Tuesday, 10 January 2012

iPad Update - Using ShowMe For Student Revision

Over the Christmas and New Year break, I made use of ShowMe to create some 'YouTube style' video clips. These were made to aid student revision, in their preparations for an exam in January.

The module concerned involves a fair amount of mathematical work, including rearranging formulae (which is never a favourite of theirs, but a bit of a subject necessity). I made three videos: (1) Rearranging simple equations, (2) Rearranging more complex equations, and (3) Making use of more than one equation to solve one problem. The videos were uploaded to the module pages on Wolsey (with a link from the ShowMe website).

The following illustrates the output:

I've only received informal feedback from the students so far, but it certainly seems to be positive. They do seem to like any attempt made to modernise their learning on a module. ShowMe registration was quick and easy, as was the process of putting them onto Wolsey (for some reason, mine didn't want to embed themselves into a Wolsey page, I had to select 'open in new window', but it looked fine). Definitely recommend it, and I intend to make further use of it where possible. Hopefully any others trialling it will have a nicer recorded voice than mine (almost a certainty). Not sure budgets will stretch to hiring Stephen Fry for my narration.

As a drier, technical bit, when I asked for the link from ShowMe, it added text before the 'http' section of the link. In this form, the videos didn't want to attach to Wolsey in either way (embedded in a page, or 'open in new window'). I removed any text before 'http', and the video would then 'open in a new window' perfectly well (you're still within Wolsey, it's not an 'external' page). They still wouldn't embed themselves into the existing Wolsey page however. Maybe it's affected by the browser being used (was using Safari)?

Best regards, Gavin.

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