I LIKE-O IPEVO

We wanted to kids to make a video. We wanted it to be easy and fast. We wanted the focus to be on chemistry and not on learning a tool. And we wanted the video to include a video of a chemical demonstration. We considered Explain Everything, but it's complicated. Too easy to get bogged down and miss the point of our lesson. Enter the [FREE] iOS IPEVO Whiteboard app.

I use this app a lot for giving notes and doing guided practice. I have described it several times as having just the right number of bells and whistles. I felt like after about 15 minutes of play, I was confident to use it in class. Tap the question mark in the corner and you get a quick tip screen of what every tool will do:

Just want to mirror you iPad and show your class how to do something? It does that beautifully. Want to import a document or image and write on top? It's got you covered. Need to make a screencast of what you did in class for kids who were absent? That's easy. Want to take a picture and write on top of the picture? Yep, you can do all that from inside the app. And here's where we got really excited about our video lesson: You can turn on the camera and start filming a video and then write on top of the video while you film. And it's easy!

This is not a great video, but it shows what it looks like when you watch the video and see the annotating happen in real time. It only lasts a minute, so give it a quick watch and look for my red markings. Can you see what I was trying to show?

Tomorrow my students will use this app in class to make videos about chemical demonstrations they will conduct. I hope to post the best ones to my blog later this week to share their great work!