A New Way of Explaining Demonstrations

Each and every year for the last 12 years I have set up demonstrations for my students during the Electricity & Magnetism unit.  Throughout the years some demos have come and some have gone, but the lesson has remained the same.  I set up 6 demonstrations and students in small groups rotated from station to station and attempted to describe what was going on. The following class I would stand up at the whiteboard and review their thoughts until the demos were correctly explained using the concepts of magnetic flux, Faraday's Law, and Lenz's Law.  

This Winter 2013 was a game-changer!  As I learned more about iPads in the classroom and the app Explain Everything from my PLN, I set out to improve this experience.  Yes, I set up the same 6 demonstrations, but now the students were responsible for explaining 1 demonstration using the concepts of electromagnetism by creating an EE video to share with their classmates.  I asked several students in the class who had iPads to please bring them in and to purchase the Explain Everything app (and yes, even for $2.99, students purchased it and installed it on their iPads!).  I also allowed a group to use my own iPad and we were off and running.

Students had a flipped assignment at home to watch a few videos and take notes on both Faraday's Law and Lenz's Law. At the beginning of class I briefly summarized the concepts and asked some questions to check for understanding.  I instructed I was going to assess their mastery of these concepts by having them create a video explaining an electromagnetism  demonstration.   I  showed them how to use Explain Everything by mirroring a short tutorial on my iPad via AppleTV for them to see.  Each group of 2 students was assigned a demonstration and they started in on their observations.

As students went to their assigned demonstration, I walked around group to group assisting them with making detailed observations and answering any questions they had on the demo or using EE on the iPad.  Students took pictures of the demonstration materials,  pictures of them interacting with it, and even some fun pictures as the one below.

Rachel presenting the induction paddles

All the while other students took video right from the EE app to enhance their presentation.  Students continued setting up their slides on EE and recording their narrations. 

At the end of just over 2 class periods each group had finished their video and emailed me the xpl file which I then compressed on my laptop.  The following class the students viewed each others videos and took notes from them.  Some videos were funny, some just the facts, but all videos were unique and original.   In this lesson my students have gone from 12 years of having me lecture them on the correct explanations to a year of content creation and students teaching students.   

* A "shout out" to @gregkulowiec for his many blogs on @explainevrythng in which I learned about the app and its potential in the classroom.  Thanks Greg!

Here is one of the student created videos:

Note how students used the annotation features of EE (laser pointer, writing), included images and video taken within the app, and other imported images and sound.  They even included a cute, "I love physics!" and a fun picture of them with induction coils on their heads!