The ShowMe app has just become available through the iTunes app store. ShowMe lets you create audio-narrated whiteboard diagrams. The diagrams can be uploaded to the ShowMe site (after you have registered at their site). The diagram can be uploaded as either a public or private drawing. A private drawing can be shared with others by giving them the URL to the drawing. Public drawings can be searched at the ShowMe site. From the web site, the drawing can be shared on Facebook, Twitter, email, or embeded in your web site or blog.
You may want to consider getting a stylus. You can read reviews by clicking on the links in this post.
When you open the app (which works only in landscape view), the toolbar shown below appears. In addition to drawing and erasing, images can be imported from your Photo library on your iPad.
Screencasts could be viewed by students for reviewing material covered in class.
If each student or group of students had an iPad, they could be assigned to create a screencast on a particular topic, which then be viewed by the teacher and other students in the class (either at the ShowMe web site or at the class’s web site).
In a post of Tomorrow’s Professor Mailing List, Richard Felder answers a letter in which the person indicates that their teaching evaluations by students when active learning strategies are used and that the students want to be taught using passive techniques such as lecturing.
Felder explains that "An important part of our job as teachers is equipping as many of our students as possible with high-level problem-solving and thinking skills, including critical and creative thinking" and that "well-implemented student-centered instruction is much more effective than traditional lecture-based instruction at promoting those skills."
It’s important that the students know why you are using the active learning techniques. Felder states, "If you tell them you’re doing it because research has shown that it leads to improved learning, greater acquisition of skills that potential employers consider valuable, and higher grades, most will set aside their objections long enough to find that you’re telling the truth." (See Felder, R.M. (2007). Sermons for grumpy campers. Chem. Engr. Education, 41(3), 183-184, http://www.ncsu.edu/felder-public/Columns/Sermons.pdf.
Additional questions that he asks are:
"Did you use the new method long enough to overcome the learning curve associated with it? It can take most of a semester to become comfortable with and adept at active learning, and if you’re using a more complex technique such as cooperative or problem-based learning and you’re not being mentored by an expert, it might take several years."
"If you got unsatisfactory student ratings, did you check references on the method to see if you were doing something wrong? For example, did you assign small-group activities in class that lasted for more than 2–3 minutes or call for volunteers to respond every time? (See Reference 4 to find out how both practices can kill the effectiveness of active learning.) The bibliography suggests references you might consult for each of the most common student-centered methods."
"In your midterm evaluations, did you specifically ask the students whether they thought active learning (or whatever you were doing) was (a) helping their learning, (b) hindering their learning, or (c) neither helping nor hindering? If you do this, you may find that the students objecting vigorously to the method are only a small minority of the class. If that’s so, announce the survey results in the next class session. Students who complain about student-centered methods often imagine that they are speaking for most of their classmates. Once they find out that very few others feel the way they do, the grumbling tends to disappear immediately."
Here are some references provided by Felder:
Felder, R.M., and Brent, R. (2007). Cooperative learning. In P.A. Mabrouk, ed., Active Learning: Models from the Analytical Sciences. ACS Symposium Series 970, Chapter 4, pp. 34–53. Washington, DC: American Chemical Society, http://www.ncsu.edu/felder-public/Papers/CLChapter.pdf
In the article, "Have Technology and Multitasking Rewired How Students Learn?" Daniel Willingham, he states that he hears two suggested ways technology has changed the way students think. Some have suggested that without the multimedia that technology provides, students will become bored. Some have suggested that technology has allowed students the ability to multitask.
Willingham states that there is some truth in the first suggestion but none in the second. The focus of this post is to discuss the first suggestion and ignore the second since no one can truly multitask.
Is technology needed in order for a student to be engaged? And how is technology best used to engage students?
Willingham explained in "Why Don’t Students Like School?" that a good way to engage students is to pose solvable mental problems. These problems are not necessarily puzzles but rather can be activities that present students with mental challenges such as when listening to a story and attempting to anticipate what will happen next.
"In order for technology (or any instructional tool) to increase student engagement in academic content, it has to aid in presenting problems as both challenging and solvable."
"…there is nothing inherently interesting about the technology (at least once the newness wears off ); students are not interested in all software or all hyperlinks. It’s the content and what the user might do with it that makes it interesting or not."
As always, the bottom line is that the design of the instruction is more important than the technology.
In an earlier post, I discussed the learning strategy called whiteboarding. If each student (or least each group of students) had an iPad, they could use the iPad as a whiteboard and record what is written using ReplayNote. ReplayNote is in essence used for screencasting so what ever is recorded can be uploaded to YouTube or an email can be sent, which will contain an URL to a webpage containing the screencast. The videos can be up to 10 minutes long.
