Originally posted by MET student Eva Somogyi on 31/05/2017
One of the biggest, fastest shifts in ed tech has been the evolution from the use of large interactive whiteboards to the use of mobile, agile multi-purpose apps. The Educreations app transforms an iPad into a recordable whiteboard. Teachers can easily produce video lessons that are stored online and can be shared via email, Twitter, Facebook, blogs, and websites.
For more information see the Educreations website.
NO, this pitch does not provide the information nor the enthusiasm needed to capture my attention. The pitch begins with a feeble attempt to identify a Pain Point. Providing educators with an ability to create and share short video lessons to their students. Regardless of the fact that this is already easily accomplished by coupling screen capturing software and a simple graphics tool, the solution offered does package this task into one tool. Value could have been embedded to this idea if the app collected data or offered any other services, but there was no mention of this. Little is mentioned about competitors or alternative solutions, nor is there any mention of an Ask or a Return. As an elevator pitch, the enthusiasm provided by the presenter is not necessarily captivating, and I would have hoped that a strong product idea would have made up for this, which I felt it didn’t.
Isn’t this essentially the way Khan Academy creates their recorded lessons?
I actually used it last year, it allow students to record a video and share it with you or the whole class. More like summative or formative assessment for students to show their learning. Very helpful for math classes when students are asked to explain their understanding to others.
Considering how the video is from 2012, I actually think this would have been good to invest in back then.
I felt like the pitch did a mediocre job of showing what the platform could do, since the end product from the atom demo wasn’t really a great teaching resource at all. They probably put it in there to show off functionality — pulling images online, and being able to mark up / label them right away.
When they showed the collage at the end though, those screen captures looked much more useful and legitimate. It sounded like uploads could be made available to the general community, so that’s good as well from a perspective of access and openness.
Videos have been the answer to text-heavy teaching forever now. Where I work, the pandemic pushed many instructors into this space — it’s much more effective for students to see how an accounting statement should be filled out step by step rather than reading about it, for example.
A dedicated platform like this also has potential in terms of convenience for instructors — the goal is always to help teachers focus on what they do best, which is teaching. Recording and uploading content shouldn’t be a hassle, and this 9-year old platform was apparently able to streamline this by (1) emailing students when a new upload was made and (2) hosting a library of materials created by others.