lots of annotating tools. There are also lots of ways to save it. I saved it as a video to my photos and then uploaded to YouTube.

One thing I didn't like was that audio cut off when you switched between slides. I tried to go back and reference something again, and it added my audio to that section of the slide. That could be useful for adding on to the audio without starting over, but I didn't know that would happen until the video was already finished. So my finished product was a little wonky. 

Explain Everything is an app our students don't have, but similar to one they do have, Show Me. It's always hard for me to wrap my brain around how to use these apps in ELA. I did find a YouTube video in which a teacher used it to create a digital storybook. I would like to try that. Opportunity just hasn't presented itself yet; waiting for the right lesson. I can see this app being used all the time in a math class. 

I really like the features on Explain Everything. And I love that it saves it as a movie so students can make like a slide show. I could see us using this in the future for a presentation of some type. 

You can also import a webpage into Explain Everything. It scrolls just like a webpage and kids can annotate inside of it. This would be a great way to practice close reading. 

This app is like the Seesaw drawing portion but way better. I am definitely going to use it again.