Students and Teachers as Makers: Apps to Present and Share Lessons and Learnings (Part I)

Thinking about "flipping" your classroom? Looking for tools your students can use to demonstrate their learning? I've become a fan of three simple (and free) apps that you and your students can easily use to record and share tutorials, lessons, and demonstrations.

Present.me
For those of you who miss the face-to-face quality of in-class tutorials and instruction, this website might be just what you are looking for to create and share tutorials or presentations with your students while maintaining that human and personal aspect.  Present.me allows you to create presentations with slides and video, slides and audio, or just video.  Upload your existing presentations, PDFs, or pictures and then record a video where you explain or teach in a split screen.  Feeling a little camera shy?  It's just as easy to record audio alongside the slides as video.

Check out the fractured fairy tale book talk for my example and Present.me's own list of simple tutorials.

The free version allows you to upload content and record video, audio, or video-only.  You cannot download the video and save as a file with the free account, but you can embed the video in a web page or share through social media sites and the direct link.

A few things I learned while making my own Present.me:

1. Write your content first if starting from scratch--If you have an existing lesson or PPT, then it should be relatively quick to create your own explanation or to record the lesson you are accustomed to.  If starting from scratch, I definitely recommend writing a script, first.  The better Present.Me videos do have more of an "off-the-cuff" feeling.  I wasn't quite there with my first attempt, so I split my screen and had a script up that I read from while clicking through the slides.  
2. Practice your timing before you record--I think I took something like 8 recordings before I got to the final version.  Many of the deleted versions were due to clumsy fingers.  When you record video or audio alongside slides, you have to click to advance the slides while you record...takes a couple of practice rounds to get used to, but then it's a synch. 
3. If you video, use a high(er) quality camera--I went with the built-in camera on my iMac, but will try using my webcam next time.  I wasn't too happy with how pixelated the video came out, and there was a slight delay in motion with the audio.  But, that's a nit-picky thing.

Ideas for students:

• "Me-Presentation"--this platform lends itself well to a little bio about yourself or even an alternative to the paper resume.  
• Explanatory/ Process--Students could create a presentation aimed at explaining a process or concept that utilizes examples or diagrams. 
• Digital Storytelling--What if students narrated their own stories alongside a visual storytelling technique?  We've been using MovieMaker, iMovie, and Animoto for digital storytelling, but those tools eliminate a lot of the power of students' own voices when telling the story.  Why not allow them to tell the story alongside the story for a dynamic narrative experience?

*Anytime students record themselves and publish to the web it's important to be mindful of privacy laws and policies for your district.  In general, never post a video of a student to the web without written parent consent, and do not include any identifying information such as name and location.  A safe alternative could be to have students email you links to the video or publishing to a closed group like in Edmodo or a similar online classroom platform that is protected.