#TeacherPD – Three #EdTech Tools to Better Engage Learners During an In-Class Lesson Ft. @PearDeck @plickers @Socrative @Zaption

I wanted to share a series of video tutorials that I am working on in case they might be helpful to you, personally, or useful to share out with colleagues at your school. I am creating these tutorials using Zaption. Why use Zaption?

I can add elements to the videos to focus and engage the viewer and also to highlight key points.
I make a lot of written tutorials, but some things are more effectively delivered via video.
By sharing my “tours” to the Zaption gallery, anyone can access and create a copy of their own. In doing so, the new author can remix the project and modify the interactive elements to customize for their needs. (See end of this post for more details on this.)

The first tour that I’d like to share is:

Click to begin video lesson

This tour showcases 3 formative assessment tools that teachers can use to best engage students during an in-class lesson or lecture. A variety of tools are included to meet the needs of low-tech classrooms through schools with 1-to-1 laptop programs. More specifically, this tour features:

Tools #1 – Pear Deck: for classrooms using Google Apps
Tool #2 – Socrative: for any one-to-one device ready classroom
Tool #3 – Plickers: for a low-tech classroom

Some Zaption features that I used in this tour that I’d like to highlight:

I created a table of contents to each of the tools using a multiple choice questions with branching feedback and the “jump to” functionality.
I used text slides to serve as a “cover page” to transition between the various video clips, including a hyperlink to the tool that will be introduced.
I used side-by-side video with an image slide to show multiple views of the tool being explained (ie: teacher view and student view)

If you’d like to use and customize this tour, you can find it in the Zaption Gallery here.

How to use Zaption Gallery Tours:

The Zaption Gallery is a public landing page to view interactive Zaption tours. The Zaption Gallery is meant for educators to preview tours and easily copy them to their account to be shared with viewers. If you find a tour you would like to use, simply click Use Now. Once you have created a free account, the tour will be copied and you can then customize the tour to fit your needs. The published tour can then be shared with viewers and responses can be seen in your Tour Analytics.