What is Educreations?
Educreations is available as an iPad app and can be accessed via the Internet. It is meant for teachers or students to create content of multimodal means via an iPad. You can draw and write as you record yourself speaking, and a video is captured of everything that is happening on the screen. As such, when used on an iPad, you would need a stylus pen to aid you. If you are accessing it via the web, you will need to hook up a drawing tablet or an interactive whiteboard. Hence, for all intents and purposes, I feel that it is best used as an iPad app since one does not need as much equipment.
There is a free and a paid version. As a free version, it only has the most basic of features, like only allowing 50MB of video space (which is not a lot considering that even short videos can take up a lot of space depending on the quality) and uploading of images and background to be used in the video. The paid version provides more options, like 5GB of video space and uploading of documents and presentations. It also gives you the option of exporting the video so it can be saved and stored separately.
Hence, I would say the free version provides a taster, and is meant to entice educators or schools to pay for the app. That is not necessarily a bad thing, since the paid version can help to create flipped classroom content fairly easily. Essentially, using Educreations on an iPad is like using a whiteboard with a recording function as you can draw or write anything on it, and you are only limited by the iPad screen dimensions or by whatever material that you are using as a backdrop to record and teach with.
While it seems like Educreations is similar to VoiceThread (link embedded in name), VoiceThread is web-based and has a more collaborative element to it as others who have access to the videos can comment, which allows for students to discuss what they watched. Educreations is more of a one-way street, in the sense that teachers push information to the students, albeit outside the classroom.
Advantages and Disadvantages
As mentioned, Educreations is very ideal for creating lessons for flipped classrooms, which means students are able to learn at their own pace since they can view the video as often as they want or even pause it to crucial points. Teachers can upload pre-lesson videos so students can learn concepts at home before the lesson and more time can be devoted to higher order thinking skills during class time. Post-lesson videos can also be created to reinforce learning. Moreover, since these videos can be reused over the years (barring any changes in syllabus), it can be time-saver for teachers in the long run.
Having said that, flipped classrooms hinge on the idea of students being self-directed learners who will put in the time and effort outside of classroom time to watch these videos. This can be a huge disadvantage in itself since some students might be reluctant to put in that extra effort, which means they will start the next lesson lagging behind those who had put in the effort to be prepared.
While it can be difficult to encourage students to become self-directed, motivation can and is a strong factor to push students in the right direction. The teacher just needs to find the right trigger. If the teacher is persistent in driving home the idea that students need to self-directed, it also sets the right tone for them.
Uses
Educreations can be used to create any sort of video relating to anything from grammar rules to the four skills of reading, writing, listening and speaking. For example, a video recapping the structure in a narrative story - i.e. Introduction, Problem, Series of Events, Climax, Resolution and Conclusion - can be created. Or a video introducing the different types of figurative language like similes and metaphors could be uploaded as a pre-activity before the actual lesson of learning how to use them effectively to enhance one's ability to write creatively. The list is endless.
In Singapore's context
Being self-directed learners is what the Ministry of Education wants Singaporean students to become. Hence, Educreations would be a useful tool for teachers and schools to invest in, since it is a handy platform to create flipped classrooms which is a means for students to become more self-directed in their learning.
Conclusion
Educreations is a useful iPad app for teachers and it is easy to use. It will definitely help in flipped classroom content creation.
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