Educreations

I have always been a huge supporter of Educreations since my junior year of high school. My AP Calculus teacher used this as a way to teach my class on the days he was absent.

I was reluctant to this idea at first because I always liked to have the teacher teaching in person, but after the first time using it, my mind changed and I really enjoyed this tool.

The way my teacher was able to manipulate the information on the screen and use a voice over to narrate the lesson, I really was able to understand everything at he was teaching as if he were there in person.

What is Educreations?
Educreations is a whiteboard and screencasting tool which allows for teachers to share lessons and information that they have the ability to annotate and narrate. This allows for students to receive information in an online format that is fun and engaging.

Teachers can create a class for any class that they are teaching. They are given a class code in which they are able to share with their students so that they can have access to the lessons that they have uploaded.

Once you create an account, you can upload lessons to your classroom by pushing the "Lessons" button in the upper left hand corner. Once you hit "Create New Lesson", you are brought to the design studio (shown to the right). Some of the options teachers have to enhance their lessons are mentioned below.

• Before recording, teachers can preplan out their lessons by making the slides of their lesson. They can write on the whiteboard, insert pictures and add links.

• Once you are ready to start recording, you push the "Record" button and you are able to narrate your lesson while manipulating the text and drawings to enhance certain parts of the lesson that you find necessary as the teacher to emphasize. 

• By clicking the arrow button, teachers are able to move text, pictures and drawings around the whiteboard.

• Once teachers have completed their lesson recording, they just hit the recording button again to finalize it and then can exit, save and publish the lesson to their class!

There is a tab under each class labeled "Students". By clicking the tab, teachers are able to see the name of the students signed up, their email, username and password, and their last active time. This helps to ensure accountability of students to make sure that they are watching the lessons and receiving the information. It also helps to ensure that each student has access to the lessons in the classroom by making sure they are all signed up and if they forget their username or password, they can contact their teacher to get the information back. 

Uses for Educreations
There are so many uses for Educreations in the classroom for any grade. The most straight forward use for this app would be to teach lessons. Since one can narrate and animate the whiteboard on Educreations, it makes it very easy to create clear lessons that make students feel as though the teacher is teaching right in front of them.

This app can also be used as a place for students to show and share their work with their teachers. Students can use the whiteboard portion of Educreations to record and even narrate them working out math problems and showing how they came to an answer. Teachers can also go around the class while students are using the app to check their work and make sure that they are on the right track.

Educreations can be used as an introduction to a topic or even a review of a topic. A teacher could use this app to share the basic information that students need to know on a subject matter so they get a baseline understanding before diving deeper into the topic or being assessed on the topic.

Students can even create their own lessons as a way to share their understanding on a topic with the rest of their class and their teacher. This is a fun and engaging way to not only assess students' knowledge but also allow them to us their creativity in their work since this app differs from most normal assessment types one would find in a classroom. This would be a good app to use in teaching a topic that has multiple subjects to it such as Black History Month. A teacher could assign each student with a prominent African American in the Civil Rights Movement and students could create a lesson / presentation on that person using Educreations.  

Experts Opinions
On the website, teacherswithapps.com, teachers who have been using Educreations share why they believe it is such a powerful app to use in the classroom.

Griva Patel shared an image of Blooms Revised Taxonomy and pointed out the top level is "create".

She shares that if a teacher wants to see if a student has a complete understanding and mastery of a concept, they can have students create and share a lesson on what they have just learned.

Wade Roberts, a developer of Educreations shared his reasoning behind the app: "We want to create the best place to teach and learn on the web, by making it quick and simple for teachers to record and share short tutorials with students. As more teachers use our app to share their knowledge, the overall quality of the lessons will continually improve as data helps us identify which lessons are most effective." 

Roberts ideas on Educreations really follows Blooms Revised Taxonomy when it comes to creating and creating being the top concept that one needs to grasp in order to have a full comprehension of the subject matter being taught. This app is perfect for ensuring that your students have a full understanding of a topic in your classroom by allowing them to use the user friendly features within the app to create lessons to demonstrate their understanding. 

Why Educreations?
Educreations is a great tool to use for sharing lessons with your class in a format that differs from the normal powerpoint presentations that are usually used in class. It is also a neat feature to have to take learning outside of the school. Students can have access to these lessons from anywhere with WiFi and the app, making them useful for those students who missed a day of school or students who need additional support and review of lessons.

This app helps students to demonstrate their understanding of a concept that has been taught by creating their own lessons to share with the class and the teacher. This is a way to demonstrate mastery on a topic by reaching the "create" level on Blooms Revised Taxonomy.

Overall, I would definitely use Educreations in my classroom by creating engaging lessons for my students so that their interest in learning rises and they enjoy being in the classroom, learning more. I would also use this app to assess my students in a way that is not as intimidating as test or paper, but at the same time I can see if they have mastered a certain concept. 

References 
Educreations Interactive Whiteboard. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.teacherswithapps.com/educreations/

Educreations. (n.d.). Teach anything to anyone from anywhere. Retrieved from https://www.educreations.com/