Show Me, this is what you are looking for!

Hi everybody!

I’m Marta. In this post I would like to share with you a useful educational tool, called ShowMe, that allow users to record their voice as well as write text, draw or add some pictures or videos in order to explain some content. This app is available in Ipad and can be used by anybody who want to, no matter the age. ShowMe Interactive Whiteboard is an easy and effective tool for step-by-step audiovisual presenting and sharing. The visual/auditory combination of a ShowMe is engaging to watch as well as create. This app is also useful to help children organize the information in a sensible order as well as develop good presentation skills in a collaborative context. In addition, children can share their projects with the educational community and take advantage of other user’s explanations.

How to use ShowMe? Here you have a presentation that explains it in detail.

What is ShowMe? from ShowMe App

Features (taken from the Apple website)

• Voice-record
• Multiple brush colors
• Enter text
• Pause and erase
• Import pictures from your photo library, built-in camera, or web image search
• Import documents as pictures from dropbox, or google drive
• Create video from any document
• Unlimited lesson length
• Free to upload and share your recordings with friends
• Easy embedding for sharing anywhere
• Manage students with groups

ACTIVITY

Target audience: 5th grade

Placement in curriculum: Science (CLIL)

School course: Second semester

Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy: This activity offers an opportunity to enhance both lower- and higher-order thinking skills.

Lower order thinking skills.

• Level III: Applying (using the knowledge in a variety of ways): This activity provides an opportunity to apply, use and practice the content vocabulary in meaningful context:  a short speech (presentation)

Higher order thinking skills.

• Level VI: Creating (create new products or points of view). The activity gives the students the opportunity to create a piece of oral presentation about how the respiratory system works.

Aims:

• To be able to use ShowMe app.
• To be able to identify and summarize the main contents related to the respiratory system.
• To be able to work in cooperative groups.

Competences involved:

• Linguistic and audio-visual: because pupils have to create a presentation while drawing and explaining different concepts. In this case, drawings are useful to improve the comprehension.
• Information handling and digital competence: in order to do the task, they have to interact and know the app to use it.
• Autonomy, initiative and decision taking: because they are creating a tool that enables their classmates to watch a video-presentation done by themselves. If they are able to do it properly, it means children have understood the concept and are able to explain something in their own words.
• Social and civic: because children have to work in pairs and listen to their partner’s suggestion. This is not about one child doing everything but it involves reaching an agreement about what they want to show.
• Knowledge and interaction with the world: this activity will be about the respiratory system and how it works so the majority of the concepts go around scientific

Grouping: This activity will be carried out in pairs (explained in the procedure).

Procedure of the activity:

First of all, I will explain to students how ShowMe app works and the elements they can find in the toolbar.  

In pairs, students will summarize and present, by using ShowMe, the main contents related to the respiratory system through a recording of about one minute. Each pair will be in charge of a different topic (parts of the circulatory system, how it works, common diseases, healthy habits to take care of it, curiosities, etc.).

First, both students of the pair will identify and write in a draft the information that they want to share through the presentation. When they finish, the teacher will check their rough draft and will give them a feedback (weaknesses and improvements).

Then, they will record the presentation, including the advices from the teacher. Each member of the pair will be responsible for recording one part of the presentation.

Finally, each pair will present their presentation to their other groups of the class, so they will review the circulatory system contents.

An example of recording could be the following:

Materials required

• Ipads (one per pair).
• Paper and pen if they want to do a draft before recording the presentation.

Class management

Following the tips that I have learnt in the ICT lessons, I would ask students to set Ipad aside when they didn’t need them to avoid classroom management problems. When I am giving them the instructions of the activity, I would say “Ipads facing at me”, so I could make sure that they pay attention to what I am saying and don’t get distracted. Moreover, I would assign some students to be Experts TIC, responsibles for giving support to me or to their classmates if in case we need some help.

When they are doing the recording in pairs, the teacher will walk around the classroom, checking that students are doing the task proposed and observing their needs in order to help them whenever it is necessary. We believe that it is always important for the teacher to have used the app before and have tried to create a game to foresee the problems that can arise.

In case that students would need a quiet atmosphere to record their presentation, they will have the opportunity to go to another classroom just to record it and then come back to the main classroom.

Added value through ICT

• Visual support, engaging tool.
• It involves a challenge (summarizing contents, identifying the key ideas, cooperating,…)
• ShowMe it’s ideal for reviewing content, assessing children and make them connect all the topics learnt through the unit in a more motivational way (not only making them memorise it and write it down.)
• Develop digital competence as well as linguistic and audiovisual.
• The recordings can be shared with each other and they can open it in any device.
• The recordings remain always kept and available to review, use or edit them.

Trouble-shooting

• One possible problem could be that, perhaps, student’s speech in the video is not clear or understandable enough. For that, I will let it clear beforehand that they have to speak loud and pronunciation.
• Another problem foreseen could be that students spend too much time recording their presentation, doing and redoing it again and again. To avoid that, I will limit the time that they can spend making the presentation (30 minutes maxim).

4 skills involved

Reading: Children will be able to read some keywords that will appear in the presentation.	Listening: Children need to listen actively the presentations made by their classmates.
Writing: Children will write and draw the main contents to support their speech.	Speaking: Children need to explain the key concepts fluently and taking into account the pronunciation.

Assessment:

The teacher will assess if the aims of the activity are fulfilled taking into account the following assessment criteria:

0) needs improvement; 1) fair; 2) good; 3) excellent

To be able to use ShowMe app
	0	1	2	3
Is he/she able to record his/her voice explaining the content?
Is he/she able to draw?
Is he/she able to erase his/her drawings?
Is he/she able to change the colour of the digital pencil?
Is he /she able to paste images in the presentation?
Is he/she able to enlarge and reduce the images?
Is he/she able to delete an image?
Is he/she able to share with the rest of the class his/her ShowMe record?
Is he/she able to save his/her ShowMe record?
To be able to summarize and present the key contents of the lesson
Is he/she able to identify the keywords of his/her topic?
Is he/she able to summarize the information?
Is he/she able to summarize the contents using appropriate grammar structures?
Is he/she able to express his/her ideas in a clear way?
Is he/she able to listen actively to the other group’s presentations?
To be able to work in cooperative groups
Is he/she able to listen actively to his/her partner’s ideas?
Is he/she able to respect his/her turn to record his/her part of the presentation? (each member of the pair records on part of the presentation).