ShowMe

Name: ShowMe

Price: Free

Format:
IOS iPad only App. Uploaded to website www.showme.com

Difficulty: Moderate

Email Required: No

Description:
ShowMe is an app particularly useful for math. Students are able to record themselves annotating and speaking onto a blank background. This is useful for math, where teachers typically want students to show their work. Students can solve a problem and use ShowMe as a tutorial video. Even if students are shy and don't wish to speak while they are solving a problem, just watching a student work through a problem is usually enough to see if they really grasp a concept, or to pick out what they are doing wrong. 

There are a couple of neat features ShowMe has built in. The first is the ability to annotate over a picture that is inserted from the internet or iPad camera. This is useful for several math topics that are difficult to draw such as graphing on a coordinate plane or 3d figures. ShowMe also has a pause button that allows users to easily create long videos. After finishing one problem, my students will pause the ShowMe, erase the screen, then click resume to start a new math problem. This allows them to create ~10 minute videos with several math problems on it. 

ShowMe has a feature that allows a teacher user to create accounts. I made a teacher account and set up ~30 different accounts (a very simple process). ShowMe randomly generated passwords for the users (and even has an option for students that are under 13 years of age), and I printed out a list of usernames and passwords on an Excel spreadsheet. Now, anytime a student wants to use ShowMe, I can simply select one of the usernames I have already created and assign it to them. When students upload a video using the account I have created for them, it automatically emails the video to me. I can then show the video through my computer onto my classroom's projector. 

Student Examples:




Final Note:ShowMe was a difficult sell to my students. They were nervous about recording themselves and having to work out problems. Knowing that many of my students would really enjoy the app once they got past their initial fear, I made the decision to "voluntell" some of them to use the app. It worked. The app was such a huge success that I now have to limit the number of students that can use ShowMe on projects, as it is one of the favorites among my classes.